Louisiana Voice

There’s a meme floating around in cyberspace that says, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

It was meant to convey the idea that much of today’s political philosophy and the division that goes with it is driven by religious convictions but it could just as aptly apply to the myriad stories of sexual abuse within churches, both Catholic and Protestant.

There are those who would argue that the number of incidents of sexual abuse in churches is miniscule when compared to the number of churches and that may be true, but the counter argument is that any sexual abuse in the church is excessive, intolerable and unforgiveable, especially when that abuse involves children.

In May 2022, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) somewhat reluctantly released the names of more than 400 of its ministers, counselors and other church workers identified as alleged SEXUAL ABUSERS that had been kept a closely-guarded secret for years.

Texas easily topped the list with 76 accused, followed by Georgia in a distant second with 30.

Fifteen were identified from LOUISIANA.

Though the overall numbers paled in comparison to number of the Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse, the totals for the Baptists were no less significant in that the SBC had successfully covered up the scandal that had been bubbling beneath the façade of judgmental purity and righteousness for decades.

It should be pointed out that the SBC sexual abuse scandal involved adulterous trysts between adults as well as children, for the most part girls, the Catholic disgrace mainly involved sex between priests and underage boys.

It should also be emphasized that the SBC offenses did not include other Protestant denominations like Methodists, Pentecostals or Mormons, each of which had their own sexual demons to contend with.

The problem of sexual abuse among Protestant clergy has been termed by some as a “crisis,” but the prolonged history of sex abuse instead is indicative of a persistent pattern of ministers taking advantage of their positions of power, influence, authority and perceived righteousness to “groom” children and in many cases, adult, vulnerable women.

Some abuse starts early. A former Baptist missionary was found guilty in 2023 of sexually abusing a four-year-old family member who later tested positive for gonorrhea while another began grooming a girl when she was seven, at one time masturbating while she sat on his lap. And when still another admitted to an unspecific adulterous affair, a woman in the congregation stood and announced that the “affair” began with her not an adult but it was when she was twelve that he seduced her on his office floor. He was “forgiven” by his family, his congregation and by God and continued his ministry while she was ostracized as the temptress.

Especially loathsome are the stories of ministers who told their prepubescent victims that it was “God’s will” that they submit to the reverend’s sexual desires or that they would be condemned to eternal damnation if they refused or if they ever told anyone

As often as not, when discovered, ministers tearfully “confess” to an undisclosed moral weakness and the congregation not only forgives but often applauds the sinner. The sickest aspect of that scenario is that the woman – or in some cases, the underage female – victim is forced to stand before the congregation and plead for forgiveness for tempting the goodly spiritual leader, especially in an offshoot of the Baptist Church identified as the INDEPENDENT FUNDAMENTAL BAPTIST (IFB) Church.

This post in no way is intended as an indictment of all of Louisiana’s 65 IFB churches, but the practice of such widespread sexual abuse in it and SBC churches is alarming. In 2018, the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM identified 412 allegations of abuse implicating 168 IFB church leaders at 187 IFB churches and institutions in 40 states and Canada.

Not all accusations of abuse involved sexual abuse. Some are simply too horrible to even believe possible. The IBF, for example, subscribes to a philosophy of child “discipline,” beginning at an early age. As barbaric as this may appear, it isn’t unusual for an IBF family, influenced by the church, to begin spanking infants as young as FOUR MONTHS. In one case, an IBF pastor encouraged parents to begin spanking two-week-old infants for “crying too much.”

ABC News, in its 20/20 program, in April 2011 told of a couple who literally BEAT THEIR SEVEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO DEATH while adhering to the teachings of Mihael and Debi Pearl in their book To Train Up a Child, a book pushed by an IBF-affiliated college. The couple spanked the child for seven hours, pausing only for bathroom breaks and prayer.

Paul Rytting is a Utah attorney who headed up the Risk Management Division of the CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, aka the Mormons. For 15 years his job was to protect the church from legal claims, including sexual abuse litigation. Part of that job was to offer hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for confidentiality agreements – also known as hush money. One of those cases involved getting Chelsea Goodrich, by then 31 years old, to destroy recordings of the times that her father, a former bishop in the church, would slip into bed with her when she was a child and he was aroused.

In Arizona, that state’s Supreme Court in 2023 issued a RULING that the Mormon Church did not have to answer questions or turn over documents under a state law that exempted religious officials from having to report child sex abuse they learn about during confessional settings after two sisters filed a lawsuit claiming that the church had covered up its knowledge that their father had sexually abused them for seven years, beginning in 2010.

TWELVE TRIBES sect, described in some stories as a cult, believes in child labor and child discipline to the extreme. Matthew Klein said the church has child training manuals that provide detailed instructions on discipline of children, starting as young as six months old. “They would get spanked from morning and night,” Klein said, “20 to 30 times a day.”

All these Protestant denominations have one insidious thing in common with those pedophilic Catholic priests: child abuse. Whether that abuse is physical, psychological or sexual, and even when it’s carried out in the name of God, it’s still abuse and should never be tolerated – or forgiven. And a 12- or 13-year-old should certainly never be made to stand in front of a congregation and apologize for “tempting” a grown-ass man.