And the next time you think oh well he should have this and that done to him, next time you lie, cheat, steal, cuss, dishonor your parents, lust, gossip, whatever it may be, just remember you committing a sin just as big as he is.

Wow, gossip is the same as kid-fucking.  And fuckwits like the author of that comment think they’re moral human beings. Vile.

...it’s not our option to judge him, discriminate him, or anything else. God will do that for us.

If only the youth pastor had been a, say, 14 yo victim of statutory rape, or woman wanting to make her own medical decisions, or gay person seeking to get married or adopt a child, etc….

“It takes two to lie—one to lie and one to listen.”  Homer Simpson

So in the commentor’s mind it “Takes two to rape—one to rape, and one to indicate a desire to be raped by wearing clothes I don’t approve of.  (Besides, dude’s only human.  LOL we’re all rapists anyway, amirite?)”

I did NOT need this glimpse inside this guy’s head.  Anyone who thinks cussing is as bad as rape would, in a just society, lose the same privilege of being considered human he so callously deprives rape victims of.

Oh, I love how the sheep spring to the defense of the wolf! And quoting Scripture to defend “God’s Little Predator”, what a nice touch!

Quoting Scripture always pisses me off anyway, because there’s a verse for everything and they can all be twisted around to defend anything. Blaming the victim is about the weakest defense in the book, though. And the victim’s family, too! They didn’t raise those kids up right, after all. Sheesh.

I call bullshit on this. To summarise the comments:

1) He’s just a man and people make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes involve statutory rape.
2) It was obviously the girls’ fault, messing around with a married man.
3) Let us all now gather in a circle and sing Kumbaya for this poor, poor man, and pray that God works in his life.

This is why nondenominational Christianity never stuck with me. Unless you have committed one of a special set of sins or are part of a particular demographic, you have NO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY! You can do whatever the hell you want, or whomever the hell you want, and not be held accountable because you’re “just a man”.

So, it doesn’t matter that this guy twice the victims’ age and in a position of power over them. He’s JUST A MAN! Poor men! Those little Lolitas made him sin! Hand-wringing! Let’s pray for him!

Switch up the genders of the victims and the perp and you have a whole new ball game. But as long as it’s a dude messing with females of any age, he will have no personal responsibility for his actions, and no one will try to make him take it.

Didn’t Drudge say something like this about the Mark Foley affair?  “These kids today, they’re animals” or something like that.

Just goes to show you don’t have to be a Jesus freak to be a moral fucktard.  Just a Republican.

And then there’s this gem of a comment on the same site:

....Let’s also pray for one another and for the wisdom to know when we are being tempted. Ben is a human being with human frailties. If this could happen to Ben, it could honestly happen to anyone.

Uh huh.  ‘Cuz everyone has the urge to rape children, so who are we to judge?  Makes me nauseous just reading that kind of crap.

When I was about 14, I had the world’s biggest crush on our youth pastor’s husband, just over the moon for him.  I doubt I was as good at hiding it as I thought I was.  The thing is, if he would have taken advantage of my feelings for him, I would have been terrified.  Fourteen-year-olds have crushes on older people all the time.  Because the adult is, you know, the adult, it’s up to him (or her) to act that way.

Because not all adults rape kids.  My youth pastor’s husband treated me kindly, but never, ever would have dreamed of taking advantage of me.

I love it when somebody quotes one bible verse that sort of fits (maybe, being generous), and then another that seems to have nothing at all to do with the topic at hand:

“6:3 IF YOU THINK YOU ARE TOO IMPORTANT TO HELP SOMEONE, YOU ARE ONLY FOOLING YOURSELF. YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT.”

...sounds like something a drunk would shout out as they’re being hauled to the squad car…

I certainly know that I wouldn’t have any idea whether I was tempted to molest a 14-year-old without praying about it.

What a fucking bitch LindsayFnWhite is.

I don’t like calling women bitches, but Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ.

The man raped a 14 year old girl, and she’s blaming the 14 year old girl.  “It takes two”?  Yeah, it does, one to do the crime, and one to be the victim.

LindsayFnWhite, there’s a very special place in the hell you believe in reserved just for you.

So, if he can rape anyone who’s seen gossip girl (“watch whatever on TV,”), I can torture anyone who’s seen 24.  After all, commentors like LindsayFnWhite occasionally tempt me to it.

