The Predator in Plain Sight

On his first Sunday as a new pastor, Aaron encountered something nearly every pastor is unprepared to evaluate or handle — a repeat child sexual abuse offender attending his new congregation. Fortunately, his wife Amy had spent 20 years as a child welfare social worker. She knew exactly what the threat was.

What followed tested everything they thought they understood about how churches should respond when the danger is undeniable.

In this episode, Aaron and Amy tell the story of what they faced — and why even the clearest evidence isn't always enough to convince others of the threat. Then Victor Vieth, former child abuse prosecutor and director of the Center for Faith and Child Protection at the Zero Abuse Project, brings the perspective most church leaders never hear — from someone who has spent decades at the exact intersection of law, faith, and child protection.

This episode contains the education church leaders need. And for survivors, it names what many churches have refused to see.

This episode was written and edited by Carolyn McCulley. Our executive producer is Rachael Berglund. 

• The Silenced Truth is a project of the Safe to Speak Initiative. 
• Join our Patreon community to advocate for the legal protections that survivors need to safely disclose their experiences. 
• To support the production of this show, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Southern Documentary Fund. 

FOR FURTHER CONTEXT

The Pedophile in the Pulpit (CBN) (John Hinton)

How to Spot a Child Abuser Hiding in Plain Sight with Jimmy Hinton (podcast)

Church hired pastor without checking his criminal record — then said it didn't matter (Burlington Free Press, January 17, 2019)

Vermont Pastor Hid His History Of Molesting A Child—And His Church Doesn’t Care (Daily Kos, January 17, 2019)

Church defends hiring pastor without background check (Rutland Herald, January 25, 2019)

Zero Abuse Project trainings

GRACE trainings

The Silenced Truth is a project of the Safe to Speak Initiative and is a production of Citygate Communications. It is fiscally sponsored by the Southern Documentary Fund.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Aaron: It was my first day at the new church that I just accepted a call to as the pastor, and we had just finished the service. I wasn't even preaching that day, I just led communion. And I came out and I was having some conversations out in the lobby, and I turned around and there was a level three sex offender giving a side hug to a seven-year-old child.

[00:00:31] And I was about an hour and a half into this new church. At that point, I went over and I broke up the conversation between him and the child and engaged him in conversation. 

[00:00:45]  Amy: One thing that struck me is that it was a lobby, not full of people, but there were a handful of people walking around, doing their thing, looking at brochures, going in and out of the bathroom.

[00:00:56] It was very public. There was no effort to hide what he was doing. It was in plain sight. 

[00:01:06] Aaron: And that started what turned out to be a, a four-month process of working with some leaders in the church and the church as a whole to understand the danger that this man presented within our congregation.

[00:01:31] Carolyn McCulley: When we think about churches protecting sex offenders, we usually imagine leaders making a calculated choice, reputation over safety. And that does happen. But this story reveals something unusual. A pastor who saw the danger clearly, did everything right, and still spent months unable to get the people around him to see what he saw.

[00:01:57] Part of the reason that gap exists is that most Christians, including most pastors, have no framework for understanding what a sex offender actually is, not legally, not clinically, not in terms of how offenders think, how they operate, and what makes them so effective in precisely the environments we hold most sacred.

[00:02:18] So in this episode, you'll hear from a couple named Aaron and Amy about what they faced a few years ago in the first months of his new pastorate. And then you'll hear from Victor Vieth, a former child abuse prosecutor and the director of the Center for Faith and Child Protection at the Zero Abuse Project.

[00:02:35] His research puts into clinical language what Aaron and Amy experienced firsthand, and what far too many church leaders are never taught. I'm Carolyn McCulley, and this is The Silenced Truth podcast, a project of the Safe to Speak Initiative. Now, a note before we begin. For privacy reasons, Aaron and Amy agreed to participate using only their first names and a general geographic reference to being in a church in New England.

[00:03:10] Aaron: I had come to that church after almost 15 years in Vermont, where I had a wonderful church and a wonderful ministry. There were some hard things during that time. My wife of 16 years passed in 2016, and so for a few years I was a widower and a single dad of three, and trying to figure out how do you pastor and raise a family and do all those things.

[00:03:37] And around 2017 or so, met Amy at a church conference, which is where every widowed pastor is supposed to meet his next wife. And we started dating and, you know, about a year after, we got married. And only because of her experience as a social worker and her knowledge did any of this stuff get taught to me, 'cause I had no idea.

[00:04:07] I had no understanding of the nature of hidden sexual abuse in the church. I would say I was one of those people that just said, "Yeah, that's the Catholics' problem. That's not our problem." And only when I started to learn from her were my eyes truly opened to the issue and the seriousness of it, and the unbelievable amount of cover-up that has gone on.

[00:04:36] So two days before my first day as the pastor, I had an outgoing meeting with the interim, and in that meeting he just shared some updates and things about the church. Nothing major, but one of the things he shared with me was that there was a gentleman in the church, and the interim pastor phrased it this way, that he had been convicted of child molestation 25 years ago.

[00:05:04] And so I took that, went home and told Amy, and we did some research and very quickly we realized that he was a level three offender. And at that point, I don't even think I knew what a level three offender was. I had no idea. I knew it probably wasn't good

[00:05:22]  Amy: Yeah, so at this point, I think we hadn't moved to the new state, to the new church.

