Not a trans man, either. Mostly just a guy who took an untoward advantage of his position and presumed authority ... and if the kid hasn't come forward, would likely STILL be doing so.
I must say that for a woke, gay transwoman who wants to ruin our women's sports, Pastor Hawk did a amazing job of pretending to be conservative, married, straight cis-man who didn't give a damn about women's sports, for 25 years.
If there is any upside to all this, it is the fact victims are being believed at long last. Sexual predators within the clergy were allowed to hide behind their Bibles and clerical collars for far too long. The root problem rests with the people who delegate an important part of their thinking to those claiming to speak for an invisible man in the sky who will sometimes grant wishes if you beg hard enough. It is going to take a massive cultural shift to turn that around and it won't change as long as organized religion is seen as a virtue.
You do an amazing job. Don't worry at all. I couldn't tell at all. I'm always impressed by people who speak multiple languages.
Me. Not so much. I know a smattering of words in a few languages and I try what I can (Please, Thank you, Good day). As I like to say, "I speak two languages. Bad English and Worse English."
Much of our legalese survives from the Norman French occupation of England. Toss in some bits of Latin here and there and it is damned near unintelligible to us native speakers as well.
+++ I have long felt the staggering number of Christian sects should be a bigger problem for believers than it is. It speaks to a God who could will the universe into existence, but couldn't make himself understood when it came to the most important message imaginable.
One other small bright side: the pastor immediately resigned. None of this "I will not step down, the Lärd will vindicate me, praise ya Jesus" bullshit -- at least his slimy ass had the [I refuse to say "decency"] to promptly step down.
This pattern feels so familiar. (NOTE: No man in my Christian Nationalist upbringing ever touched me inappropriately or groomed me.) But that's not to say it didn't happen to others. We all talked about the one staff pastor who had such a crush on one of my classmates that he literally stalked her on weekends and called her into his office on Mondays to tell her everywhere she went. He subsequently had an affair and left his wife. Or the rumors that another staff pastor had sex with a student. (She was not believed when she alleged it; the incident was never investigated.) Their obsession with sex and grooming is an admission.
Lately I've been wondering why are Christians so obsessed with the very thing they supposedly hate, despised, and abhor? Why are they telling people, including each other, to abstain from sex of every kind while at the same time waste countless hours looking at porn on TV, the internet, adult magazines, and engaging in them every chance they get?
I wrote about this on my Substack. I don't want to link drop in Hemant's space, but if you click on my face and look for "Christian Nationalists and Their Urges," it will answer a lot of questions for you.
I saw your article and found it a really good read. The way I see it, it's very much the way the Christofascists hate themselves and their own bodies and are quite jealous of those who enjoy sex life without shame or guilt. To me that's why they're so obsessed with sex, pop culture, and other things that they supposedly hate and despise, yet relentlessly pursuit for kicks. They are addicted to them just like drugs.
It's pretty much a truism of most crimes* that when someone is caught, it wasn't their first time committing it. That's because people often start small, so the true "first timers" would be caught doing something very petty, not felonies. Also because when someone commits a crime and gets away with it, they very naturally do it again as their experience has taught them to expect they will get away with it the next time too.
Yes that was really actually nice to see. Don't see it enough. Especially when it's on the borderline of harassment and assault. People sure want to be positive their kids have been definitively assaulted before they believe them (and too often not even then) and do something.
I'm trying to imagine which commandment my youth pastor would've used to stop this behavior. Lying? Maybe but that's not the worst part of it. Coveting? I guess we could say a daughter is the property of he father. Honor thy parents? That's the reason so many of these kids get molested in the first place. It's almost as if the Ten Commandments were not a comprehensive list.
The commandment "Thou shalt not put a kid's hand under thy thigh" was removed from the Decalogue at the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE by a youth pastor named Nectarius.
Yes, absolutely. To be a pedo, a lot of lying to yourself is involved. Often, they convince themselves the victim was seducing them. Maybe a commandment about delusions?
Last line says it all. The projection of these monsters and screams of immoral libs, when they comprise the biggest group of child molesters out there. In fact, a good reason for us to CANCEL christian fundamentalists. Troublesh00ter is correct…Youth Pastor= pedophile far too many times. WARNING: Religion can be damaging to your health and the health and mental well-being of your children!