And Caren - I wouldn’t be certain White is female - I’m thinking of Sen. Lindsay Graham here.  Or else it’s just a dude who thinks that he can justify his pedophilic urges by cloaking them under a woman’s name.  I’m jaded enough not to be shocked that a woman can heap blame on 14-year-old girl for getting raped, but I would be at least a bit surprised if she is spending that much energy empathizing with the rapist.

I love (in the WTF? way) the confluence of temptation and giving in to temptation.  I’ve been tempted to commit sexual assault, domestic violence, terrorism, vehicular homicide, rape, mutilation, treason, and murder, and I guess that’s just as bad as if I had actually done all that stuff.  It’s a bpnus that those pretty women and girls and bad drivers and people who wronged me really deserve whatever I do to them.  I never really understood it, but “It’s always someone else’s fault” really seems to be the summaritive principle that drives many to Christianity.  Must be nice to never have to be or become a better person when forgiveness is all that matters.

I’m so glad I’m a godless atheist or I could be one hell of a monster.

It’s the same conservative song and dance repeated endlessly.  Our stupid and unproductive ideology never fails, it’s only weak humans that fail.  As long as the yokels will buy this line of shit their kids will keep raped, their bank accounts will continue to be emptied and their local governments will continue to be inhabited by bigots, racists and sexual predators.

Sound familiar?

To get an idea of the scope of the pedophile pastor problem, read Dan Savage’s Youth Pastor Watch on slog.thestranger.com

Personally I’d be suspicious of any adult who wants to work with children—assuming the worst should be the default position.

“...it’s not our option to judge him, discriminate him, or anything else. God will do that for us.”

Odd, how that doesn’t apply to ANY other perceived sin. Not for abortion, not for consensual heterosexual sex, not for being gay, not for being non-Christian, the wrong kind of Christian, or atheist. Not even, for most of these people, for being a Democrat.

Actually, “not for us to judge” does apply to other sins - it applies to any sin that “people like us” might do. As soon as someone counts as “other” then all the judging is perfectly justified, and in fact, mandatory. Asswipes.

Personally, I’ve never seen any conflict between “not judging” and “locking his ass up.” The Christian response isn’t to overlook the offense, it is to make sure that unnecessary cruelty and inhumane treatment isn’t added to the realization that someone is a danger to themselves or society.

Having actually met some convicted child molestors (it’s sometimes wonderful to work in a prison,) I have learned that the scary myth of the child kidnapping rapist stranger is the rarest kind.  Those guys aren’t looking for a one-night stand, they want a relationship.  So they develop one, as a counselor, friend, or in some sort of leadership position.  (There’s one guy at the prison whom the inmates call Father Salami.)  They all say that if they wanted to kidnap a child, it would have been easy since there’s always one around.  But they generally want the control of having them come back next time for the next scheduled visit.

So be suspicious of adults who want to work with children.  But really, if your children are going to be out there in the world, the best thing to do is not to isolate them from every potential abuser but work to ensure that they understand that they’ll be trusted and believed if they tell you something happened.  Someone may steal their lunch money, someone may fondle them, and someone may beat them up, but if they can’t come to you and get results if they tell you about the least of things, then they’ll not go for help with the big ones.  There’s a fine line between being weak for asking for help with a bully and being strong enough to ask for help, but if a parent’s answer is for the child to handle things alone, what will the child do when confronted with a sexual bully?

The key term is statutory.  There are two statues in play here.  Civil and Biblical.  His biblical crime is adultery if married and premarital sex if he’s not.  I’m pretty sure a fourteen year old is considered an adult BY THE BIBLE standards.  Correct me if I’m wrong.  I don’t do a whole lot of pre-enlightenment fantasy reading.

I’m pretty sure that adultery and premarital sex are death penalty offenses in the Bible.  The civil penalty for statutory rape is somewhat less severe.  The fellow ought to be happy he’s not being judged by biblical standards.

Enjoy.

I would be at least a bit surprised if she is spending that much energy empathizing with the rapist.

Nah, Mikey, I have no problem believing it’s a woman (though admittedly I didn’t think about the possible Southern-name gender neutrality).

See, that little teenager (14) deserved to be raped b/c she was dressing like a hussy, watching TV, and going after a married man.  LindsayFnWhite will never be raped b/c she doesn’t dress like a hussy, watch TV or go after married men.

You see, there are clear rules about which women(girls)deserve rape, and LindsayFnWhite observes them, providing her a magic bubble of protection against rape.  Everyone knows that.  No woman who wasn’t secretly asking for it has ever been raped.  For reals. 