[00:05:26] It was probably a couple days before our move, and Aaron tells me that there is somebody who's a sex offender in the church we're going to, and I thought, "Oh my gosh," like, you can't make this up. I'm a child welfare social worker. At the time, I had just left a 20-year career to marry Aaron, and I knew the gravity of the situation and I was deeply concerned.

[00:05:51] But I got on Google with Aaron and we looked at it and we saw that this person, Andy, was a level three sex offender, which is the highest risk to re-offend. Different states have different names, but Massachusetts, which is where I did my child welfare work, uses the level one, two, and three tiers. Level one is the lowest risk, level two is moderate risk to re-offend, and level three is very high risk to re-offend.

[00:06:16] This classification is done mainly based on victim impact statements, police reports, court records, probation and parole records, and that board looks this over and then puts people in different tiers. So I knew that this person had done some really heinous crimes. And fortunately, it's very clear when you look on the registry, they actually outline the convictions of the person, and this person had multiple convictions over a two-decade period, and there was a 10-year gap in between, which to me suggested he served time in between, and he went on to re-offend when he got out of jail.

[00:06:54] So I knew this was a really serious situation, and in some ways I thought, "The writing's on the wall, this is gonna be easy. We can all agree that this is a dangerous person." 

[00:07:05] Carolyn McCulley: To be more specific, Andy's record shows 10 convictions across three separate cases spanning a decade, including five convictions for rape and abuse of a child, not just molestation.

[00:07:21] So how are we to understand this record? Various experts estimate that between 70 and 90% of child sexual abuse cases are never reported. Among those that are, some experts estimate only 10% end in conviction. So just one conviction represents the successful navigation of a long chain of low probability events—the disclosure, report, investigation, criminal charges, prosecution, and verdict—each of which has significant attrition along that chain.

[00:07:58] Given all that, a single conviction likely represents many more victims and many more incidents than the official record reflects. Multiple studies have found that sex offenders reported significantly more victims and offenses during polygraph sessions than in their pre-sentence file records, with medium to high-risk offenders showing the largest discrepancies.

[00:08:22] And Andy had 10 criminal convictions over multiple years in one state. 

[00:08:30] Aaron: The way they found out was one of my elder's wives works for a company and they had to do a background check on someone. And as she's doing this background check just about her company, Andy's picture pops up, who happened to go to the church.

[00:08:47] Andy had been at the church for five years as a member, and he had told the interim, "Hey, I avoid kids. I don't go into the bathroom when there's a child in there. I don't do anything with the kids' ministry, and I'm totally rehabilitated. I'm not," and one of the words he used, "I'm not in cycle." All these sort of things he used with the interim to manipulate the interim, to be honest with you.

[00:09:14] So Friday, I find that out. I had already given my resignation at the previous church. We had already started more than packing. So we know going into Sunday, okay, we've got to keep our eyes out, because the next week we've got to start unpacking this with the elders. So we knew we were coming into having a conversation with them that could be a process, and we could go slowly.

[00:09:37] And so then when I turn around in the lobby, and here's this guy who says, "I avoid children. I don't work with children," and I turn around, he's giving a side hug to a seven-year-old, patting them on the head and right in their face. I realize this is a dangerous individual right now.

[00:10:01] The interim pastor took a much different approach than I was gonna take, that we were gonna take. He had told Andy, "Okay, I hear you. You avoid children. I'm sure the next pastor will be okay with this," as far as this unwritten, just verbal agreement. And I wasn't gonna be okay with it, and I think that was a little shock to Andy.

[00:10:27] I understand how the interim didn't begin to unpack it, because in some sense it was gonna be my responsibility, because it was, again, two weeks out. The other elders had no idea, and so when it landed fresh on our laps, we were able to approach the circumstance from our perspective and not have to deal with, "Oh, we as an elder board already made this agreement with him, and this is what we're doing, and it's set," because that would have been even harder.

[00:10:59] Carolyn McCulley: This wasn't the first time Aaron had encountered a sex offender in a church setting. Only a few months after he and Amy married, a pastor named John Longaker in a nearby town made local headlines because he had been hired nine years earlier by a church that did not run a background check on him. So the church members were unaware of his prior convictions in 1998 when he was a teacher in a Christian school in Pennsylvania.

[00:11:23] The charges were for corruption of a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. Longaker had pled guilty and was sentenced to serve 11 and a half to 23 months in county prison. He served the initial term with the remainder on probation. It was his victim, now an adult, who made this public. So when the church was contacted by a local newspaper in 2019, the elders stood by their decision to hire someone who did not disclose this background to them.

[00:11:54] One elder was quoted in the newspaper saying, "I don't believe it would have made a difference to me." Now, in fairness, if the church had run a background check on Longaker, his 1998 convictions might not have shown up in 2010. A church could have found those convictions, but only with a relatively thorough multi-jurisdictional or fingerprint-based background check.

[00:12:18] A typical low-cost or basic screening used by a small rural church might easily have failed to uncover these convictions, especially given the age, misdemeanor level, and out-of-state nature of these offenses. But Longaker had no intent to disclose his background. He told the newspaper that his wife had begged him not to tell the church.

[00:12:41] He added, "I'm ashamed of the fact that I have a criminal record, and I will take that shame to my grave, so I didn't want to talk about it. It didn't matter what job I had." And that was precisely the stance that troubled Aaron.

