The Help Line

Thursday I saw an article about the church covering up sex abuse that indicated that the help line wasn't accomplishing what I had been trained that it was meant to accomplish.

I have since read the article. It is disheartening and I feel I must spend some time addressing it.

https://apnews.com/article/Mormon-church-sexual-abuse-investigation-e0e39cf9aa4fbe0d8c1442033b894660

I have been through the training two or three times, first as part of the welfare committee as emergency preparedness coordinator, then as a youth teacher.

Those trainings both happened well after the help line was created in 1995. Prior to that, I know the policy was to report to local authorities. I assume the help line was created as there started to be more awareness (accompanied by lawsuits) of abuse by Catholic priests and Boy Scout leaders. I suspect also that local leaders might not have been reporting at all, trying to protect the wrong things. The advantage of the help line would then be to take away that type of discretion.

That was what I first expected on hearing about the story; that personal discretion was the issue. People can be terrible about that.

There are always excuses you can make about ruining someone's life, though if you look at the life impacts that should fall apart pretty quickly.

It was worse than that.

Let me say that I don't object in principle to the church using legal counsel; it's a big entity with deep pockets, and where different states might have different laws, it is a reasonable thing to have someone available with expertise to guide.

I do object to the priorities of protection. The training clearly specified that the first priority was the protection of the child. It was certainly not to protect the predator or the church, and yet that is what has been happening. 

That has made it an absolute failure. The children were not protected, the predator himself is dead by suicide, and the church may very well have legal liability, which I support. Whether the issue was that the policy was not well-delineated enough, or that there was not enough oversight or follow-up, this failed.

There is often a certain cynicism regarding lawyers that is not without cause.

Now I can't help but feel that the newer policies about always having two adults in the room with a youth class and windows in all the classroom doorways is a capitulation; we can't handle abuse, so let's just focus on prevention.

I don't mind prevention, but those measures will only prevent opportunistic abuse. Predators find ways.

Beyond that, those methods only work if the problem is teachers or leaders. It does nothing for when the abuse is coming from inside the home, which is the vast majority of cases.

This is a failure in the area of not letting offense come to these little ones by those who believe in Him.

I also remember a part of the initial training that included the goal of attempting to help the sinner, though the first priority was to protect the child.

I don't object to this either. There doesn't seem to be a high success rate for turning around abusers, but if we can try -- especially if someone is seeking help from the bishop -- fine, let's try. 

However, repenting means forsaking the sin and attempting to make amends. It means paying restitution. 

Doing "nothing" is not helping.

This is extremely disappointing and needs a bright light shone on it. The three children in this story were betrayed by their parents and their church, and they are surely not the only ones.

I do believe that part of the failure includes a failure to examine the power dynamics and change the interactions. 

I intend to write more about that later.