If Lindsay’s a man, the same thinking is in place—the teen deserves it for being temptation personified.

Either way, LindsayFnWhite is a waste of carbon.

oh look, a massive fucking hypocrite who writes (and thinks) like she’s fifteen and brainwashed. what an useless asshole..

“Either way, LindsayFnWhite is a waste of carbon. “

No argument here.

I’m pretty sure that adultery and premarital sex are death penalty offenses in the Bible.  The civil penalty for statutory rape is somewhat less severe.  The fellow ought to be happy he’s not being judged by biblical standards.

Actually, if the girl was a virgin and not engaged to anyone, his heaviest Biblical penalty would be to pay her dad fifty bucks and marry her with no possibility of divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).

Only if she were engaged (i.e., another man’s property) would he have to die, and then only if he raped her out in the country where no one could possibly hear (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). If they happened to be in the city at the time, the victim gets to die too, because if she didn’t scream so that people could hear her, she was obviously asking for it (Deuteronomy 22:23-24).

Biblical penalties: Not real fearsome for a child rapist. >_<

Lindsay F’n’ White? I don’t know, but a name like that makes me think Poe. Not that the letter isn’t totally believable about how the wingnuts think, but Lindsay effin White?

“Personally I’d be suspicious of any adult who wants to work with children—assuming the worst should be the default position.”

hector, shut up. really. just shut up. are you one of those jackasses who thinks every teacher in the world is a molestor? you’d better be glad SOMEONE is willing to teach them how to think.

next, let’s be suspicious of everyone who wants to have children…

Chibi, since most child molestation happens in the family….

I hope the police make a thorough investigation of the letter-writer’s past, based upon the contents of his letter.  Practically a confession.

So, it doesn’t matter that this guy twice the victims’ age and in a position of power over them. He’s JUST A MAN! Poor men! Those little Lolitas made him sin! Hand-wringing! Let’s pray for him!

Switch up the genders of the victims and the perp and you have a whole new ball game. But as long as it’s a dude messing with females of any age, he will have no personal responsibility for his actions, and no one will try to make him take it.

Er, the commentator said “human”.  You’re letting your own views colour your reading.

From what I’ve read, 3letterjon is right about those preying on children.  And the suspicion generated by these predators “just looking for a relationship” is inevitably going to spill on any of us - especially if male - who legitimately want or have to work with children.

Chibi, since most child molestation happens in the family….

Seriously, you did not just say that.  As a mother and an aunt, I find that incredibly offensive.  I will make damn sure that my daughter knows I trust her and would believe her if she told me anyone had abused her, but how dare you suggest that everyone who wants child is a child molester.  Fuck you.

Personally, I’ve never seen any conflict between “not judging” and “locking his ass up.”

Agreed.

I was sexually abused as a young child and as a teenage fundamentalist Christian (who is all better now!) I really wanted there to be some solace within the church for people in my situation. I went to a whole raft of bible camp study sessions on forgiveness and how if we didn’t forgive people who had done us wrong then we would forego the forgiveness we needed to escape hell. Apart from that: nada.

I had already started to question my faith when my pastor announced from the pulpit that parents shouldn’t be concerned about the ex-pedophile who was the youth pastor, because he was a new creation in Christ. That was the final straw for me with that church, which hastened the process of becoming an ex-fundamentalist and now atheist. The levels of denial and collusion in the church are completely astounding.

are you one of those jackasses who thinks every teacher in the world is a molestor?

No, I’m one of those jackasses who thinks that pedophiles are attracted to jobs that grant them power and authority over children.

Google “Lenny Bruce,” fly, button, and scoutmaster to find an earlier example of roles pedophiles are attracted to.

Personally I’d be suspicious of any adult who wants to work with children—assuming the worst should be the default position.

People who work with kids—at least in community licensed centers—are generally required to be fingerprinted and have a background check.  What more do you want?

As another commenter mentioned, kids are far more likely to be molested by a family member or family friend than they are by out of home care providers.  Of course, a closed system like a church is more likely to harbor sexual predators than a licensed, secular day care, which usually has a much higher level of transparency and accountability (as well as quite a bit to lose if one of their staff is up to no good).

As a male who has worked most of his adult life with children (including several years as a pre-school teacher), this is kind of a pet peeve of mine.