[00:13:01] Aaron: In 2019, Amy and I had been married for, oh, I don't know, four months, three months. And at the church I was at previously, I had a elder who was also a police officer that one of his main responsibilities was investigating crimes against children. And he called me up one night, and he said, "Hey, do you know this guy, John Longaker?"

[00:13:26] And I was like, "Yeah, I know him." And he just basically said, "It's about to come out what he's guilty of." John was a pastor of an independent church, and John was part of a pastors group, is probably the best term. So I was a part of the group, and John would show up from time to time, and we had a fine relationship.

[00:13:49] And so I think within the next week, maybe two weeks, I went out to see him. And I basically told him, I said, "Listen, I'm not gonna be a part of this group if you decide to stay." And I can't remember all the other parts of the conversation, but he basically said, "Well, I'll drop out. I won't be a part of it."

[00:14:06] And then that conversation put Amy and I into a discussion with the leaders of this pastors group. And this pastors group, at most, is a dozen guys, not a large group at all. And so then Amy and I sat down with a couple of the leaders, and they were like, "Why'd you have this conversation with John? You know, help us understand your thoughts on this."

[00:14:33] And so Amy and I had a meeting. 

[00:14:37]  Amy: Well, in my world, it's very clear. All this stuff is very clear, folks. Like, this shouldn't be so hard. There was probably three guys there, and they were leaders in this loosely knit affiliation group. And I was able to explain to them how a predator works, what John Longaker’s presence is to anybody who's been victimized, if they know about his past and he's a leader in their church, what kind of messaging that brings.

[00:15:03] And they, you know, they really struggled with the idea that people can be forgiven, this was years ago. But they really listened and they, at the end, they were just like, "You're right. He cannot be in fellowship with us." And they thanked Aaron and I, and they were really accepting of the education in a very surprising way.

[00:15:22] Aaron: What I remember as the phrase that turned it for them was, "Why should the world have a higher standard for protecting children than the church?" And they, they couldn't answer that. And so at that point, they started to change and, and it was a much better conversation than I thought it would be. It had a positive outcome.

[00:15:49] Carolyn McCulley: In the five years in between their experiences at these two churches, Amy had been listening to a podcast called Speaking Out on Sex Abuse by Jimmy Hinton and his mother, Clara Hinton. Jimmy is currently the pastor at Somerset Church of Christ, a small church not far from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 went down during the 9/11 hijacking.

[00:16:14] His father, John, had been the pastor at that same church for 27 years. But in 2011, just two years into his own pastorate, Jimmy's sister disclosed to him that she and another friend had both been sexually abused by their father on the same night. Jimmy and his mother immediately turned John in to the police, and eventually John confessed to 23 victims, all prepubescent children, in crimes that occurred hundreds of times over roughly 40 years.

[00:16:47] At age 62, John was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in a Pennsylvania state prison. 

[00:16:57]  Amy: I just was struck by their conviction of knowing what to do. I don't feel like I would've known what to do without those years of experience, but they did, and I just really always admired them and the work that they were doing to educate people.

[00:17:12] Jimmy would talk about his dad. He was like a magician. He would literally abuse children in front of them and other people. The child could be sitting on his lap and he was touching them. So I really became more aware of how abuse can happen in a church context, in front of witnesses even.

[00:17:33] Carolyn McCulley: In addition to producing his podcast, Jimmy Hinton also wrote a book and started speaking to churches, training them to see how an abuser operates within church settings.

[00:17:42] His framework was, watch the eyes, watch the hands, and listen to the words. In his training, he focused on the red flag behaviors of abusers. His three recommendations were, first, watch their eyes. They are on the hunt. They are always scanning the room, looking for victims, gawking at and fantasizing about potential victims.

[00:18:07] Next, notice their hands. They're constantly touching their victims to see how they physically respond to that touch, testing the boundaries, gauging any resistance. They use that to determine who is a viable target. And equally important, they're watching whether the parent notices the touching, whether the parent's eyes drift to where the abuser's hands are.

[00:18:29] It's a matching game between a vulnerable child and inattentive adults. Last, in conversations, abusers tend to be information mining, asking tons of questions, but not being reciprocal about their own stories. They tend to be opaque themselves, but they want to know all about you. It's manipulative because it's only to gather relevant information.

[00:18:52] So Jimmy Hinton's experience was fresh on Amy's mind when Aaron came home with news of what they would encounter in their new church. That's why the details of what happened on that first Sunday really stood out to both of them. This was no light thing to Aaron. In the retelling, he was emotionally affected by the details

[00:19:16] Aaron: The interesting thing about this whole circumstance of him giving her a side hug, we actually had it on camera, and that was a miracle. If it wasn't on camera, I don't think we would have ever gotten the final result that we did. And, and our cameras are weird, poor security cameras. They record a minute, like every five minutes for some reason.

[00:19:51] You know, they get activated, and then they record, and then they don't record again. And in this one minute, it recorded from start to end his actions. It was what we needed, because if it was just my word, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere. We wouldn't have had anything to show numerous experts that we showed the video to.

[00:20:12] We wouldn't have had anything.

[00:20:18] The video's from an upper corner in the lobby, just looking down, and it's not a big lobby. It starts really about 45 seconds before he puts his arm around her. And he's just standing there and he's just watching her in the lobby. Follows her the entire time. Even though there's other people in the lobby, he never looks at them.