I resent the hell out of the fact that they *navigate* it -- as if "this difficult time" is some kind of goddamned river that winds its way through perilous rapids or something. Say, here's a zany thought: how's about instead of "navigating" it, you guys "traverse" it for once? Jesus, Mary, and Joe Pesci, I'm SO SICK of all the freakin' "navigating"...🙄
Churches can NEVER be relied on to look after their “most vulnerable members.” I’ve never heard of a church taking action against abusive clergy and employees before the abuse becomes public knowledge. When your only concern is protection of the brand and providing cover for your managers, your members can just keep paying their tithing and taking whatever abuse you want to dish out amid a pile of cynical sermons.
"On NUMEROUS occasions I told him that I was uncomfortable and asked him to stop touching me to which he would say, "we aren't doing anything wrong”"
You are doing something wrong, first and foremost, and that isn't what she said. So often that is the answer given by adult men to the too young women who reject them. He said it to Izzy, even though she didn't say she was worried what they were doing was wrong, he said it here to Crandall, and though it's not quoted, I guarantee he said it to Terwillger too. I follow a group that posts about terrible men on dating apps and real life and far too many times when a young girl tells some older man she's 15 or 16, his response is "it's okay, it is legal for me to pursue you." Sometimes they even add in it's better for him to go too young for fertility's sake (which is false and gross).
Izzy was uncomfortable because she didn't like his touch, as with the other girls. Not because they were concerned about what others or god will think. But, with the narrative these men, and Hawk specifically, make up in their minds, the object of their desires, the human people who happen to be female do not have a say in what happens to them.
Finally, to drive the point home, it was wrong. It is wrong to push yourself on folks who are trying to reject you. And perhaps telling a man your age isn't a direct enough rejection, or becoming stock still when you're being touched isn't direct enough, it is still a rejection. Men need to be retrained in basic human communication sometimes. "No" is a complete sentence and does not mean "convince me".
Yeah, that response was a clear "he doesn't want to get it" moment. It doesn't matter if it's legal, if what you're doing is non-consensual, you are doing something wrong.
I would like to think there is still some room in human interaction for 'that's a fail but I don't mind if you keep trying' flirtation games. But that takes social skills on both parts. If someone has not passed nuance 101, they shouldn't try it. And let's face it, the sorts of guys we're talking about don't even bother taking the course.
This is a great point, and I felt something similar when I read that passage (but I didn't fully articulate it like you did). This guy was so caught up in his own sleaziness that he responded, not to the girl's actual request, but to his own guilty conscience.
The above equation has all but become axiomatic as it comes to those who think they're qualified to minister to children, and you'd think that parents and onlookers would see the pattern. Sadly, I think a great number of them are blinded by another equation:
Faith = goodness / respectability / acceptable.
And so long as that paradigm persists, kids are going to be molested by those who represent religion. It's an ugly truth, but I've yet to see it contradicted.
I had a couple of great youth pastors. Didn't stop me from losing faith but in terms of herding teens for a weekend and giving them wholesome fun activities to do, they did fine. Indoor kickball in the undercroft was not a wise idea for a lot of reasons, but it wasn't sexually inappropriate. :)
I think you need to qualify it as applying to *authoritarian* churches. In sects and churches like the one I grew up in (liberal ELCA Lutheran), where the pastors are considered basically "paid experts at their job" but social co-equals outside of that theological job, you probably see a lot less of it. Both because the lack of power outside of 'your job is to lead theological meetings" doesn't attract as many predators, and because in those places the congregation is much less likely to put up with such crap.
Also maybe something to do with it, our youth pastors were trainee priests. Meaning they were only staying at the church for a year or two before moving on to another church. While that doesn't at all stop predators, it does prevent the youth pastors from accruing a lot of trust and power. So the 'groomer' types might have been more attracted to other sects which could offer them more long-term positions.
The one youth pastor I remember from my preteen and teen days was Don Decoursey, of the Northfield Congregational Church. He was an older gentleman (and for what I remember, a Gentle Man, too), and as decent a fellow as you'd ever want to meet. I did a couple church retreats which he led, and if anything untoward happened during those times or any other, I am unaware of them.
