According to The Daily Beast, some American Protestant Churches are refusing to hire individuals who were sexually abused as children. The rationale is that such individuals are likely to become abusers themselves. But the real rationale is that insurance companies are reducing the amount they’ll indemnify churches for sexual abuse, so churches have to protect their own interests—and pocketbooks.
“Have you ever been physically or sexually abused as a child?” is one of the questions on the Urbana, Illinois, church’s job application. “If yes, when, where, and what were the circumstances?”
The questions are shocking, but not rare for Protestant churches and religious organizations across the United States. These groups want to know the personal histories of prospective employees in an attempt to protect themselves against liability for potential sex-abuse scandals based on the false belief that victims of sex abuse as children are destined to become abusers as adults.
Hundreds of churches, including The National Community Church (PDF) in Washington, D.C., the Shalom Mennonite Fellowship in Arizona, Nazarene Churches (PDF) in Ohio, and Church on the Rock (PDF) in Missouri all ask applicants some variation on: “Were you a victim of abuse or molestation while a minor?”Even potential janitors at Trinity Preschool in Texas are asked this question (PDF).
The Faith Assembly of God in New York mentions that, “answering yes, or leaving the question unanswered, may not automatically disqualify an applicant for youth or children’s work.”
The first question you should ask is, “Is this legal?” Well, in America the answer is “yes,” thanks to the exemption churches get from nondiscrimination laws:
“Under the ministerial exemption, religious institutions are allowed to violate employment-discrimination law when hiring and firing their ministers,” said Greg Lipper, a lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Not everyone who works for a church is a minister, but the exception applies to employees with significant religious responsibilities, including clergy and religious-school teachers.” So asking the janitor about their past abuse might be prohibited, but asking the Sunday School teacher is fair game.
The second question is this: “What’s the evidence that those who are sexually abused as children become abusers themselves?” And here the data are scanty. The first paragraph below refers to a sample church employment application, including a question about childhood sexual abuse, produced by Richard Hammar, editor of Christianity Today’s Church Law and Tax Review. The Alaska case involved a court finding a church culpable for a case of child molestation because it didn’t ask the employee whether she had experienced sexual abuse as a child:
By 1998, Hammar’s questionnaire was included in sample volunteer application forms (PDF) made by Lifeway Christian Stores, a major Baptist bookstore chain. That year, Lifeway’s representative for its Bible studies division told the Baptist Press: “All people who have been abused do not become child abusers, but almost all child abusers have been abused themselves.”
This is not true, though. As a 2001 study in the British Journal of Psychiatry found, “The data supports the notion of a victim-to-victimiser cycle in a minority of male perpetrators, but not among the female victims studied.”
And according to the author of the 1989 study cited by the Alaska Supreme Court, justices and churches are misusing her work.
“That is a very old paper and based upon a clinical sample that came to our program at the University of Michigan and all were intrafamilial sexual-abuse cases,” Professor Kathleen Faller told The Daily Beast. “Therefore, the sample is not relevant to clergy cases. [JAC: Well, it might be; only further study could show that.]
“Moreover, since most offenders are men and most victims are women, the hypothesis that a major contributing factor to sex offending is a history of sexual abuse does not make sense.”
I’m not quite sure what Faller is getting at in the last sentence, since the 2001 study showed that there is a relationship between males being sexually abused as children and their own propensity to abuse. Perhaps the study dealt only with males abusing male victims, but that’s not clear. Dismissing the data as irrelevant seems premature.
What’s driving all this, of course, is largely money: if you’re going to be sued because you didn’t ask the questions, you’re going to ask them in the future. And if there were a strong correlation between having been abused and the likelihood of becoming an abuser, perhaps that’s a relevant factor.
But against this weigh four factors. First, it’s a severe invasion of privacy to ask somebody a question about whether they were sexually abused, and surely most people who were would want to disclose that only to confidantes or law enforcement.
Second, if you’re a pedophile, you’re not going to answer the question honestly, especially if you know why it’s being asked.
Third, the notion that this is all driven by insurance liability rather than protecting children sticks in my craw. It’s the wrong motivation.
Finally, only churches are allowed to ask this question—for people with “religious tasks”. Why does the need to ask the question outweigh the right to privacy—but only for those with religious jobs? Why can churches re-traumatize victims but schools can’t? After all, there’s plenty of sexual abuse of minors in schools as well. Here we once again see the unwarranted privilege given to religion in America.
In the end, the religious-privilege argument tips the balance for me against asking about abuse. If childhood sexual abuse does say something important about your likelihood of becoming an abuser—and we’d need better data on that—there’s no reason why such considerations should apply only to churches. If such questions are considered “employment discrimination” in secular positions, no matter what the data show, then that should apply to churches as well. Despite the child-abuse scandals of both Catholic and Protestant churches, if the courts have already decided that invasion of privacy outweighs the risks of abuse, then that should hold regardless of whether an organization is religious.
Not a surprise. I was molested as a teen and, many years later, after a divorce, the catholic church used that experience as justification for annulling my 17 year marriage. Apparently , because I was molested, I was never able to fully commit to the marriage.