[00:20:42] She walks across to a door and he just watches her the whole way. And she walks back and sits on a chair and he watches her. He was about to go over to her as she was sitting on this chair, but his wife had come out of the bathroom and she was using a walker, and so he went to the bathroom door and helped her out, sat her down.

[00:21:04] And as soon as he sat her down, he turned as quick as possible and went straight over to the child. As he approaches the child, he begins to extend his hand for a side hug. As he does that, you see her flinch away. And as she flinches it away, she was holding a piece of cake and a plate, and it fell on the ground.

[00:21:30] And so then he went in and gave her a hug, a side hug, as he's picking up the cake and just hugging her that whole time. And then as I walk over to stop the touching, he sort of gets up off his one knee, puts his hand on her head, ruffles her hair a little bit, and then starts talking to me. But he couldn't take his eyes off her the whole time.

[00:21:57] And it wasn't until I came into the picture that he stopped. Everything he had told the interim, everything, was an absolute lie. An absolute lie. And he was caught.

[00:22:20]  Amy: And nobody else in that lobby was approaching the child.

[00:22:23] Aaron: Nobody else was watching the child. And he, he- 

[00:22:26]  Amy: And she wasn't in distress. 

[00:22:28] Aaron: Yeah. No. 

[00:22:29]  Amy: She was just sitting on a chair- Not at all ... eating a piece of cake when he went over and hugged her. There was no need.

[00:22:40] Yeah, so Aaron comes home pretty late on Sunday. I don't know if it was, like, 8:00 or 10:00 PM, but it's very abnormal for us. But he had an unusual meeting that he had to do that day. So he told me this, and I think I just went on the web again and just looked, like, "I gotta get this right." This is a guy who said he wasn't gonna approach children.

[00:23:00] He's a level three. I'm looking at the charges. And I remember it was hard to fall asleep that night. I was thinking about this little girl, the family, and what was potentially about to unfold. At this point, we didn't know if there had been prior abuse. There were a lot of unknowns. So I, I felt like, "Okay, Lord, I'm here in an area where I've practiced as a child welfare worker before.

[00:23:26] I have contacts. I know people. I understand the language." But I knew there was gonna be a lot of calls we had to make the next day 

[00:23:34] Aaron: I mean, my email wasn't even set up at the church, and so I must have gotten the video by Tuesday, because by Tuesday, two days later, I was making a report at our local police department, and I gave them the video.

[00:23:49] I had them download it. 

[00:23:51]  Amy: And that's where we found out that this person had no conditions to his release. He wasn't on probation, parole, which I didn't really expect him to be, because the last conviction was from 1997. 

[00:24:02] Aaron: And then I called the town where this individual lives, and that happens to be a different state.

[00:24:08] And so now we've got two different towns, two different states involved, and I sent them the video as well. But I hadn't even talked to the parents yet. The parents had no idea of Andy's history, so I needed to talk to them first. 

[00:24:26]  Amy: Aaron contacted the family following an emergency elders meeting that Tuesday.

[00:24:31] Aaron: So this church is about 80 people. Majority of them are over the age of 50. We had really at that time only one or two young families in the church. Very few, if any, 20, 30, and 40-year-olds. It was a church that was financially solid, had in the past some really good ministries, had some wonderful ministries to a homeless mission in the town.

[00:24:58] Very loving, very welcoming, wonderful building, well-kept, all that sort of stuff. And the elders, they were four guys in their 50s and 60s who had been at the church at least 10 years or so, some of them a couple decades. And they were all businessmen. None of them had experience with law enforcement. None of them had experience with Child Protective Services.

[00:25:28] So my first elders meeting, I was still trying to learn these guys' names. They trusted Andy a lot more than they trusted me. Part of that reasoning was we followed a pastor that was there 30 years. He was spiritually abusive. He approached multiple women in the church. He ended up having an affair within the church.

[00:25:55] There was so much smoke over the years of his ministry there that at one point the elders said, "Hey, we have to put a window in your door for your office." After it was revealed that he was fired for an affair, women in the church brought him casseroles. That pastor that was there 30 years, he is a master manipulator, a master.

[00:26:25] I won't go into all the stories, but I don't think a predator could have found a better church to try to get involved in, because this was a church that no matter how much smoke they see, they don't take action until there's clear fire. They saw smoke for years. They wouldn't take action, wouldn't take action, couldn't believe it.

[00:26:47] You know, "We don't want to stop what God's doing. Oh, it was a misunderstanding. You misinterpreted that. Oh." So many stories we've heard about pressing the boundaries, about how much can I get away with. Sometimes sexual, sometimes not, but just boundary pressing all the time. We were like, "How come you guys didn't see this?"

[00:27:10] So as I brought the subject up in that first elders meeting, and you could tell it was stemming from the 30 years of spiritual abuse. They say that, "We believe the gospel, and the gospel says Andy's forgiven. This is a gospel issue. We can't kick him out, 'cause if we do, we don't believe the gospel." Because in their mind, if we ban him, why are we even at church?

[00:27:38] Because obviously then we don't believe the gospel. I think part of it is he had been in the church for five years, and they had gotten to know him. And regardless of his past, he is a very loving person towards his wife. He takes care of her. I think they were of the opinion he hasn't offended since. And the point is, he just offended in the lobby and you didn't see it.

