9 Theses on Pastoral Confidentiality and Child Abuse

Introduction:

We unfortunately live in a time when child abuse is common, and given the way things are going, tragic instances of it are likely to increase. This means that those pastors who are involved in genuine pastoral ministry are going to encounter this particular kind of evil at some point, and ought not to be caught flat-footed when it happens. We are also living in a time when due process is increasingly in tatters, and we have to be prepared for that as well.

The Dilemma:

Let us begin with the outlines of the basic dilemma. In the first place, when plausible suspicion arises that child abuse has occurred or is occurring, the first priority is to ensure that it does not continue in the present circumstance, and that it does not continue into the future, in any other circumstance. In other words, you might be solving the problem in your youth group by dismissing the youth minister, but if he gets a job at another church in the next city, you haven’t really fixed anything. Predatory child abuse is a crime, not just a sin, and so in principle the civil authorities do have the right and responsibility to be involved, and at that point church officials have an obligation to involve them. The simple fact of a reporting requirement is not tyranny. And Christians with tender hearts need to remember that abusers are clever, calculating, ingratiating, and know how to work the Jesus game.

So how is there a dilemma then? The “authorities,” as we call them, have also become a massive part of our cultural decline. The average age of introduction to the world of porn is eleven years old, and who was it that made it easy for pornographers to insinuate themselves into homes? The authorities. Who is trying to mandate that local governments (and churches) allow sexually disturbed individuals into any restroom they please? The authorities. And remember these rest rooms are the one place where surveillance cameras are obviously not in operation. Who was it who determined that dismemberment and sale of children was a constitutional right? The highest authorities. Who is it that has abandoned our centuries-long commitment to the rules of evidence and the rights of the accused in child molestation cases? The authorities. And who was it that set up grooming classes in every government school, so that adults could easily introduce young people to a wide assortment of perversions? The authorities.

So this is the dilemma. A wise Christian pastor knows that a sexual predator should be restrained and prosecuted by the authorities, but he also knows that we live in a time when ungodly standards are often assumed by the authorities, and also when unreasonable suspicions are officially considered reasonable. When a kid can fall out of a tree in the backyard and break his arm, and that is all it takes for a doctor down at the ER to feel the need to call CPS, then clearly we live in demented times.

And so the dilemma is this. No conscientious pastor can be willingly complicit in a child having to spend one more minute under the control of his abuser, and no pastor can willingly turn over an innocent person to a system that will simply presume him to be guilty, and quite possibly make a hash out of the rest of his life. That really is a true pastoral dilemma.

So here are some suggested theses to help us work through the dilemma.

Thesis 1: First, Do No Harm

This is taken from the Hippocratic Oath, and is pertinent here. The goal of pastoral counseling in such tragedies is first to contain the damage, and secondly to bring biblical principles to bear, so that justice can be served, and then after that, if possible, do what you can so that forgiveness and healing can begin to occur. Unfortunately, it is possible for counseling to just make everything worse. There are times when an anemic response of a church to a child abuse tragedy is a response that simply makes the blast radius bigger. Instead of containment > justice > forgiveness, the drill that is sometimes attempted is forgiveness > no justice > no containment. The first thing for counselors to remember is that they are potentially part of the problem. They are not automatically part of the solution. Good intentions do not make you part of the solution.

Thesis 2: Discretion, Not Silence

Pastoral confidentiality does not mean that a pastor cannot report something that he learns in the course of pastoral ministry. If someone comes in for pastoral counseling and asks you to “promise never to tell,” and then proceeds to tell you where he buried the body, you are in a bad way. A minister should never promise to “not tell.” He can and should promise to be discreet with what he learns. He can promise not to put it on the prayer chain, but should never commit himself to “not tell” others on his ministry team or, as necessary, someone in law enforcement.

Rightly understood, pastoral confidentiality means that the state cannot coerce the minister into divulging what he has learned in the course of his ministry. The state is not to be the final arbiter of how the minister conducts his ministry. At the same time, if the minister is biblically informed, and understands biblical law, there will be occasions when he willingly reports a violation of the law to the civil authorities. Child abuse is one of the areas where this ought to happen.

Thesis 3: Legality and Morality Are Not the Same Thing

Laws concerning pastoral confidentiality vary from state to state. Every minister, and every elder board, ought to know what the law in their state is, and should have a church policy that takes that law into account. Taking the law into account is not the same thing as agreeing with it, or even agreeing to comply with it. But it does mean that the church should never be out of compliance through a blundering ignorance. If the letter of the law is ever disobeyed by a minister, it ought to be as a matter of conscience, with the eyes open, and with a willingness to defend what was done. It ought not to happen by accident because the counseling staff was winging it, or because the alleged offender was a friend of theirs from seminary.

The law of God and the law of man do not always agree. And ministers should resolve always to submit to the law of man insofar as it is consistent with obeying God’s law. It is not always consistent. Some may have recoiled at my earlier statement that a session of elders might take it upon themselves to disregard the law, and “who do you think you are?” But sometimes the question ought to be “who do they think they are?” Keep in mind that it is now a criminal sexual offense to change a baby’s diaper in the state of Arizona, and this will help you to never forget the legal dictum laid down by Dickens, which is to say, the law is an ass.

Thesis 4: All Behavior Has Unintended Consequences

We live in a fallen world which means that you cannot arrive at simple “solutions.” We must always factor in the problem of trade-offs. If your church culture is such that “no one ever talks about that,” then it will not be surprising if parishioners with reasonable concerns or suspicions don’t ever come forward. Nobody wants to be thought of as hyper. But if the minister automatically turns any alleged abuser in—say all the diaper changers in the church nursery—then that may well prevent (say) a suspicious mother in another situation from asking for help—because she wants possible help for one child without risking jail for another child. Now perhaps the other child ought to go to jail. That’s not my point here.

