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Sexual Abuse Epidemic and Cover Ups
Central Question:
The abuse news is bad enough, why does every Christian church then try to cover it up?
Why this is important to me:
We have been seeing these sexual abuse stories now for over 35 years yet they keep coming. I understand that it might have been a shock 35 years ago, but it is not a shock anymore. We expect to see these stories. Yet, no church is fixing this internally even to this day. The only way to fix these appears to be news articles proving the abuse.
And every time, from every denomination, the news article involves a cover up as well.
How much can someone actually trust a church? They are not willing to stop something as blatantly bad as sexual abuse. They know that it happens and yet they ignore it. In fact, their response is to cover it up. Can someone actually trust it?
France 216,000 sexual abused in Catholic Church
Two hundred and sixteen thousand. By 2,900-3,200 abusers. That is 600 people per abuser since 1950. The logistics of this are incredible. Not only did leaders know, for that number some leaders had to be accomplices
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58801183
Scope of USA Catholic Church Sexual Abuse
As of this writing it has been 36 years after the first catholic sex scandal report. In those 36 years the Catholic church has seen 17,000 complaints in the USA alone. They have paid $4 billion to victims.
The most common response by the Catholic Church is to be surprised that it is still happening. And then try to reduce the abusers punishment in court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_cases_in_the_United_States
LDS Church hid abuse for years
“The @AP obtained nearly 12,000 pages of records showing that a “help line” run by the Mormon church is part of a system that can be misused to divert abuse accusations against church members away from law enforcement — and out of the public eye.” All calls go directly to a legal team who tells the caller to NOT call local police and local sex abuse laws. Mormon leaders established the help line in 1995 and it operated not within its Department of Family Services, but instead in its Office of Risk Management, whose role is to protect the church and members from injury and liability in an array of circumstances, including fires, explosions, hazardous chemical spills and severe weather.
Case after case has been ignored due to this policy. This is despite the incredible research in this article. When this story came out, the church published a ‘this is a fake news’ announcement which interestingly also shared how they are legally following policy. An interesting combination. “The nature and the purpose of the Church’s help line was seriously mischaracterized in a recent Associated Press article.” but also “The help line is just one of many safeguards put in place by the Church…” Here is a good example to what was the churches response compared to what could have been the response if they truly wanted to fix the situation
https://apnews.com/article/Mormon-church-sexual-abuse-investigation-e0e39cf9aa4fbe0d8c1442033b894660?fbclid=IwAR0OjfBK-RMyC4-zDhKklchGpdAQs_0U0g9RRnHuDJ2Zu01_xvzq1H-j474 https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-offers-statement-help-line-abuse?fbclid=IwAR1BRBrVwKJmAMlxvf0dSMFQi-bH_WOXJsJfb0Ez0VtkZPZ1SeejQiHvB04
“In the seven lawsuits each representing seven different male victims, attorneys say church officials never notified authorities about abuse allegations. Public records show members of church-sponsored Boy Scout troops who were abused would tell church bishops about what they had experienced. The lawsuits allege bishops would then tell the victims to keep quiet so the church could conduct its own investigation. In the meantime, troop leaders and volunteers accused of sex abuse would be allowed to continue in their roles or be assigned to another troop, the suits said”
BYU punished victims of sex abuse
Over 40 students joined on a Pulziter prize winning article. These students would report sexual abuse to the police or the school. Sexual activity is not allowed at the school. BYU would place these students on an academic hold
“They’re saying they can’t prove that a rape happened, so they can’t provide the services they would provide to a rape victim,” student Madi Barney says.
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5161643&itype=CMSID
Southern Baptist Sexual Abuse
Widespread sexual abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches was reported by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News on February 10, 2019. The report found roughly 380 clergy, lay leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, leaving behind over 700 victims[1] since 1998. The extent of misconduct is further complicated by work within the Southern Baptist Convention to move sex offenders to other communities and resist attempts to address the culture of abuse.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_cases_in_Southern_Baptist_churches
Boy Scouts Sexual Abuse
Boy Scouts requires boys to have religion. Its leader was christian and wanted all Boy Scouts to follow christian values. While other religions are in scouts, christianity is the main religion. Many religions sponsor troops
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Scouting
The Boy Scouts of America settled with 10’s of thousands of victims. $850 million total
Cover-ups by Scout officials were frequent. Instead of informing authorities, the officials told the subjects of the allegations to quietly leave the organization. Many went on to join other troops, only to face more allegations of child abuse. The young people targeted by abuse were often told by Scouting officials not to tell their parents.
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/21/boy-scouts-abuse-scandal-film/
Evangelical Abuse Numbers like Catholic Numbers
Boz Tchividjian has prosecuted dozens of sexual abuse victims harmed by a church’s response to them. In one case, a pastor did not report a sexual offender in his church because the man had repented. The offender was arrested only after he had abused five more children.
Tchividjian says sexual abuse in evangelicalism rivals the Catholic Church scandal of the early 2000s.
192 Publicized Pedophile Cases Against Religious Leaders in Just 2 years
Wade Mullen, the director of the M.Div. program at Capital Seminary & Graduate School, looked into this as a part of his PhD dissertation.
He found 192 instances of public abuse in two years (2016 and 2017) He only counted those from church leaders abusing a child.
Bob Jones University Sexual Abuse Cover Up Culture
Wade’s study showed that 56 percent of the 381 respondents who reported having knowledge of the school’s handling of abuse (a group that included current and former students, as well as employees) believed that BJU conveyed a “blaming and disparaging” attitude toward victims.
According to one anonymous respondent, after he finally told the police about years of sexual abuse by his grandfather, a BJU official admonished him that “[you] tore your family apart, and that’s your fault,” and “you love yourself more than you love God.” BJU officials declined to comment for this article.
The Duggars Abuse Scandals
Josh Duggar, the eldest son of the creepy super-fundamentalist clan at the center of the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting, has admitted to charges of molesting multiple underage girls when he was a teenager; he has since stepped down from his position as a sex scold for the Family Research Council. Duggar admitted to molesting five girls—some of them reportedly his sisters—and while the family claims to have addressed the situation, a timeline constructed by Gawker suggests he did not get counseling while managing to dodge any prosecution.
Another hardcore fundamentalist leader who had a mentorship relationship with the Duggars, Bill Gothard, was also caught up in a sex abuse scandal last year. Gothard was the leader of Institute in Basic Life Principles
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Letter Sections
- Letter
- Preface: Belief Change Bias
- Abuse And Oppression
- Bible Accuracy
- Trust In God