Hey, how did we get from “this youth pastor guy and the people defending him are twisted and we suspect their ideology plays a part in that” to “we should suspect everyone who wants to work with children of having prurient interests”? That’s a hell of a leap. I’m glad we do background checks where I live on anyone working with children, but the idea that there would be a firewall of ongoing suspicion just rankles. My gosh, should we consider it abnormal for people to be interested in children as human beings worthy of their time, attention and (in this society at least, where we pay teachers and daycare providers squat) financial sacrifice? And my expectation is that this suspicion would mostly extend to males working with children (certainly does in public discourse) and would be used to shame males who are interested in entering a traditionally female-dominated profession into choosing something where their intentions won’t be continually questioned.

There’s no good solution here—there are simultaneously a vast majority of fundamentally decent people trying to make a difference in kids’ lives and a disturbingly vast minority of damaged people looking to satisfy their sexual needs.  It’s a heinous problem.

I’m glad we do background checks where I live on anyone working with children,

I’ve seen a bunch of librarians, all good people, get really upset when their organisation decided to participate in a “online homework help” exercise aimed at secondary students.  There was a requirement that, if your job involved chatting with kids via keyboard all day, you had to have the police check you out.

Getting told that the cops will be prying into your background to see if you’re a pervert really rankles people.

Chibi, since most child molestation happens in the family….

that’s it. no more having kids by anyone. ;p

okay hector, so who’s going to teach the children, then? if you don’t seem to think being fingerprinted before you can become certified is good enough, and that everyone is suspect?

Katherine,

The cluephone is ringing off the hook, and you have it on a silent setting.  Please read the other comments, especially those by me.  If you still feel that way, then fuck you right back.  But I’ll just accept your apology in advance.

I’m glad we do background checks where I live on anyone working with children, but the idea that there would be a firewall of ongoing suspicion just rankles.

Hello?

Everything changed after 9-11.  EVERYTHING. 

As Americans, we no longer allowed to fear ONLY fear itself.  We are to embrace terror as a lifestyle.  We are no longer eagles, but rabbits.  FEAR!!!  TERROR!!  If you ever leave the house, someone will rape you.  If you ever let your child leave the house, someone will rape him/her.

Stay in your homes, especially you women.  Homeschool the babies.  Protect them from the STRANGERS, who will only be acting on temptation, and should really be forgiven, considering how smoking hot little girls always want it.

I really and truly hate the culture of fear that W introduced to us.  It was one thing to be freaked about the Towers coming down, but fuck it all. By the of time Flight 93, the passengers had already learned that these were no routine hijackings.  They took the plane down rather than be passive victims—>and that active response to fear is the best protection there is.

Meet your children’s teachers.  Be involved in your children’s lives.  Put the blame for rape ON THE RAPISTS, and life will be better and safer for everyone.

Personally I’d be suspicious of any adult who wants to work with children—assuming the worst should be the default position.

Watch out, some people might think you’re a little suspect if the only reason you can think of for wanting to work with kids is to facilitate molestation.

Hector B. said: “Personally I’d be suspicious of any adult who wants to work with children—assuming the worst should be the default position.”

Since the vast majority of child abusers are family members or close relatives, I gather that there is nobody in the world that you would trust around children.  Sort of hard on kids to raise themselves, isn’t it?

“Sort of hard on kids to raise themselves, isn’t it? “

Yeah, but in a lot of cases, other kids are abusers.  Particularly siblings.  When any children are born, lock them in a room with robots.

I know, Mikey, let’s design some robots for the purpose.

We could call them

Child-
Youth
Learning/
Observer/
Negotiator
Systems.

I foresee a bright future for humanity once we create such helpful, serviceable devices…

Caren, the point of background checks is precisely that - to keep people who have been convicted of relevant crimes out of these roles, rather than targeting people on the basis of stereotype or prejudice. All a background check does, at least the ones I’ve been subjected to, is review your criminal record. And it doesn’t give details out to the employer, just yes or no, has this person been convicted of a crime involving violence or neglect/abuse of children. It isn’t failsafe, but it also isn’t a big fear-a-lot-fest either.

And I’m saying this as someone who works with kids and appreciates that, yes, parents need to pay attention to the actual people instead of going with stereotypes. I’ve also worked with sex abusers, and they are often very good at manipulation and appearing to be perfectly nice folks on the surface. They could fool a lot of parents.