The point is that the way the church reports will affect how people in the church report. Setting a good example is important, but that good example needs to include biblical balance. If the church sets no example of reporting, they are making things worse, and if they set a wooden example, then they are also making things worse. The goal should be to deal with as much sin in a godly way as possible. If nothing ever happens in abuse cases, everybody clams up. You create a culture of shame. If massive over-reaction happens, everybody clams up. You create a culture of fear.

You don’t want your church to be Hush Chapel—“That Could Never Happen Here”—and neither do you want your church to be Wenatchee Witch Hunt Memorial—“kill them all and let God sort it out.”

Thesis 5: Not All Sins are Crimes But . . .

There is a difference between a small group of five-year-olds being naughty behind the barn, and an adolescent boy preying on a sister ten years younger than he is. The former is a sin, and ought to be dealt with as such, and the latter is a crime, and should be dealt with as such.

Counselors need to understand the principles that are involved in distinguishing one case from the other. What were the age differences? What was the actual activity involved? When you first uncover the problem, how sure are you that you know the full extent of the problem? Are the instances that you have discovered indicators of other instances two years later that were far more serious? A six-year- old boy with precocious sexual interest is unlikely to have those interests disappear just because he is thirteen now.

Not all sins are crimes, but all such sins are indicators of possible crimes. Make sure that your kindness is tempered with suspicion, and that your suspicion is tempered with kindness.

Thesis 6: Past Sins and Present Threats

The principle practical reason for reporting abusers is to keep the problem from being repeated. If the abuser is dead, or his whereabouts are completely unknown, and the abuse happened 25 years ago, then reporting is not an issue. You can’t do what you can’t do. But if credible information about abuse in your youth group 10 years ago comes out, and the alleged perpetrator is a youth minister in another church now, and you know exactly where he is, the chances are outstanding that the abuse is ongoing. You have a responsibility to act on the basis of what you now know. But keep in mind that you will sometimes have to help the victim with the consequences of reporting.

Here is another scenario. Suppose the perpetrator is serving a life in another state for a sexual offense, and someone in your church reveals in counseling that she was a victim as well. Do you just leave sleeping dogs lie because he is in prison? No, not necessarily. Sexual abuse is a crime with continuing effects, and finding out who the additional victims are enables you to get help to them now. “Did he have access to your sisters? Do you know if any of them were his victims?”

Thesis 7: Identifying the Victim Is Not Blaming the Victim

You are not “blaming the victim” if you are honestly involved in finding out who the victim is. A young girl abused by her stepfather is the victim. A stepfather falsely accused by his stepdaughter is the victim. If your approach is “ready, fire, aim,” it does not matter if you say that your intent was to side with the victim. That really must be your first priority, but getting the identity of the victim right is part of it.

In order to do this right, you have to make distinctions, and you have to keep your emotional balance. You must resist the enormous pressure to politicize everything. To object to ambulance chasers is not to display a calloused disregard for the pain of the people in the ambulances. To object to hypochondriacs is not the same thing as being insensitive to those who are really sick.

A biblical doctrine of the sinfulness of man should remind us that lies can be told in any direction. A predatory child abuser will lie about what he is doing. That is how he gets away with it. But those who are not abusers, who have not lied, can be lied about by someone who claims to be their victim. This can happen in nasty custody cases, for example.

Read the linked story, and then tell me who the victim was. Who was the victim there when the story first broke?

Thesis 8: Threats Have Consequences

In the story linked above, note that an innocent man copped a plea because of the legal pressure he was under.

Always keep unintended consequences in mind. In ancient Rome, slaves were not allowed to give testimony in legal cases unless it was under torture. They were assumed to have no moral character, and you could not trust what they said unless they were tortured. That torture was conducted in the courtroom. How barbaric, we say. How could they possibly trust testimony given under those circumstances? Don’t you see that you are just going to get the answer you want?

But I recently asked an expert on child abuse litigation how many abusers went to jail maintaining their innocence. Her reply amounted to “not many,” because if you are convicted and given a life sentence, you will not receive probation so long as you are maintaining your innocence. So suppose you were wrongly convicted, which can happen, and you were faced with the prospect of admitting what you did not do, in order to be out on probation after ten years, instead of spending the rest of your life in prison. Now what?

There are times when we get the answers we demand.

Thesis 9: Training is Necessary Because the Golden Rule Applies in Every Direction

I mentioned the “Jesus game” earlier. One problem is that predators in church environments are frequently the best practitioners of that game you ever met. They are smooth, outgoing, gregarious, and know how to make people trust them. They gravitate toward ministries where trust comes easily and where vulnerability is high. One of my daughters described the youth ministries of many churches as “potato salad at room temperature.” Sleep overs! Lock ins! Back rubs! Jesus!

But there are others who have figured out how play the victim card, and that has to be thought through as well.

Now I want you to run a thought experiment, and the results of it will tell you why training is necessary. The mere fact that I acknowledge that some accusations of child abuse could be false is taken by some as clear evidence that I want to enable child abusers. The fact that I know that many churches are configured in such a way as positively to invite predators is taken by some as me being against youth ministry.

Because the Golden Rule applies in every direction, pastors must acquaint themselves with these issues. There are organizations that can help your church guard itself against needless vulnerabilities. There are also organizations that can help if you suspect that an allegation may be false.

The central thing to keep in mind is that learning from organizations that help you protect the innocent is not in tension with learning from organizations that help you protect the innocent. How could it be?