Whether he was part of the rule or the exception, he was a good man, for what I remember, and that deserves mention.
Worth remembering that reading Hemant's posts has some of the same faults as the regular media and is a bit like being a policeman: it gives you a skewed view of the world where the bad deeds are always in focus and the hundreds or thousands of decent deeds/people which happen at the same rate as the bad deed go mostly un-covered. He's not immune to "if it bleeds, it leads."
It's a fact: not every youth pastor is a kiddie-diddler. The problem as I see it is that there are a disproportionate number of youth pastors that ARE child molesters, and too many of them are going unpunished or with little more than a slap on the wrist because religion. WE – those of us who focus on religious and atheist issues – see stories like this almost on a daily basis. The average person DOESN'T. That said, I would like to think that I maintain at least a semi-balanced POV regarding what is going on regarding those topics.
And I have no problem in writing my congresspeople or my local paper when I feel the need to point something out to them, regarding religion ... and I DO.
Maybe? I'm not sure. AIUI whether the per capita number of pedophiles in (protestant) priest positions is > the regular population is still unclear. At least, if you have empirical data about it, send the link, that would be interesting. I think it's been a difficult matter for researchers to statistically nail down.
I do fully agree that one part of the reason churches are in far more trouble with this (compared to, say, schools and work offices) is because they seem to be more tolerant and protective of the criminals. Thus even if the number of *criminals* is the same, the number of *crimes* each criminal commits before being fired/reported seems to be probably higher. With some exceptions for the Jerry Sanduskys and Larry Nassars of the world. That' again, goes back to power and authority. The more the institution considers its reputation to be bound up in the reputation of the criminal, and the more the institution sees the criminal as useful (outside of their crimes), or the less authoritative the institution views the victims, the more likely they are to try and cover it up.
"They’ve shown they can’t be trusted to look after their most vulnerable members. " I think you'll find they believe that's what they're doing. When they make a statement later, after the bad PR has died down the statement will reflect how difficult these things are to defend their pastor from. In their minds it is never going to be understood that the authority figure who is an adult man placed in a powerful social and religious position who is ruining jobs, childhoods, lives and futures with his feelings of entitlement and ownership of the bodies of all female parishioners regardless of age. They are always going to believe that the trouble started with the survivors going public and try to "fix" the situation from that time forward. This is why nothing will change. They need to go back to the initial conditions they've created that lead a person to believe these behaviors are permissible and forgivable.
It won't stop even with a change in church leadership. It requires a change in fundamental culture.
The church has to reject the culture of toxic masculinity, misogyny, and hierarchy. It is impossible to maintain an authoritarian culture that is free from abuse. You have to create a culture of equality. You must create a culture of justice. You must create a culture of accountability for everyone in leadership.
Toxic masculinity, misogyny, and hierarchy are so fundamental to the culture of these churches that you might as well ask a leopard to change its spots to stripes.
My very best wishes go out to Hawk's victims. I hope they find peace and healing and are able to get on with their lives knowing that it was him, not them, all along.
This church's response to decades of reports of grooming and sexual assault is no different from that of the catholic church, the Boy Scouts, and any number of other patriarchal organizations: circle the wagons, support the abuser, disbelieve the victims - until the vast numbers of them make that untenable.
And THESE are the people who are trying to push their 'values' and their beliefs into our public schools with displays of their religious tenets. What a bunch of monsters.
So it's not just sex-deprived catholic priests. I wonder if these abusers are that way before they're in a position of power or become that way afterwards.
I've often said that like the mountain climber who say "because it's there" when asked why they do it, pedophiles take jobs where they can be exposed to children, because that's where the kids are. A job as a pastor is great for them because a lot of churches aren't going to do a background check and they assume that because he's Christian he must be of high moral fiber.
There is something which make me cringe every time I heard "A condemned pedophile was released earlied because of good behavior". No shit Sherlock, how many occasions have they to rape children in a fucking prison ? 🙄
Both. The position carrying authority over kids probably attracts people who want that, and then when they get away with their first few acts they get worse and worse.