My husband is a daycare provider studying to be an elementary school teacher, and it is discouraging to him that because he has a Y chromosome, some folks just assume his motivations for following his life’s calling are suspect. However, he and everyone else he works with, male or female, gets a background check, and they are all held to the same basic standard of not having been convicted of violent criminal offenses.

I can see problems with background checks due to injustice in our judicial system, and due to the way that immigrants with undocumented status may avoid such jobs for fear of ICE involvement. But what would you think if a teacher was convicted of abusing her or his students and it was discovered after the fact that they’d been convicted of such crimes before? Doesn’t the employer have some obligation to avoid hiring such a person in the first place? Should they rely on applicants to provide honest answers about their criminal records?

There really has to be some area between “omg be afraid be veeery afraid” and “what the hell, she seems nice, dunno much about her past, let’s hire her to work with our kids.” That I mention support for some form of background check does not put me in the column of post 9/11 Bush-olyte hysteria. Standards are not the same thing as paralyzing unfocused fear. If background checks are problematic as screening tools, what alternative should be used?

And among the things that complicates all of this is that anybody who works with kids and doesn’t at least sometimes find them sensually attractive has probably got a screw loose too. Kids are at least as pretty, graceful, intense, cuddly, athletic, and so forth as a healthy dog or cat, and (allergies aside) who’s going to say it’s not fun watching or hugging one of those?

I think one of the reasons you seem to get so much pedophilia and ephebophilia among religious wingnuts is not just the unquestioning power relationships that conservative religions foster, but also the completely screwed idea that religious wingnuts have of sexual relationships. The whole conservative idea of sex is typically described in predator/prey or master/servant terms, and trying to have that kind of relationship with another fully formed human being has really good odds of being unsatisfying at one or more levels. So if you believe that adult women are a lot like children in terms of rights and proper behavior…

And among the things that complicates all of this is that anybody who works with kids and doesn’t at least sometimes find them sensually attractive has probably got a screw loose too. Kids are at least as pretty, graceful, intense, cuddly, athletic, and so forth as a healthy dog or cat, and (allergies aside) who’s going to say it’s not fun watching or hugging one of those?

Mmm - there’s a difference between sensually attractive and sexually attractive though.  I like kittens - it doesn’t mean I wanna screw one.

But, on making that point, I note that this guy was going after 14 year olds, and probably not a pedophile in the medical sense - someone sexually attracted to prepubescents.

It may be a mistake to focus on his supposed “Christianity”. He may not be a youth pastor who just happens to fiddle kiddies on the side; he may just be a kiddie fiddler who figured out the best way to access unprotected children.  This is, alas, all too common, and the reason why any adult wanting to work with kids is suspect.

(Note the judge’s comments on that link, too)

okay hector, so who’s going to teach the children, then?

The solution is to design fault-tolerant systems to prevent even the most raging pedophile from being able to molest one of his/her charges. As piator’s link shows, the pedophile creates opportunities by isolating one child from his peers, away from the view of other adults. Then if a pervert candidate with a clean background slips through, s/he still won’t be able to offend.

Of course, you have to trust *someone* with your kids - but after reading all the comments about how anyone who wants to work with kids has a background check done, I felt I should point out that background checks only work if the person has been 1) caught, and 2) charged.
It is, unfortunately, not uncommon for a child-molesting teacher to actually get PAID to leave the school, quietly, so no one will find out that someone like that has been working there (school doesn’t want to get in trouble, after all…). So then they just move on to the next school, where the background check doesn’t turn up anything. I remember reading a news article to that effect a while back… it’s the kind of thing that really makes you lose your faith in humanity, some days. :(

Like I said he’s the older one and the youth pastor, but still it’s takes two!!

No, rape takes only ONE active participant.

To build on Zef’s comment, the background checks only do state police and FBI.  So if you were convicted in one state, and moved to another area of the country, a background check will not show anything, unless you were charged federally.  It’s very easy for convicted child molesters to move and get jobs even with convictions.  And let’s not discuss the molesters that went AWOL after Katrina.

We don’t have a perfect system.  The only way we are going to be able to effect change is by changing the discourse.  The rapist should be the one shamed and flogged in public, not the rapee.  We should start holding these perpetrators accountable and quit the slut shaming and victim bashing that always occurs in the media and around the water cooler.

Maybe the 14-year-old could have said No, but the pastor could have also said it much more easily, since he wasn’t the being told what to do by an authority figure at the time.  Also, it’s a lot easier for one person to say No to screwing children than for 19 different people to say No to him.