[00:28:10] But they don't see it as an offense. They are simply not educated about what harm and abuse looks like. And in some sense, I don't blame them, because before I met and married Amy, I would have probably been the same exact way. I would have said, "There wasn't anything going on. What do you mean?" They just didn't have an understanding of what it looks like for an abuser to be a predator.

[00:28:39] But expert after expert who saw the video say, "This guy is a predator. He's active." It's no doubt. Not one expert said, "Eh, you know, eh, I'm not sure." None of them. None of them. Every PD, every officer, every social worker, and they just can't see it. They cannot see it. 

[00:29:04]  Amy: It's very nuanced. For people that are in the world of child abuse or advocacy, law enforcement, there's an ease in which we talk about these things and we understand it.

[00:29:16] "Oh, he went to jail for molestation." We understand what that looks like, all the behaviors that went into it, the interviewing, the disclosure, the complexity of it Certainly my background has helped me understand risk in a very nuanced way that an average person would not understand, and I can appreciate the challenge that the elders had in understanding this.

[00:29:39] You know, I understand patterns, I understand family systems and environments. I can live in two worlds very comfortably. I can say Andy took very good care of his wife, but he's also a danger to children. And for some people, you can't say he's a danger to children if he's taking such good care of his wife.

[00:29:58] But for me, protecting children is a non-negotiable. You do that first and then you address the perpetrator. But we had to make sure this little girl was safe. 

[00:30:09] Aaron: What I would say for this church is they had been trained to accept bad behavior, and what they saw in the video was not bad behavior in their mind.

[00:30:21] You know, one of the elders emailed me, "We all have skeletons in our closet." We're not talking about skeletons in our closet. We're talking about an active groomer in our lobby. So we told the family Tuesday night, "Hey, this is what happened and this is what's going on." The parents had no idea of Andy's history.

[00:30:42] They were shocked. They certainly wanted to understand how long had the church known, and I was able to tell them, "We've only known for two weeks." And even for those two weeks, I was only the fourth person to find out. Some other elders didn't even know until that Tuesday meeting. So they wanted to know what was being done.

[00:31:02] By that point, thankfully, we were able to say, "Hey, he's not coming back until we figure out what's going on. We just want you to be aware of this." I let them know I'd already gone to the police and that I encourage them to go and talk to the police. Whether or not they chose to press charges, I said that's up to them.

[00:31:21] You know, I'm thankful that the elders agreed we need to let the parents know. And we all agreed we've got to tell the church. So those were the things that I'm thankful that they agreed to, but that was about the last time we had agreement for a few months.

[00:31:48] So we're part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and I've been part of the CMA for about 25 years. And every time we needed something in this situation with Andy, we got full support from them In those first two weeks, we were still working to convince the elders that this is a serious issue.

[00:32:16] They still wanted to figure out, how do we get him back? How do we make a plan, say we're gonna watch him? How do we do that?

[00:32:29] Carolyn McCulley: Aaron knew that he had to bring in some outside expert voices to his elder meetings to provide the education and perspective that his team needed to hear. So he arranged for a Zoom call with a number of people to consult with his team, including Deborah Bumbaugh, the trauma therapist we heard from in episode one of The Silenced Truth.

[00:32:57] Aaron: So at one of these meetings, we had our district superintendent, we had Debbie, we had a state trooper who had dealt with these crimes, and we also had the lead counsel for the CMA, because he understood the seriousness of the matter. So for me, the CMA did exactly what you're supposed to do, bring the full weight of truth, reveal it to the church.

[00:33:25] I'm thankful for the way the CMA stood behind us, supported us, and continued to do that for us as a church. 

[00:33:34]  Amy: I remember you after the meeting telling me that Debbie, the therapist, commented that this person is showing us that he is impulsive and he can't even maintain his own boundaries, and this is why we need to step in to help him with boundaries he can't even keep at this point.

[00:33:50] So in a way, this is the most loving thing we can do for him. But I also reached out to a forensic psychologist. He was somebody I was in a small group with for years, and he said, "This person, Andy, is sexually attracted to children in the same way as heterosexual adults are attracted to other heterosexual adults.

[00:34:10] It's the same attraction, and it's not going to stop for them in, in their life. So you have to look at his behaviors, because his heart can be changed by God, but if his actions aren't playing out, then he's dangerous."

[00:34:34] Aaron: This was the worst four months of my life, and this is coming from a guy who lost his wife, his first wife, after six years of cancer. So the fact that this is my worst four months is sort of hard. We were coming from a church and a location we loved, I loved. I thought I would live there forever. We moved to an area that we could never afford to stay at, and we don't have any family around.

[00:35:06] We had two kids in college. I had just had my daughter change high schools. I didn't handle the stress as best as I could have, and it was rough. It wasn't the way you want to start at a new church. I've preached probably 1,200 sermons by this point, been doing this for 25 years, and it's hard because I love those elders.

[00:35:34] They really are loving, and on so many issues we agree. I'm positive that we still do not agree on this issue. 

[00:35:44] Carolyn McCulley: Think about what Aaron just described. Documented video evidence, two police departments, a district superintendent, a trauma therapist, a state trooper, and the lead counsel of an entire denomination, expert after expert in meeting after meeting, all saying the same thing, and still, the people who needed to hear it most couldn't take it in.

[00:36:09] That's not stubbornness. Victor Vieth would call it something more specific: cognitive dissonance. This is the well-documented psychological phenomenon where our brains protect what we love by filtering out what threatens it. And he would tell you that faith communities are uniquely structurally vulnerable to this.