Every major denomination has had sex abuse scandals, every one. The Mormons, The scientologists (an out and out scam cult but thr claim to be a religion.) Of course the usual suspects the Catholics, Southern Baptists, The Amish/Mennonites Even culty off-shoots like the People of Praise Amy Coney Barrett's cult.
Worth repeting each and every time.
Not a Drag Queen.
Not a trans woman.
Not a gay man.
Not a trans man, either. Mostly just a guy who took an untoward advantage of his position and presumed authority ... and if the kid hasn't come forward, would likely STILL be doing so.
Yeah, but trans men are not the target of right wing nuts as much as trans women are, on this topic anyway.
True. I suppose it was the egalitarian in me, wanting them to get at least SOME mention. I'm weird that way! 🤪
It's true they are often conveniently forgotten by rwns and terfs.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I must say that for a woke, gay transwoman who wants to ruin our women's sports, Pastor Hawk did a amazing job of pretending to be conservative, married, straight cis-man who didn't give a damn about women's sports, for 25 years.
A straight, white, christian, male, predator.
If there is any upside to all this, it is the fact victims are being believed at long last. Sexual predators within the clergy were allowed to hide behind their Bibles and clerical collars for far too long. The root problem rests with the people who delegate an important part of their thinking to those claiming to speak for an invisible man in the sky who will sometimes grant wishes if you beg hard enough. It is going to take a massive cultural shift to turn that around and it won't change as long as organized religion is seen as a virtue.
The police seems to have started investigating on their own. It would be a refreshing change if it's really the case.
If she was under 14 at the time, there is not statute of limitation in Missouri. (Yes, the law is more complex than I'm addressing here.)
I thank you for dumbing it down for me. I am far from fluent in legalese :)
I'm not much more fluent either.
I loved the scene in Maid when she's in court and everyone uses the world "legal" for everything she doesn't understand.
"You Honor, my client legal legal legal legal legal, legal legal legal. She legal legal legal legal legal, legal legal legal legal legal legal legal. ..."
But English is your native language, not mine. I have less problems understanding it in French.
You do an amazing job. Don't worry at all. I couldn't tell at all. I'm always impressed by people who speak multiple languages.
Me. Not so much. I know a smattering of words in a few languages and I try what I can (Please, Thank you, Good day). As I like to say, "I speak two languages. Bad English and Worse English."
Much of our legalese survives from the Norman French occupation of England. Toss in some bits of Latin here and there and it is damned near unintelligible to us native speakers as well.
Indeed.
If religion was about real things, I would suggest actual licenses to practice it, like we have to have to drive a car.
+++ I have long felt the staggering number of Christian sects should be a bigger problem for believers than it is. It speaks to a God who could will the universe into existence, but couldn't make himself understood when it came to the most important message imaginable.
Well, His kid tried dumbing it down--love your neighbor asI have loved you--but people managed to eff that up, too.
In our sect it was "Love your neighbor as your elf" -- which I never understood, because I was one of the kids who didn't have an elf...
🎯That kind of spoiled the grift, though.
Statically, when you beg for something, once in a while you get it. And you would have got it without begging to a nonexistent dream/nightmare figure.
Yup. Sometimes the ball bounces your way, and it doesn't mean God did it.
One other small bright side: the pastor immediately resigned. None of this "I will not step down, the Lärd will vindicate me, praise ya Jesus" bullshit -- at least his slimy ass had the [I refuse to say "decency"] to promptly step down.
This pattern feels so familiar. (NOTE: No man in my Christian Nationalist upbringing ever touched me inappropriately or groomed me.) But that's not to say it didn't happen to others. We all talked about the one staff pastor who had such a crush on one of my classmates that he literally stalked her on weekends and called her into his office on Mondays to tell her everywhere she went. He subsequently had an affair and left his wife. Or the rumors that another staff pastor had sex with a student. (She was not believed when she alleged it; the incident was never investigated.) Their obsession with sex and grooming is an admission.
Lately I've been wondering why are Christians so obsessed with the very thing they supposedly hate, despised, and abhor? Why are they telling people, including each other, to abstain from sex of every kind while at the same time waste countless hours looking at porn on TV, the internet, adult magazines, and engaging in them every chance they get?
