Are you still closing your eyes to the real risk of child sexual abuse in your church?

In one of my most-read previous blog posts, I tackled a topic that I consider to be one of the most important topics in the church today: child sexual abuse …

Child Abuse in the Church: Justice Can Be Grace

After reading a link from Challies this morning (The Top Five Reasons Your Church Could Land in Court), I am only that much more convinced that this topic is extremely important and yet, shockingly and naively ignored by most Christians and most church leaders. (Thankfully, not my church leaders and my church administrator. But I know they have to fight tooth and nail, at great personal cost of time and effort, to protect the sheep in this regard.)

Where do you stand on this topic? Are you still closing your eyes and burying your head in the sand and saying, “That couldn’t possibly be true of my church”? Please. Click through. Read the stats.
 
After doing so, I am only that much more confident of the accuracy of what I wrote in my previous article:

“This is not a problem that is “out there” in some other church, in some other community. If you are closing your eyes to the real risk of child sexual abuse in the church, you are naive and foolish and not living up to your membership vows …”

Now that I’ve probably totally freaked you out, let me start my close with something even more awful. The words of a predator—and that is a correct term because child sexual abusers prey on churches. They do. And don’t look for a shaggy, disheveled, scary looking guy. Look at the most clean-cut, correct Bible-carrying, knows all the right words, super-duper-nice guy. Listen to how one abuser explained how he targeted his victims in the church …”