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| Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, on January 26, 2012. |
A mother, who says her son was repeatedly molested by
a minister at one of the Southern Baptist Convention’s largest churches, claims the church needs
to come clean about a cover-up of child sexual abuse.
“I want people to know the truth,” she said in a written
statement released to CBS News last Saturday.
“The hurt our family endured…is indescribable. . . . The church never reported
John to the police . . . . We ask that Prestonwood take responsibility for
their cover-up, and to say they are sorry.”
After minister John Langworthy was allowed to simply
walk away from abuse allegations at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas
in the late 1980s, he went on to serve two decades as music minister at another
prominent Southern Baptist church, Morrison Heights in Clinton, Mississippi.
There, he recently received a 50-year suspended sentence for molesting multiple
boys as young as six. But Langworthy avoided prison time because, in the plea
bargain process, prosecutors were concerned about the statute of limitations.
So, thanks to many years of secrecy surrounding his
crimes, minister John Langworthy walks away with no prison time. But no one should
overlook the fact that his crimes could have been disclosed many years earlier
– and countless kids better protected -- if only the leadership of Prestonwood
had spoken up and reported Langworthy to police.
As described in the Associated Baptist Press, Prestonwood is
the fifth-largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention. Its
pastor, Jack Graham, was a two-term Southern Baptist Convention
president from 2002-2004. So this is a pastor who is well-entrenched in Baptists’
good-ol’-boy network.
Who in that Baptist network will now answer this
mother’s anguished call for accountability? Who will require that Prestonwood
“take responsibility for their cover-up”? Will anyone do diddly-squat? Not if
the patterns of the past continue.
Much like the insider network that covered up a coach’s
abuse of kids at Penn State, the Baptist good-ol’-boys don’t hold one another
accountable.
This is not the only time that Prestonwood has dealt
with ministerial child sex allegations. In 2008, another Prestonwood minister,
Joe Barron, was arrested for soliciting sex from an officer posing as a
13-year-old. On that occasion, pastor Jack Graham had little possibility for keeping
it quiet because Barron had already been arrested and was making headlines. So,
after Barron’s arrest, Graham took
the pulpit and preached about doing the right thing. And he claimed
that, “in forty years of ministry,” he had “never had one moral problem with a
staff member” prior to the Barron case.
Now that we know about the prior Langworthy allegations,
we know Graham’s statement wasn’t accurate. Perhaps pastor Graham just forgot
about the Langworthy case – meaning a staff minister’s molestation of a kid was
not a memorable problem for him – or perhaps Graham remembered the Langworthy
case but chose to keep up the smokescreen and to heck with the safety of kids.
In any event, despite Graham’s inaccuracy, his
preaching was the usual fine performance, and many heaped praise on him for his
cheap, toothless pulpit talk.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s chief executive
officer, Morris Chapman, urged
other church leaders to follow Graham’s example “in
confronting this horrible crime, exposing it for what it is, and doing
everything within our power to protect the children under the care of the
ministries of our churches.”
But is that what Graham did with Langworthy? Did he do
everything within his power to protect children? I expect most ordinary parents
would say no.
Graham and other Prestonwood leaders simply allowed
Langworthy to move on. They got him off their own turf, while leaving countless
other kids at risk. And even as recently as 2011, Prestonwood’s executive
pastor, Mike Buster, proudly described Prestonwood’s modus operandi of a quiet
dismissal by saying that the church had “firmly and forthrightly” dealt with the Langworthy matter.
If that’s what Southern Baptists call being firm and
forthright with clergy molestation allegations, then parents should keep their
kids out of Southern Baptist churches.
But Graham is a prominent somebody. Not only did other
Baptist officials sing his praises, but so too did the Dallas Morning News. After Graham took the pulpit following Joe Barron’s
arrest, the Dallas Morning News published an
editorial extolling Graham as though he were the perfect example of a pastor
who had done all the right things. And even as Prestonwood’s leaders basked in that
over-the-top praise, they continued to keep their dark secret about Langworthy
locked tight in their closet.
And Langworthy continued to work with kids.
“In the end,” wrote the Dallas Morning News, “the real scandal in cases like this comes not
from the sins and crimes of sexual offenders. . . . The truly damaging scandals
arise when church leaders mishandle these crises by failing to treat them with
the gravity they deserve.”
Prestonwood
and Jack Graham failed miserably, and Baptists should heed the mother’s call
for accountability. In the end, when organizations do not impose consequences
for those who turn a blind-eye, then blind-eyed behavior continues, and kids
remain at greater risk.
________________________
Thanks to the Associated Baptist Press (an independent news service) for publishing this post!
Related posts:
Related posts:
Related ABP column:
Update:
Amy Smith's persistence brings justice in John Langworthy clergy abuse case, Clarion Ledger, 2/6/2013
Sex offender loses pharmacy license, ABP, 3/1/2013 (with numerous additional links to articles on the Prestonwood / Langworthy scandal)
Sex offender loses pharmacy license, ABP, 3/1/2013 (with numerous additional links to articles on the Prestonwood / Langworthy scandal)
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