I wrote about this on my Substack. I don't want to link drop in Hemant's space, but if you click on my face and look for "Christian Nationalists and Their Urges," it will answer a lot of questions for you.
I saw your article and found it a really good read. The way I see it, it's very much the way the Christofascists hate themselves and their own bodies and are quite jealous of those who enjoy sex life without shame or guilt. To me that's why they're so obsessed with sex, pop culture, and other things that they supposedly hate and despise, yet relentlessly pursuit for kicks. They are addicted to them just like drugs.
But the guilt about it seems to be an aphrodesiac for them.
The book Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality is a good read on that aspect of the issue.
Others too - notably Allen Sherman. He muses about this in his book: 'The Rape of the A.P.E. a a serious satire for a comedian.
Research materials for fire and brimstone sermons. They can't condone such abhorrent perversity, can they ? /s
Omfg what a nightmare. So essentially terrorizing your classmate on the regular? Nice.
It's always happened to others.
It's pretty much a truism of most crimes* that when someone is caught, it wasn't their first time committing it. That's because people often start small, so the true "first timers" would be caught doing something very petty, not felonies. Also because when someone commits a crime and gets away with it, they very naturally do it again as their experience has taught them to expect they will get away with it the next time too.
*Doesn't apply to crimes of passion.
Kudos to the parents for immediately taking action.
Yes that was really actually nice to see. Don't see it enough. Especially when it's on the borderline of harassment and assault. People sure want to be positive their kids have been definitively assaulted before they believe them (and too often not even then) and do something.
Maybe this Christian church could have benefited from the Ten Commandments being posted in their church.
I'm trying to imagine which commandment my youth pastor would've used to stop this behavior. Lying? Maybe but that's not the worst part of it. Coveting? I guess we could say a daughter is the property of he father. Honor thy parents? That's the reason so many of these kids get molested in the first place. It's almost as if the Ten Commandments were not a comprehensive list.
The commandment "Thou shalt not put a kid's hand under thy thigh" was removed from the Decalogue at the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE by a youth pastor named Nectarius.
Yes, absolutely. To be a pedo, a lot of lying to yourself is involved. Often, they convince themselves the victim was seducing them. Maybe a commandment about delusions?
Last line says it all. The projection of these monsters and screams of immoral libs, when they comprise the biggest group of child molesters out there. In fact, a good reason for us to CANCEL christian fundamentalists. Troublesh00ter is correct…Youth Pastor= pedophile far too many times. WARNING: Religion can be damaging to your health and the health and mental well-being of your children!
Thanks and upvote for the shout-out! 👍
I am ever so tired of this type of response: “be in prayer for Pastor Bobby” as well as the staff “as we navigate this difficult time.”
Give me a f-n break. The emphasis always is on the accused. “As we navigate this difficult time…”
Church and politicians.
Is this the first thing that they learn?
Never admit accountability, and objectify the accuser.
"Dear Lord, I am speaking to you in prayer for Pastor Bobby. Specifically, I'd like to pray for the jury to find Pastor Bobby guilty on all counts."
:)
It's the DARVO principle yet again: Deflect, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
I resent the hell out of the fact that they *navigate* it -- as if "this difficult time" is some kind of goddamned river that winds its way through perilous rapids or something. Say, here's a zany thought: how's about instead of "navigating" it, you guys "traverse" it for once? Jesus, Mary, and Joe Pesci, I'm SO SICK of all the freakin' "navigating"...🙄
It's the Jesus playbook. Chapter 2.
Churches can NEVER be relied on to look after their “most vulnerable members.” I’ve never heard of a church taking action against abusive clergy and employees before the abuse becomes public knowledge. When your only concern is protection of the brand and providing cover for your managers, your members can just keep paying their tithing and taking whatever abuse you want to dish out amid a pile of cynical sermons.
"On NUMEROUS occasions I told him that I was uncomfortable and asked him to stop touching me to which he would say, "we aren't doing anything wrong”"
You are doing something wrong, first and foremost, and that isn't what she said. So often that is the answer given by adult men to the too young women who reject them. He said it to Izzy, even though she didn't say she was worried what they were doing was wrong, he said it here to Crandall, and though it's not quoted, I guarantee he said it to Terwillger too. I follow a group that posts about terrible men on dating apps and real life and far too many times when a young girl tells some older man she's 15 or 16, his response is "it's okay, it is legal for me to pursue you." Sometimes they even add in it's better for him to go too young for fertility's sake (which is false and gross).
