advice about how a church should treat registered citizens

This piece is from 2014 but still worth reading and thinking about whether you want to belong to a church like the one Boz Tchividjian wants you to have. He tells the story about a church who hired a senior pastor knowing the man's status as a registered sex offender, and the pastor's eventual arrest for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy. He says, "This church just doesn't get it."

He gives us four pieces of advice.

1. “The allegations were false”: At the time he was hired, the pastor informed the church of his past conviction and claimed the allegations were false. Despite the fact that a court of law found sufficient evidence to convict this man of a sexual offense against a child, the church preferred to believe his words. I have seldom encountered child sexual abusers who did not claim that the allegations made against them were false. I even prosecuted cases where the defendant gave a full confession to law enforcement as he maintained his innocence to friends and family.

It is true that some people lie about their charges. This is true of drug offenders, wire fraud offenders, bank robbers, murderers as well as sex offenders. It can be true of people who are deeply ashamed of what they did, as well.

It is also true that innocent people sometimes give full confessions and true that some innocent people have been convicted in a court of law. A court of law is not a holy temple to infallibility so reminding us that someone was convicted there carries less moral heft than it ought.

It is worth noting that Boz Tchividjian is a former child abuse chief prosecutor, someone who certainly understands how easy it is to convict someone--anyone--charged with a sex offense. Since the majority of defendants accept a plea agreement instead of going to trial, a former prosecutor certainly knows that there is no need even to prove a case in order to convict.

He offers suggestions for ferreting out the truth about the offense:

• Review the court file....

• Speak with the investigator....

• Meet with the probation officer....

Does he offer the same advice for people who encounter other former criminals?

2. “Everybody has a past”: All too often scripture is distorted in order to justify the blind embracing of those who have sexually victimized children. Though the interim pastor proudly states, “We are firm believers in the Bible”, he provides no scriptural basis for his “belief” that past offenses of a sex offender should be forgotten.... 

Don’t be fooled, offenders love a distorted theology that gives them immediate access to the little ones in the church. Whether or not the offender is a “changed” person before God, he/she is the same person who was convicted of sexually abusing a child. That is a past that should never be forgotten by those around him.

All too often churches embrace sex offenders? This will be news to registrants who have a difficult time getting comfortable in churches that will not let them use the restroom.

Tchividjian refuses to believe that someone who is changed before God will improve his behavior to match his changed beliefs. This is interesting because for a guy who quotes the Bible frequently, Tchividjian doesn't seem to believe that Jesus--who set what is generally acknowledged to be a fine example of behavior--wants us to spend time with the scorned.

3. “Don’t judge the worshippers”: In one of the few public statements made about the pastor’s arrest, the interim pastor stated that he hopes people don’t “judge” the worshippers. A church hires a known sex offender who then sexually abuses a child in the church, and its primary concern is the reputation of the church? Perhaps its primary concern should how best to serve a 14-year-old boy who trusted his pastor and was repeatedly violated. Perhaps its primary concern should be cooperating with the police to identify other children who may also have been victimized by this offender. Perhaps its primary concern should be ways the church could serve other abuse survivors in their congregation who are likely being re-traumatized by this scandal. Perhaps its primary concern should be for the church to publically acknowledge that it was complicit in the abuse of this child due to its inexcusable decision to hire a known convicted sex offender. Perhaps its primary concern should be to reach out to experts for help in becoming educated on this issue so that this horror is never repeated. There is no lack of primary concerns for this church – its reputation certainly isn’t one of them. This church doesn’t get it.

At first, I thought the writer was on to something good here, but he never quite gets around to talking about how to create an environment where proper boundaries are encouraged. Instead, he is all about action after the abuse has happened. Laying blame is a popular pasttime, and easier than figuring out how to prevent sexual abuse.

I do agree with him that the church reputation should not be a primary concern...unless the church thinks there is value in a reputation as a church that practices what it preaches about redemption.

4. “We did no wrong”: Tragically, instead of acknowledging the grievous consequence of hiring a convicted sex offender, this church has spent the last week defending and excusing its inexcusable actions. All too often, I encounter church leaders whose immediate response to disclosures of abuse within the church is to be defensive instead of wanting to learn where they (or the church) may have failed and what can be learned.

Some day, Tchividjian's church will be rocked with a sex abuse scandal caused by someone other than a registered sex offender and he will be baffled as to how that could have happened in a church that doesn't hire sex offenders--a church that keeps a watchful eye on registrants who attend services.

Let's look at the people he seems to trust: prosecutors, investigators, parole and probation officers--people not on the registry.

Where does he think sex offenders come from? They come from people not on the registry.

Tchividjian misses the irony when he says,

It is time that more faith communities recognize the dark reality that there are predators in our midst and become more vigilant in making sure that they are never in positions to access and hurt little ones.

The dark reality is that there are predators in our midst and they almost certainly are not listed on the registry. Another dark reality is that not all sex offenses are against children. While he worries about protecting little ones (I'd like to know if a 14-year-old likes being described as a "little one") from predators, he pays no attention to sexual assaults on adults.

The registry has provided a focus for fools who refuse to recognize facts. That is all the reason we need to abolish the registry.

Tchividjian doesn't get it.

child porn investigation damages the whole family

A story from Nebraska:

...Paul Nader was arrested, charged with seven counts of child pornography and held in the Sarpy County Jail for almost a month. His arrest was reported on TV and online, along with his booking photo. Reporters talked to his neighbors about how he interacted with his kids. 

