Who decided "false accusations"?

One of these days, I’m going to completely swear off the Baptist blogs. Eighteen months ago, I began commenting on some Baptist blogs because I thought it might be a way to raise awareness and educate Baptists about the extent of the clergy sex abuse problem.

It’s been a continuing exercise in frustration. I haven’t seen any improvement in the level of understanding during the past 18 months. To the contrary, I continue to see the same redundant arguments for why nothing can be done. Even worse, I continue to see the same entrenched resistance to effectively addressing clergy sex abuse. And though it’s obvious that many of the people on Baptist blogs are pastors, I continue to see virtually no pastoral concern for the victims.

These are the three main arguments that people on Baptist blogs make for why Baptists can’t address clergy abuse in the same way that other faith groups do: (1) Autonomy of the local church; (2) Fear that any sort of action by state and national conventions would subject their coffers to the risk of lawsuits; and (3) Fear that ministers’ reputations will be ruined by false accusations.

It was the third excuse that gave me pause this time.

“Pastor” dragged out the “false accusations” argument in comments on the Spiritual Samurai blog a couple days ago. Whenever I see this argument, it strikes me as so utterly self-absorbed that I’m stunned. It defies my comprehension to imagine that pastors can be so much more concerned with protecting their colleagues than they are with protecting their flocks.

I view the argument as demonstrating a sort of tribalism among clergy. How else could the fear of ministers being falsely accused weigh so much more heavily on them than the fear of kids being sexually molested by those they trust the most?

Perhaps because I’ve always found it incomprehensible, a critical aspect of this argument didn’t register with me until I saw “Pastor’s” recent words.

He started out with the sort of condescending tone that we see all-too-often from some of these guys. Spiritual Samurai had posted Debbie Vasquez’s story of abuse by a Baptist preacher still in the pulpit, and “Pastor” commented that this was an issue “more complex than ranting, raving, posturing, and speculating in a blog.”

So right off the bat, “Pastor” demeaned Debbie’s story by suggesting that it amounted to “ranting” and “raving.” That set my adrenaline pumping a bit right from the get-go.

But of course, “Pastor” was far from done.

“There is a lot of hyperbole,” he said, “about what the BGCT and the SBC should and should not do when it comes to child molesters.”

“Hyperbole?”

Given the number of people I hear from – people who have tried to report clergy perpetrators only to be ignored, bullied, shamed, and shunned -- my perception is that it would be almost impossible to overstate the urgency of the need for denominational action. If we have erred on one side or the other, we have erred on the side of understatement rather than on the side of hyperbole.

About the time I was moving on from his “hyperbole” remark, “Pastor” got in still another dig by talking about how “the abused and their champions” may “hyperventilate.” He said that “we need to calm down.”

Oh. I see. This “Pastor” guy thinks we’re just a bunch of over-emotional sorts whose views aren’t worthy of taking seriously. How very pastoral of him.

Well… you can see that I wasn’t off to a good start in considering “Pastor’s” comments.

But I continued reading, and when “Pastor” turned substantive, here’s what he said: “I realize that children have been and are being abused but we need to protect the rights, reputations, and credibility of all concerned…. In 42 years of being a pastor, I have encountered plenty of abuse victims but I have also encountered people whose lives and reputations were ruined by false accusations.”

So there it was, the standard “false accusations” excuse. But this time I realized that the excuse itself raised questions.

WHO are all these ministers who were ruined by “false accusations”?

And WHO decided that the accusations were false?

Was it just this “Pastor” guy who, with his wealth of self-confidence, decided that HE knew what was true and false? Was it just this “Pastor” guy who decided that HE knew the character of his clergy colleagues and so the accusations must surely be false?

Of course, this particular “Pastor” is just one among many. As I said, I’ve seen this “false accusations” argument countless times on Baptist blogs.

Experts say that fabricated reports of childhood sex abuse constitute only 1 to 4 percent of all reported cases. So how is it possible that so many Baptist ministers seem to know other ministers who were falsely accused?

And again…WHO decided that the accusations were false?

Maybe some of these so-called “false accusations” that so many Baptist ministers seem to know about are accusations that need to be brought forth again and looked at with some objective eyes. Maybe the existence of so many so-called “false accusations” are really an argument for why there SHOULD be a professionally-staffed review board to objectively consider Baptist clergy abuse reports.

Otherwise, who’s playing umpire? Who’s making the call on falsity or truth?

The concern for false accusations cannot be ignored, but it should be kept in its proper perspective.

It is surely a terrible thing for a minister to be falsely accused of sexual abuse. However, what is even more terrible is for a kid to be sexually molested by a minister, to be disbelieved and further shamed years later when he attempts to report it, and to continue seeing the perpetrator in a pulpit, knowing that he will likely do to some other kid the same as what he did to you.