[00:36:31] Victor spent nearly a decade prosecuting child abuse cases before going on to build some of the most consequential child protection infrastructure in the United States. He now directs the Center for Faith and Child Protection at the Zero Abuse Project and is a founding board member of GRACE, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.

[00:36:54] He holds both a law degree and a master's in theology. What makes his voice essential to this story is that he has spent decades at the exact intersection where faith communities and predators meet. He knows what churches get wrong, and he knows why they keep getting it wrong.

[00:37:20] Victor, welcome. 

[00:37:21] Victor Vieth: Thank you, Carolyn. Good to be with you. 

[00:37:23] Carolyn McCulley: A study of nearly 4,000 sex offenders found that nearly 93% of offenders identified as religious. You've said that this may be the most dangerous group of offenders. Tell us why. 

[00:37:35] Victor Vieth: Yeah. Research tells us that a sex offender who grows up within a religious community and maintains significant connection to that community, that's the offender or set of offenders who is able to accumulate the most victims, to get away with it for the longest period of time, and also to access the youngest victims And the reason for that, sex offenders themselves tell researchers and clinicians, is that churches and other religious bodies are the safest place for them to operate.

[00:38:05] They often have the weakest policies. Even if they have policies, they often don't enforce them. They often neglect the most important policy, which is education. Centers for Disease Control since 2007 says every single year you should educate all of your staff and volunteers working with children to recognize and respond to abuse.

[00:38:24] Every single year you should be educating parents and youth a- about personal safety. Very few faith communities are coming close to those standards. Another factor that makes it relatively easy for people to abuse children in a religious community is that we know that offenders often incorporate religion into the selection of children, the grooming of children, the silencing of children.

[00:38:50] And in fact, a study that just came out a couple weeks ago from France tells us that can be particularly powerful in keeping a child quiet, because in essence, you're communicating to the victim that God, in some way, has sanctioned the abuse or God is requiring the silence. It's an extraordinarily effective means.

[00:39:11] It's, it's a significant and meaningful body of research saying that we have a lot of work to do in faith communities. 

[00:39:17] Carolyn McCulley: In this episode, there was a sex offender registry report that Aaron and Amy looked at where in that state this man was listed as a level three offender. You've been able to look at that same registry.

[00:39:31] What was your takeaway just looking at it? 

[00:39:34] Victor Vieth: Well, a couple of things. First of all, the fact that this offender was at a level three would suggest he's in the upper echelon of risk factors. What I also noted, though, is that of his 10 prior convictions, they were 10 years apart. So the first series of convictions was in '87, the second was in '97.

[00:39:54] And so that tells me that for at least 10 years he's had sexual thoughts about children that he's unable to control, and at least a decade apart had resumed those crimes. So that in and of itself would give a significant pause. 

[00:40:10] Carolyn McCulley: Yes. So I'd read where you talked about preferential and situational offenders.

[00:40:17] Do you still hold to that kind of delineation? And then if so, how do you describe it? 

[00:40:22] Victor Vieth: Yeah. Broadly stated, there are situational offenders who may periodically have a thought of sexual contact with a child. When I say child, someone who's not yet attained the age of 18, so it could be anywhere from birth to teenage years.

[00:40:37] Studies out of Europe say about 10% of men, 4% of women every once in a while have a sexual thought cross their mind about doing something with a child. Those offenders perhaps would not act out on these desires unless all the stars are aligned. They're in a situation where they have reasonable confidence that they could get away with the offense.

[00:40:56] Our child protection policies are often best suited to address situational offenders. A preferential offender is somebody who prefers to have sexual contact with children. So they could be a pedophile, intense sexual urges for prepubescent children. They could be a hebephile. They have a lot of sexual thoughts and desires about adolescent boys or girls, or they could be something else.

[00:41:20] But having sexual contact with children is their preference, and that is often the hardest group of people to rein in because, in some instances, they're obsessed with acting out on these desires. 

[00:41:33] Carolyn McCulley: In that situation, is it curable? Is it treatable? 

[00:41:36] Victor Vieth: Pedophilia is not curable. It is not something that we can give a pill or a treatment and take away these desires.

[00:41:44] Treatment of pedophiles instead focuses on management. How do I manage these sexual desires? So if, for example, a pedophile is convincing themselves that some children wanna have sexual contact with adults, or that in some way it is good for them, how do we correct these unhealthy thoughts and give you the skills to aid you in checking these thoughts going forward?

[00:42:08] So it's a lifelong condition. It's not curable. Instead, the treatment focuses on managing the behavior. 

[00:42:16] Carolyn McCulley: So in light of that, somebody who had this kind of background and number of offenses, do you think that a sex offender similar to what we've discussed should be part of a church congregation? 

[00:42:29] Victor Vieth: Well, the document we discussed, there are things I'd like to know.

[00:42:33] Was he ever assessed? Was he given any tests? We're making an assumption he's a pedophile, given that the crimes described are below the age of 14. But I'd like to know, was he subjected to a battery of tests? What do those tests actually show? And then I'd like to know the specifics of the crimes. That often tells us what he may be inclined to do in the future.

