I’m getting a lot of calls [to my law practice] saying ‘listen, if I report this, I have 70 people in my church, if I report this and they find out I reported it, I might lose 5 or 6 families and then my church gets cut in half.’
This is from a lawyer who advises churches.
It is well-known that congregations almost invariably rally to a pastor who sexually abuses their children, and visits additional injury upon his victims (de facto shunning, usually) — even when the pastor pleads guilty in court. But they would abandon a church whose pastor reports child abuse?
I should not be surprised by this, I guess, but I admit that I am. After all these years of tracking church indecencies, it seems that the ‘family values’ and love-love-love marketing lies that we were all reared with still have some subterranean influence upon me.