Izzy was uncomfortable because she didn't like his touch, as with the other girls. Not because they were concerned about what others or god will think. But, with the narrative these men, and Hawk specifically, make up in their minds, the object of their desires, the human people who happen to be female do not have a say in what happens to them.
Finally, to drive the point home, it was wrong. It is wrong to push yourself on folks who are trying to reject you. And perhaps telling a man your age isn't a direct enough rejection, or becoming stock still when you're being touched isn't direct enough, it is still a rejection. Men need to be retrained in basic human communication sometimes. "No" is a complete sentence and does not mean "convince me".
Yeah, that response was a clear "he doesn't want to get it" moment. It doesn't matter if it's legal, if what you're doing is non-consensual, you are doing something wrong.
I would like to think there is still some room in human interaction for 'that's a fail but I don't mind if you keep trying' flirtation games. But that takes social skills on both parts. If someone has not passed nuance 101, they shouldn't try it. And let's face it, the sorts of guys we're talking about don't even bother taking the course.
This is a great point, and I felt something similar when I read that passage (but I didn't fully articulate it like you did). This guy was so caught up in his own sleaziness that he responded, not to the girl's actual request, but to his own guilty conscience.
Once again: Youth Pastor = Pedophile.
The above equation has all but become axiomatic as it comes to those who think they're qualified to minister to children, and you'd think that parents and onlookers would see the pattern. Sadly, I think a great number of them are blinded by another equation:
Faith = goodness / respectability / acceptable.
And so long as that paradigm persists, kids are going to be molested by those who represent religion. It's an ugly truth, but I've yet to see it contradicted.
I had a couple of great youth pastors. Didn't stop me from losing faith but in terms of herding teens for a weekend and giving them wholesome fun activities to do, they did fine. Indoor kickball in the undercroft was not a wise idea for a lot of reasons, but it wasn't sexually inappropriate. :)
I think you need to qualify it as applying to *authoritarian* churches. In sects and churches like the one I grew up in (liberal ELCA Lutheran), where the pastors are considered basically "paid experts at their job" but social co-equals outside of that theological job, you probably see a lot less of it. Both because the lack of power outside of 'your job is to lead theological meetings" doesn't attract as many predators, and because in those places the congregation is much less likely to put up with such crap.
Also maybe something to do with it, our youth pastors were trainee priests. Meaning they were only staying at the church for a year or two before moving on to another church. While that doesn't at all stop predators, it does prevent the youth pastors from accruing a lot of trust and power. So the 'groomer' types might have been more attracted to other sects which could offer them more long-term positions.
The one youth pastor I remember from my preteen and teen days was Don Decoursey, of the Northfield Congregational Church. He was an older gentleman (and for what I remember, a Gentle Man, too), and as decent a fellow as you'd ever want to meet. I did a couple church retreats which he led, and if anything untoward happened during those times or any other, I am unaware of them.
Whether he was part of the rule or the exception, he was a good man, for what I remember, and that deserves mention.
Worth remembering that reading Hemant's posts has some of the same faults as the regular media and is a bit like being a policeman: it gives you a skewed view of the world where the bad deeds are always in focus and the hundreds or thousands of decent deeds/people which happen at the same rate as the bad deed go mostly un-covered. He's not immune to "if it bleeds, it leads."
It's a fact: not every youth pastor is a kiddie-diddler. The problem as I see it is that there are a disproportionate number of youth pastors that ARE child molesters, and too many of them are going unpunished or with little more than a slap on the wrist because religion. WE – those of us who focus on religious and atheist issues – see stories like this almost on a daily basis. The average person DOESN'T. That said, I would like to think that I maintain at least a semi-balanced POV regarding what is going on regarding those topics.
And I have no problem in writing my congresspeople or my local paper when I feel the need to point something out to them, regarding religion ... and I DO.