[00:42:56] So in the past, did he access children at a church? Were there certain grooming behaviors that he's found successful in the past? There's a lot more that we would wanna learn, much of which is probably publicly available. If it's not and he were attending my church, I would ask him to sign releases so that we could get as much information as possible to figure out what the game plan is going forward.

[00:43:19] If someone is at high risk to reoffend, which publicly available information suggests he would fit into that category, it may not be correct to have the person attend services of the congregation. 

[00:43:33] Carolyn McCulley: So when it comes to evaluating an offender and that person's confession, because abusers can be so manipulative, are there special red flags that should be evaluated?

[00:43:45] Victor Vieth: Yeah. I wrote an article some years ago in the Journal of Psychology and Theology where I gave pastors a list of potential questions you could employ to assess the level of repentance of an offender. One is, does the offender maintain cognitive distortions? All of us at some level have cognitive distortions.

[00:44:03] We all lie to ourselves to convince ourselves we're better than we really are. The difference is sex offenders are lying to themselves to justify sexual contact or sexual desires for children. So they may say, "Well, the child didn't say no," or, "The child came on to me," or, "The child seemed to enjoy it," or, "The child was poor and needy and troubled.

[00:44:24] The parents were really abusive. I'm the only one that ever cared for the child. It was sex education," and so on and so forth. So I think it's really important for anyone working with an offender to see what they're saying and pay close attention. Anything short of, "I am completely responsible for this behavior, and there is no excuse whatsoever," anything short of that says we're not on the right road here to managing our behaviors.

[00:44:47] We need to have some brutal honesty. So, you know, questions I say in there, if somebody comes to you and confesses to sexually abusing a child, "Well, you will turn yourself in to the police, right? And you will plead straight up. You're not gonna force a child to go through a trial and be humiliated, are you?

[00:45:02] You will sign appropriate releases so I can speak to your probation officer if you have one. I can speak to your sex offender treatment provider. And oh, by the way, you will enroll in an appropriate sex offender treatment program. You know, your spouse wants you to move out of the house, you'll do that.

[00:45:16] You'll tell everybody who needs to know exactly how you abused the child and how, if at all, you incorporated religion into the abuse so that we can figure out a long-term game plan to address the physical, emotional, and spiritual impact of trauma." 

[00:45:32] Carolyn McCulley: There's so much wisdom in what you just said, and I am thinking of the chronic online conversations around this, which often devolve into the political.

[00:45:45] You do a lot of investigations with churches. You must see these kinds of conflicts mirrored in local churches in different denominations. How do you counsel churches? 

[00:45:56] Victor Vieth: Yeah, a couple of thoughts. One of the challenges that institutions have in responding to abuse is called cognitive dissonance. So for offenders, I mentioned cognitive distortions.

[00:46:06] They lie to themselves to convince themselves they're not as bad as their conduct would suggest. But congregations engage in cognitive dissonance, which means, for the most part, almost everybody other than sex offenders are opposed to the sexual abuse of children, right? But we're not usually opposed to it when we see it, because when we see it, it's in our church, it's in our denomination, it's in our family, it's among our extended friends, it's at the university that is our cherished alma mater And so our brain protects itself.

[00:46:38] We flood our memories of all the good things this person or this institution has done, and we block out the countervailing information. And you can only combat that with education, uh, to say, "Hey, cognitive dissonance is a real thing, and it will kick in as soon as the institution you love is threatened with allegations of abuse."

[00:46:57] And so you need to be aware of that and check that and bring in appropriate outside experts to address this topic. Let me make one other point that I think is really critical. We often focus too narrowly. We focus only on the direct harm caused by the perpetrator, which is obvious where we should start.

[00:47:16] It's the direct impact. But research tells us that the response of the institution, if it's a poor response or a silent response, in and of itself is abusive. In fact, some studies, a study out of Hong Kong that found that the spiritual abuse inflicted by the church's failure to respond in a trauma-informed way may actually be worse in terms of its impact on the medical and mental health and spiritual health of the victim.

[00:47:46] 10 years, or nearly 10 years as a child abuse prosecutor, I never had anyone from a church show up on behalf of an alleged victim, but it wasn't unusual for me to see them show up on the list of character witnesses from the accused or to show up as a sign of support for the alleged offender. One of the most poignant moments of my career was to walk into a court with a adolescent girl who alleged sexual abuse by a family member who was also a church leader, and she saw this strong support for the offender.

[00:48:19] And she tugged on my suit, whispered in my ear, "Does this mean that God is against me, too?" So we've done significant damage to the faith of children and adult survivors, and if there really is a God and we sincerely believe that, we should be frightened of what that God may say to us one day. 

[00:48:37] Carolyn McCulley: Exactly.

[00:48:38] There was a quote that you gave in a 2012 article in the Journal of Psychology and Theology that I liked because it said, "Members of the clergy, church elders, and lay Christians often struggle with the application of law and gospel to victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse. Partly as a result of ignorance of the dynamics involved in these cases, Christians often apply a heavy dosage of law to victims and gospel to offenders."

[00:49:04] That rang so true to me, but tell me how you most often see this done in your work. 

[00:49:10] Victor Vieth: Yeah. Very few faith leaders are trauma-informed. Very few seminaries have any sort of education in child abuse. When they do, it's not required education and is not close to the level I and other experts would recommend.

[00:49:23] I remember years ago I took a call from a pastor who said, "Yeah, we're working with this sex offender on prison release, but he only abused one child, and he felt so remorseful that he drove himself to a police station and confessed, and the next morning waived his right to attorney and pled guilty." And I said, "He's lying to you.

