I
found myself reading another story recently:
Another church facing unsavory publicity because they did not handle a
predator correctly. The abuse continued,
a man is in jail, children have been scarred for life, and a pastor has more
questions than answers right now.
What
can we do to protect our children from this poison? This does not have to be inevitable! Here are seven things we adults can do to
protect the innocence of these children God has entrusted to us:
1. Pray.
“The horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is of the
Lord.” (Proverbs 21:31). God is not discounting the preparation, but
He is emphasizing His own power in this battle.
We need to pray for our kids every day.
Pray for wisdom—God promises to give it (James 1:5). Pray that sin will be exposed and judged. Pray that our children will be safe from evil people who would serve as instruments of Satan.
2. Handle things God’s way in the church. I’m amazed at how poorly many churches handle
this issue. This is our world, and this
issue is not going away. If churches and
ministries would use wisdom on an administrative level, our children will be
safer to begin with.
Galatians
6:1 commands the spiritual people in the church (not necessarily just the
pastor) to “restore” sinners. Ladies, you and I are generally not part of the
decision-making structure of the church, but most of us have found an audience
with our husbands. Please urge your
husband, and pray for your pastor, not to hide this sin in the church. To put it bluntly: If a
sex offender attends your church, he ought to be identified by name and photo to
every member. Some churches do not
allow predators to attend at all, or to attend when children are present. Those are also wise steps that reflect a serious
attitude toward the situation.
But
other churches and ministries are hiding these individuals and keeping their
secret for them. Trying to restore a predator by allowing him to be surrounded by
children publically, with no warning to parents, is like trying to restore an
alcoholic by letting him live in a beer garden. Certain sins bring with them a bondage to
addiction. A heroin abuser must
acknowledge his lifelong addiction and therefore surround himself with a strong
network. Predators can repent and get
saved, but the addiction is theirs until
they go to heaven. A private Bible study
with the pastor is not going to erase that.
Children should never, ever find
themselves in a church or ministry setting where they are within reaching
distance of a known predator. When that
happens, the adults around them have failed.
Our church attenders should not have to search their internet to find out that a predator is lurking in their pews. They should have been warned from their pastor already.
3. We
need to protect our children’s sense of modesty. God equipped children with a desire to be
covered. Remember Adam and Eve in the garden,
desperately trying to sew fig leaves together to cover up? During the late
toddler years, children begin to demonstrate a natural sense of modesty, even
if they are inconsistent about it. Our
four-year-old will race out into the living room stark naked to ask a question—and
then return to his room and dress in the closet “so you don’t see me”!
The
trouble for most kids is that their natural inhibitions have been stripped
away. The mistake begins long before
puberty, when parents encourage small children to become comfortable in
provocative dress. When I see a
thirteen-year-old girl walking down my street with short shorts and the word “hotty”
blazing from the back side, my heart breaks:
The inhibitions that God created in her to make her uncomfortable under the
gaze of questionable characters were clearly lost a long time ago.
While
our girls need to be taught to preserve their purity in their behavior and dress to please the Lord,
maybe I can appeal to you on an even more basic human level. Mothers, do you understand that it’s not just
good-looking boys who are staring? I
once asked a class of teen girls, “What would you wear to the mall if you knew
there was an offender standing at the doorway watching you?” I think we had every answer from turtlenecks
to raincoats. I said, “Girls, they are there.” We are surrounded by people whose twisted
minds want to see our children and women as objects, not precious creations of
God. While we don’t need to do
raincoats, I think we can do much better than “hotty” shorts and tight stretchy
tee-shirts. Protect your kids from the inside out.
4. We need to teach our kids to disobey adults
who abuse trust. No adult—no teacher, relative, teenager, camp
counselor, pastor, family friend, or church attender—has the right to touch you
in ways that are uncomfortable or to discuss things with you that are
personal. We need to empower our
children with honest conversations that begin very young. The terminology grows with their maturity,
but even small toddlers can be reminded at bath time which parts of their
bodies Jesus has said no one should touch.
Additionally,
we need to help our kids learn to listen to their own “alarm systems.” Help your kids to believe their own sense of
fear. It’s a gift from God, and they ought
to be prepared to run. We jump up when
we smell smoke, right? If your child is
uncomfortable around someone, believe her.
It doesn’t mean that she has been violated, but she is detecting that something
isn’t adding up in the character of that adult or teenager. Parents, let’s not allow our loyalty to
friends and family supersede our mandate to protect our kids. Stop trying to please other people. We need to be willing to dissolve or limit relationships
with people who pose a threat to our kids.
Watch out for adults who “hug too long,” or who seem forceful with their
affection. They are revealing a heart
that disrepects the personal space and rights of the vulnerable. And it goes without saying that our children
need to avoid people who are into pornography.
5. Practice getting kidnapped. Self-defense experts tell us that the most
effective way to get away from someone who is trying to pull you is to scream
and to fall down on the ground. The kidnapper is unlikely to bend over and
carry you (especially an older child or teenager). Dead weight is hard to kidnap. Secondly, once you are down, you can grab feet—or
support beams, shopping carts, racks of Pepsi, or whatever is handy. A chilling surveillance video from a
kidnapping in Florida quite a few years ago showed a pre-teen girl at a gas
station walking reluctantly as her kidnapper took her wrist. Practice the principle of “Not One Step”: Do not take a single step in the direction
your assailant wants you to go. Just
drop to the floor. If he wants me in his
car, he’s going to have to carry me like an infant—a screaming, kicking,
biting, eye-poking, hair-pulling, neck-strangling, clawing infant. When I’m done with that guy, he’ll be asking
for the death penalty to put him out of his misery. My kids get so excited imagining doing that
to a kidnapper that they almost long for an abduction.
6. Set a standard of appropriate behavior as a
reference guide. If you are a single mom or dad, find an adult
of the opposite gender that you can hold up to your kids as an example of “normal.” When
we compare the behavior of other men to Dad, it is suddenly very clear where
the predatory behavior is showing up. Dad
would never tell a dirty joke (period!), and he certainly would never say
something personal to anyone of any age.
He would never initiate a hug with anyone outside his family, and never
toward a teen girl who wasn’t his daughter. When the kids at church come to him
for a hug, he is very quick to offer a handshake instead. We need to remind our kids what “normal”
looks like and help them see that they do not need to compromise that standard
out of “mercy,” whether it’s for an old man at the nursing home or a
babysitter. Our most vulnerable victims
are children whose reference guide is skewed by inappropriate conduct in their
homes to begin with.
7. We need to protect our kids from images that
destroy their sense of decency.
The internet and TV can jade our kids—not just the porn sites, but ads, youtube
videos, Facebook photos, the news (thanks, Miley). It’s not enough just to say, “You know that’s
bad, right?” Those images affect our kids.
The internet and movies are teaching way too many kids that it’s normal
to be half-naked (or worse) around a camera.
Criminologists are familiar with the practice of predators to use movies
to densensitize victims to debauchery.
Let it not be said that parents had already done their job for
them.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward
you,
saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of
evil,
to give you and expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11
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