Maybe? I'm not sure. AIUI whether the per capita number of pedophiles in (protestant) priest positions is > the regular population is still unclear. At least, if you have empirical data about it, send the link, that would be interesting. I think it's been a difficult matter for researchers to statistically nail down.
I do fully agree that one part of the reason churches are in far more trouble with this (compared to, say, schools and work offices) is because they seem to be more tolerant and protective of the criminals. Thus even if the number of *criminals* is the same, the number of *crimes* each criminal commits before being fired/reported seems to be probably higher. With some exceptions for the Jerry Sanduskys and Larry Nassars of the world. That' again, goes back to power and authority. The more the institution considers its reputation to be bound up in the reputation of the criminal, and the more the institution sees the criminal as useful (outside of their crimes), or the less authoritative the institution views the victims, the more likely they are to try and cover it up.
Hermant never says that is the case, though, but he rightly points out where it is the case.
Not a Drag Queen. Not an evolutionist, either.
"Please be in prayer for Pastor Bobby and Vanessa, the EPIC staff and leadership, as we navigate this difficult time."
Here it is. No prayers for Izzy. Just prayers for the church and Pastor the molaster.
The victim is female. They are unclean Jezebels who tempt the pure. This makes kkkristerism the antithesis of humanity.
"They’ve shown they can’t be trusted to look after their most vulnerable members. " I think you'll find they believe that's what they're doing. When they make a statement later, after the bad PR has died down the statement will reflect how difficult these things are to defend their pastor from. In their minds it is never going to be understood that the authority figure who is an adult man placed in a powerful social and religious position who is ruining jobs, childhoods, lives and futures with his feelings of entitlement and ownership of the bodies of all female parishioners regardless of age. They are always going to believe that the trouble started with the survivors going public and try to "fix" the situation from that time forward. This is why nothing will change. They need to go back to the initial conditions they've created that lead a person to believe these behaviors are permissible and forgivable.
It won't stop even with a change in church leadership. It requires a change in fundamental culture.
The church has to reject the culture of toxic masculinity, misogyny, and hierarchy. It is impossible to maintain an authoritarian culture that is free from abuse. You have to create a culture of equality. You must create a culture of justice. You must create a culture of accountability for everyone in leadership.
Toxic masculinity, misogyny, and hierarchy are so fundamental to the culture of these churches that you might as well ask a leopard to change its spots to stripes.
🎯The toxic patriarchal religions have always been about fleecing the vulnerable, and molesting those they see as lesser.
My very best wishes go out to Hawk's victims. I hope they find peace and healing and are able to get on with their lives knowing that it was him, not them, all along.
This church's response to decades of reports of grooming and sexual assault is no different from that of the catholic church, the Boy Scouts, and any number of other patriarchal organizations: circle the wagons, support the abuser, disbelieve the victims - until the vast numbers of them make that untenable.
And THESE are the people who are trying to push their 'values' and their beliefs into our public schools with displays of their religious tenets. What a bunch of monsters.
So it's not just sex-deprived catholic priests. I wonder if these abusers are that way before they're in a position of power or become that way afterwards.
It doesn't matter, but I'm curious.
I've often said that like the mountain climber who say "because it's there" when asked why they do it, pedophiles take jobs where they can be exposed to children, because that's where the kids are. A job as a pastor is great for them because a lot of churches aren't going to do a background check and they assume that because he's Christian he must be of high moral fiber.
There is something which make me cringe every time I heard "A condemned pedophile was released earlied because of good behavior". No shit Sherlock, how many occasions have they to rape children in a fucking prison ? 🙄
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These people can rarely be “cured”. Recidivism is high among pedophiles. Better they stay in prison or monitored house arrest forever.
Maybe they seek out places where they can gratify their base urges.
Both. The position carrying authority over kids probably attracts people who want that, and then when they get away with their first few acts they get worse and worse.
Predators go where they're most likely to find the most vulnerable prey.
Every major denomination has had sex abuse scandals, every one. The Mormons, The scientologists (an out and out scam cult but thr claim to be a religion.) Of course the usual suspects the Catholics, Southern Baptists, The Amish/Mennonites Even culty off-shoots like the People of Praise Amy Coney Barrett's cult.