Then, seven months after the arrest, the charges were dismissed. 

Now the Naders have filed a federal lawsuit against Papillion, Sarpy County, Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov and several Papillion police detectives, citing the anguish and embarrassment of the episode.

 An arrest on child pornography charges would cause anguish and embarrassment to anyone, guilty or innocent.

On March 17, 2015, Papillion police searched the Nader home and questioned Paul Nader. During the search they found chemicals and books on terrorism. Nader said the chemicals were used to polish jewelry. According to the lawsuit, he spent more than 15 years in the Air Force, where he worked in counterintelligence. At the time of the search he was getting his doctorate in strategic security, the suit says, which he said accounted for the books. But police called in a bomb squad before confirming that the chemicals were legal.

Papillion police found none of the images identified by the tips during their search, according to the lawsuit. Nader was arrested based “solely” on the tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the couple’s suit says. He was charged with six counts of possession of child pornography. The charges later were amended to seven counts, then later changed to three counts.

Eventually, the charges were dropped. No harm done?

No.

The Naders’ children were placed with a relative. And after Nader posted bail and left jail, he was denied contact with his children for 79 days.

Nader's wife, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, suspects that she was passed over for promotions because of her husband's child porn charges.

Police seized computers, tablets, cellphones, thumb drives and hard drives, among other items, from the Naders. The seized items included equipment on which Nader had stored his thesis and research, which he spent four years working on. That work was “irreplaceable,” according to a motion he filed in Sarpy County District Court to have his items returned. Much of this property was destroyed, the documents indicate. It is not clear if Paul Nader got his thesis work back.

Think about the data stored on the digital devices in your home: contact information, tax and other financial records, photos, videos, music, business records. How much damage would it do if a tornado or a flood snatched all of that away from you?

For the Naders, it wasn't a tornado or flood that did the damage and it could have been reversed if the investigators or prosecutors had completed the examination of the confiscated equipment quickly and returned the "clean" equipment back to the family. The damage could have been lessened if copies of important files had been returned to the family.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that Nader was guilty. We could argue about whether he deserves to have the equipment returned to him but does his family? 

His wife and children were not charged with any crime and yet they suffered enormous losses. Removing children from the home without evidence that they have been terribly mistreated--and without evidence that the wife will also mistreat them--is inexcusable. Keeping children away from their father even though none of his charges were for contact offenses, let alone contact offenses involving his kids, is also inexcusable.

Criminal investigations ought to be done while treating innocent family members as if they are innocent.

The government caused great unnecessary damage to the Nader family. I hope they win their lawsuit.

Utah declares pornography a public health crisis

Utah officially passed a resolution declaring pornography to be a public health crisis. Sounds good, right? People need to recognize that using pornography can have lasting negative effects.

S.C.R. 9 Concurrent Resolution on the Public Health Crisis says, in part:

WHEREAS, pornography is contributing to the hypersexualization of teens, and even prepubescent children, in our society;
WHEREAS, due to advances in technology and the universal availability of the Internet, young children are exposed to what used to be referred to as hard core, but is now considered mainstream, pornography at an alarming rate;
WHEREAS, the average age of exposure to pornography is now 11 to 12 years of age;
WHEREAS, this early exposure is leading to low self-esteem and body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior;
WHEREAS, exposure to pornography often serves as childrens' and youths' sex education and shapes their sexual templates;

Yes, porn can do serious damage.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah, the Governor concurring therein, recognizes that pornography is a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislature and the Governor recognize the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation. 

Utah isn't all resolution and no action, though. They also passed HB0155, creating a law that:

• requires that a computer technician who finds child pornography in the course of the technician's work shall report the finding to law enforcement or the federal Cyber Tip Line for child pornography; ...
• provides that the willful failure to report the child pornography is a class B misdemeanor;
• provides immunity for a computer technician who reports in good faith or acting in good faith does not make a report

As if we don't have enough people in our criminal justice system already, now we are going to add computer technicians who don't report images that are or could be considered child pornography.

The law provides immunity for a tech who...acting in good faith does not make a report. How do they decide if the tech is acting in good faith? 

The law says:

good faith may be presumed from an employee's or employer's previous course of conduct when the employee or employer has made appropriate reports

...which means, the more people a tech reports, the safer the tech will be if he or she decides not to report someone.

What child pornography will computer technicians most likely encounter? In a world where nearly every teen carries a phone with a camera and in a world where, as the Utah resolution says, there is an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior, it is probable that computer techs will discover nude selfies of teens.

Yes, that is considered child pornography and someone in possession of those images can be charged with receiving, distributing, or creating child porn. Serious crimes that carry serious mandatory minimum sentences if charged in federal court. If computer techs report the images to the federal Cyber Tip Line, it is likely that the "crime" will be a federal crime.

How badly do we want to punish teens for what is, for better or worse, normal teen behavior? Do we want a world in which teens take nude selfies ... or a world in which teens take nude selfies and have criminal records?

Is criminalization the only way to discourage unwanted behavior? We saw what happened during Prohibition, when criminalization drove the booze industry underground where violence was the only enforcer. We have seen what forty years of the War on Drugs has gotten us: the recreational drug industry is driven underground where violence is the only enforcer and where illicit drugs are still widely available, less expensive than ever, and often more powerful. 

We know what the outcome will be and yet legislators still try the same failed trick of making unwise and unwanted behavior illegal.