The solution is to design fault-tolerant systems to prevent even the most raging pedophile from being able to molest one of his/her charges. As piator’s link shows, the pedophile creates opportunities by isolating one child from his peers, away from the view of other adults. Then if a pervert candidate with a clean background slips through, s/he still won’t be able to offend.

Yeah, that’s nice.  To do what you propose requires that child care providers actually have enough money to hire enough staff to do this.  While we’re at it, why don’t we PAY PEOPLE WHO WORK WITH CHILDREN AN ACTUAL LIVING WAGE, instead of, you know, next to nothing.

Frankly, the threat of child care providers molesting children is hugely overblown.  Don’t get me wrong; it’s not non-existent.  But there are far greater threats to children who are in child care: being cared for by overworked, underpaid staff who barely have time to attend to the child’s basic needs, for one.

Hearing all you supposedly progressive folks blithely state that anyone who wants to work with children should be suspect just turns my stomach.  A small percentage of accountants commit embezzlement; are we then to automatically suspect anyone who wants to be an accountant?  No; we put safeguards in place to try to prevent it from happening (CPAs, audits, etc.).  We could easily do the same for child care if we, as a society, were willing to PAY THE FUCKING MONEY TO DO IT! 

Sorry to scream, but if you want good people to care for your kids, then you should damn well advocate to have the government subsidize it and pay good people what they’re worth.  It does absolutely no good to make fatuous, intellectually lazy comments like “anyone who wants to work with kids should be suspect.” 

Don’t like it?  Put your money where your mouth is and do something about it.

/end rant

“We all make mistakes”?

Making a left turn from the center lane is a mistake. Having sexual intercourse with a child is a crime.

Let’s see, we’ve eliminated Teachers, pastors, strangers, relatives, parents, and step-parents.
I’m detecting a Lord of the Flies education for our future generations.

I’ll agree with Captain Bathrobe.
The recent/on-going Catholic Church circle-the-wagons-to-protect-the-molestor shows how closed organizations like churches provide cover (and in some cases lawyers) for these criminals.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the article did not state the gender of the children involved, did it?

Which, unless this person is somehow in the know, makes the post by LindsayFnWhite even more problematic.

Or is it assumed that the children involved are female because the press didn’t hysterically latch on to the “boy sex” angle?

Bitter Scribe said: Making a left turn from the center lane is a mistake. Having sexual intercourse with a child is a crime.

Only in some countries (okay, most countries now) and some cultures, at some times.

The prophet Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah, the founder of Islam, married his last wife when she was 10 years old.

Even here in America, many states have had laws that allow girls as young as 12 to marry, though this age has gradually increased over the years.  Even today, in some states he could have married one of these 14-year-old girls (with parental consent) and legally had sex with her.

The world is a strange place . . .

I don’t know if this is the case with a lot of people here, but I grew up in a church community and youth pastors were very much a part of my life when I was, well, a youth.  Since our church was urban and almost all of the young people who came to our groups were the “at risk” kind, the youth pastors at my church put a LOT of effort into establishing relationships and trust with them, with the idea that having positive role models was incredibly important for these kids.  The relationship that the youth pastors I’ve had experience with are trying to establish seems to not one of authority but of a caring, mentor-type figure who’s a friend but also an adult who can be an unconditional source of support.

Remembering the relationships I and my friends had with our youth pastors… thinking of somebody taking advantage of that is just about the creepiest thing I’ve thought of in a long time.  It’s not just the age thing, it’s the power dynamic/trust thing…

Jeez, my very first crush was on a youth pastor.  (Not one at my church, one from some other church in the area).  I can’t even think of how traumatic it would have been if he had taken advantage of that in any way.  ::shudder::

To do what you propose requires that child care providers actually have enough money to hire enough staff to do this.

Or install a bunch of nanny cams.

Plus “child care providers” are only a subset of adults working with children, many of whom do not get paid at all. The thread topic is youth pastors. Piator’s link is about a volunteer coach. I mentioned scoutmasters.

Hector,

You stated upthread that you would be suspicious of any adult who wanted to work with kids.  Several posters (not just me) took “any” to mean “any”—not just youth pastors, coaches, scoutmasters, et. al.  Some of us who work with children for a living were understandably offended by that remark. 

In any event, having broadened the conversation to include “any” adult who wants to work with kids, you now don’t get to narrow the scope of debate to include only those you had in mind.