[00:49:41] There's no way it happened like that." Mm-hmm. The pastor was offended and said, "Oh, you lawyers, you can't really understand the power of the Holy Spirit." And I said, "We don't have to debate about this. Drive to the courthouse. There's probably a lot of public records." And so a few days later, he calls me and is apologetic and says, "Yeah, it looks like somebody walked in on him sexually abusing a boy.

[00:50:02] They called the police. He didn't turn himself in. And during the interrogation, he confessed to molesting this boy and nine other boys. He was charged with multiple counts, multiple victims. He did get an attorney, and as part of a plea agreement, he pled guilty to sexually abusing the one boy." So the true nature of the offense was so much more egregious than what he admitted, but we just take the word of these offenders, and they're the last people we should be taking their word from because the very nature of the crime involves duplicity.

[00:50:33] It involves lying. You will never meet a sex offender who's not a skilled liar because they're practicing every day as they lie to themselves, they lie to their spouse, they lie to their institution, they lie to everybody in the church. They're no doubt lying to you as well. 

[00:50:48] Carolyn McCulley: This has been really good.

[00:50:50] Where do you see, over the course of your work, this trend going? Are things getting better? Are things getting worse? Or is it a matter of more is being revealed, but that's good? 

[00:50:59] Victor Vieth: Child abuse as a whole in the United States is declining. So in the last 30 years, there's been more than a 60% decline in sexual abuse and physical abuse, 31% decline in neglect.

[00:51:10] So our society as a whole is going in the right direction. But within the faith community, the declines are not as steep. Within the church as a whole, we've seen a 13% decline, but I would say that is largely confined to the Catholic Church. They obviously paid out billions of dollars. They have the most vigorous reforms.

[00:51:31] But Protestants haven't been sued enough, arguably, and so the policies are still pretty weak. Even though when we implement policies, we listen to law firms and insurance companies, so the policies are narrowly focused on preventing sexual abuse within the organization. That's the wrong starting point.

[00:51:51] And the reason it's the wrong starting point is the sex offender does pay attention to what's going on in the home of a child. They'll abuse anybody that they're attracted to, but they're looking, uh, for easy targets. So if the child is struggling at home or in other areas of their life, those are the ones they zero in on.

[00:52:09] If a child is being abused in their home, particularly if they're a polyvictim abused in multiple ways, they are the easiest child to be re-offended against in the church So the only way to cause a, a meaningful decline in the faith community is for Christians to convert to Christianity and to say, "I'm gonna care about all the children God has entrusted to me, not just those that might grow up into me."

[00:52:33] So we just have to get to the point of, okay, there's a million excuses I could give for not doing anything, but none of those excuses will fly because there is GRACE, and there is the Center for Faith and Child Protection. There are high-quality programs out there where I could learn what to do. There are also over 900 children's advocacy centers in the United States that service 90% of the country, and if they're accredited, they meet really rigorous standards.

[00:52:59] How about getting in your car, driving to the local CAC, saying, "Could I have a tour of the CAC? Can I learn what resources you have available? Can you help me in terms of my policies and other initiatives? Can you direct me to who would be an expert I could speak to if I have a sex offender in my congregation?"

[00:53:17] There are experts all over the country, probably in your community, that you could reach out to, but you're gonna have to put a little bit of effort into it. 

[00:53:26] Carolyn McCulley: Well, I'm glad that you gave the plugs for all those systems, because I think that's very helpful knowledge. I'm so grateful for your time today.

[00:53:33] This was an excellent conversation. I learned a lot, and I'm very grateful for your investment of time in our audience. So thank you for being with us. 

[00:53:42] Victor Vieth: Thank you, Carolyn.

[00:53:47] Carolyn McCulley: The Silenced Truth podcast is a project of the Safe to Speak Initiative, and here is why we exist. Studies show that nearly 93% of sexual offenders identify as religious. That means the church is not a refuge from this crisis. In fact, in many cases, it perpetuates the crisis. The Safe to Speak initiative exists at this specific intersection, using storytelling to expose the problem and educate listeners, while also advocating for better laws and policies for survivors from any community.

[00:54:24] But stories like Aaron's and Amy's don't reach you without significant investment in research, in production, and in the relationships that make survivors willing to speak at all. So if this work inspires you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our fiscal sponsor, the Southern Documentary Fund, in support of this series.

[00:54:45] The link is in our show notes. Now, there's one other way you can also be involved. Survivors have been at the forefront of advocacy for decades. We shouldn't expect people who are dealing with sexual trauma to shoulder this effort, too. Survivors need the rest of us to carry the work forward. So if you wanna be part of the movement, join the Safe to Speak Patreon community.

[00:55:09] This is where we have the opportunity to grow our grassroots movement and support the efforts of advocacy. You can get to that link at safetospeak.info or find it in our show notes. Our show notes also have the links for the historical materials referenced in this episode and the training resources offered by both Grace and the Zero Abuse Project.

[00:55:33] The Silenced Truth podcast is written and edited by me, Carolyn McCulley. Rachael Berglund is our executive producer. It is fiscally sponsored by the Southern Documentary Fund and is a production of Citygate Communications. Finally, if you enjoyed or benefited from this episode, please leave us a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:55:56] They truly make a difference. Thank you for listening.