"Deplorable"

In Georgia, a former Southern Baptist minister pled guilty to molesting a 13-year-old girl. As reported yesterday in the Athens Banner-Herald, Norman Anthony Pugh was sentenced to 13 years in prison with another 7 years on probation.

In 2005, Pugh was arrested on similar charges when he was working as a youth minister at Georgia's Arnoldsville Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. At that time, he was charged with molesting a 14-year-old church girl.

Church members rallied around Pugh after that 2005 arrest. His bond was posted by the wife of the senior pastor, Nathan Palmer. (Do you think they used offering plate dollars to post Pugh’s bond?)

The case went to trial, and Pugh was acquitted in November 2006. Church members lined up in the courtroom to hug him.

How do you imagine that 14-year-old felt when she saw her whole church publicly supporting the minister?

And if any other kids were molested, how do you imagine they felt? Almost certainly, they would have squelched any possible thought of speaking up when they saw how the church rallied around the minister.

And it surely didn’t help the prosecutors any for the church to rally around the minister.

It is often very difficult for child molestation victims to have to testify in court. That’s just one of the reasons why so many of these kinds of cases are resolved with a plea bargain – prosecutors seek to spare the victim the additional trauma of testifying. But often, the way a prosecutor gains the negotiating leverage needed for a plea bargain is with evidence of other victims who speak up after the first one. But by publicly rallying around its minister after his 2005 arrest, Arnoldsville Baptist Church helped to assure that there likely wouldn’t be any others who would speak up.

So Norman Anthony Pugh went free. At that time, prosecutors were unable to prove his guilt by the strict “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of the criminal law.

Now, four years later, Pugh has been convicted of molesting a 13-year-old. He was no longer working at the church.

Do you think the people of Arnoldsville Baptist feel even a shred of remorse? Do they give any thought to how their own conduct may have helped to allow Pugh to go free and may have thereby enabled him to molest that 13-year-old in 2009 . . . and no telling how many others? Do you think they’ll seek out that church kid who reported Pugh back in 2005 and offer to pay for her counseling?

Do they even give a hoot? And if they do, what will they now do about it?

On a related note, I received an email just nine days ago, on November 22, from a guy who signed off as “William J. Tarbush,” and whose email address was for “Jeremy Tarbush.” He told me it was “deplorable” that I had posted Norman Pugh’s name with a link to the news article about Pugh's 2009 arrest.

Tarbush ranted a bit and made this complaint: “Norman Pugh is not even on the list of sex offenders in the State of Georgia for sex crimes.”

I guess Tarbush thinks the only people we should be concerned about are people who show up on a sex offender registry . . . even though virtually all experts recognize that the vast majority of active child molesters have never been criminally convicted and won't show up on a sex offender registry.

Ordinarily, I would ignore an email like the one from William J. (Jeremy) Tarbush. But since his timing was so poor – just 8 days before Pugh’s guilty plea -- I'm going to respond a bit.

Tarbush closed his email with “In His Service.” I don’t think so. That’s just Tarbush’s own no-thought-required religious rationalization for his rant. Heck . . . I once saw a letter in which a prominent Southern Baptist official was threatening to sue a blogger, and he signed the bullying letter “In His Name.” It would be comical if it weren’t so pompously pathetic.

In any event, I believe that “In His Service” would mean looking out for “the least of these.” But when it comes to clergy sex abuse, Southern Baptists are far too wrapped up in looking out for the ministers. “The least of these” seem to be “the least of” their concerns.

And as for what’s “deplorable?” It’s churches like Arnoldsville Baptist when they turn their backs on kids who report clergy sex abuse. It’s Southern Baptist officials when they choose to do nothing at all about ministers who are reported for clergy sex abuse. It’s the Southern Baptist Convention when it persistently refuses to institute the bare-basic safeguard that other major faith groups have of allowing outside review for clergy abuse reports and when it refuses to even keep records on credibly accused clergy sex abusers.

All of that is what’s “deplorable” … along with the fact that the news reports of Baptist clergy abuse and cover-ups keep growing, and the denomination keeps doing nothing.