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I am not sure I see the practical justification, except maybe that there might be some correlation to higher proclivity to give abuse when someone previously (especially as a young child) received abuse. I recall ‘In Cold Blood’ by Capote seemed to explore that idea, but that is a somewhat rare and extreme circumstance.
The outcome, I predict, will continue to be worse for religion. They habitually do things which are orthogonal to public’s best interest and soon the public will lose all interest in them.
Since religion yet again, gets the pass on this and does ask the question, lets turn it around. If the family is shopping for a church to attend, they should be able to ask the question of the ministers and priest before selecting where to go. They should also get to see background checks on these people before making their decision. Of course the best course of action would be to not take the kids to church at all and wait until they are much older and decide for themselves. Fat Chance.
After all, this should be of great benefit for those insurance companies, who do worry about these things…money that is.
I’d say that on this one it’s the non-churches that, ironically, get the pass. Since they are legally prohibited from asking the question, they can’t be accused of negligence for not asking it.
cr
Hmmmm. I don’t know if this applies to the most litigious society in the world, but …
A common addition to the UK’s household insurance properties (normally on the contents, not the buildings insurance, but I’ve seen it as an option in both types), is insurance to cover you against the costs of taking legal action against various sorts of civil action. As such, if offered such insurance, then as a (potential) customer, you do have the right to ask the insurance company if they require their customers to ask such questions of their clergymen (boy scouters, etc).
So, in the spirit of stirring up trouble for the god squads, asking insurance companies if THEY ask this question (with the reasoning) is reasonably likely to get the insurance companies to ASK the question … leading in a few years to much discomfort in the ministerial chair.
Worth a try?
This was not the first thing that sprang to my mind. The first thing was: probably many such victims were abused by clergy and didn’t report/sue their abusers. But if they’re employed daily by a church, this could serve as a constant reminder of their abuse and they might decide to act. So employing these victims increases future suits against the church for abuse, which the church wants to avoid. Thus, better not to give them a daily reminder of what the church did to them, lest they actually do something about it.
This seems to be assuming that the individuals were abused by a church. Despite the headlines, the majority of sexual abuse is not at the hands of clergy but within families. So that concept wouldn’t really apply.
Nonetheless, churches and corporations are big money targets for opportunists.
“I’m not quite sure what Faller is getting at in the last sentence”
He’s saying that since mostly women are the victims, there are very few abused men available to become abusers.
I believe the deal is, even though many victims are female, most abusers are male. Therefore, why the need to ask the question of females in the first place?
That’s a worthy point, but the researcher in question was discussing the validity of the scientific hypothesis.
In my grand daughter’s school, there are two cases of serious sexual harassment, however the school system can neither fire them or identify them at this point (thanks to teachers union contract)
My guess is that either the cases haven’t yet gone to court, or did not result in a criminal conviction?
Probably that is the case, but in the meantime these individuals are working with the children. (this was not just a case of inappropriate jokes .. much more serious than that).
I work in the corporate world (as opposed to government or academia, where my wife is) and I can hardly see this being handled like that. The place where I work once suspended a man and a woman for sexually harassing each other… even though they were both friends. Apparently some third party didn’t like their banter.
*Alleged* sexual harassment.
““Under the ministerial exemption, religious institutions are allowed to violate employment-discrimination law when hiring and firing their ministers,” said Greg Lipper, a lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Not everyone who works for a church is a minister, but the exception applies to employees with significant religious responsibilities, including clergy and religious-school teachers.” So asking the janitor about their past abuse might be prohibited, but asking the Sunday School teacher is fair game.”
Churches should not have been exempted from nondiscrimination. (I know: ministers, sunday school teachers and counselors should be believers of the faith. It would be more interesting if they were not. And, it’s my understanding that some of them are not.)
What is the evidence that abuse in churches is
committed by janitors and other employees who are not clergy or teachers? Most of what I’ve read on this subject indicates that abuse usually is committed by those who are exempted; primarily clergy.
The false premise used to invade the privacy of potential employees should be tested by science, and tested in court.
If churches should be protected from potential suit by asking such questions on job applications, should all businesses protect themselves this way?
Although, more men are abusers and more women are abusees, men and children are not exempted from abuse. And, women sometimes are abusers.
When men are the abusees, they are less likely to want the abuse reported or known. So, I assume these job applications with invasive
questioning about abuse is given to both men and women.
When you mentioned that you thought it might be interesting if some of the clergy and Sunday school teachers were not believers, I couldn’t help but think of Jerry DeWitt. Things would defiinitwly be more interesting if more pastors were like Jerry DeWitt.
I think The Clergy Project has shown us that there are a great many non-believing clergy trapped in their jobs.
This is probably being driven by the churches lawyers because of the prior ruling by the judge. I can understand them wanting to protect themselves. Once the judge made the ruling the questioning was inevitable, anyone not doing it may be placing themselves in financial jeopardy if they don’t. That was the fault of the judge.
If it’s become standard practice in churches or religious organizations then if they fail to ask the question and it leads to an abuse case, could it not result in the church being sued, and the people who made the decision not to ask the question being personally liable? I would think so.
Churches have a board or some such, they don’t want to held personally liable. Especially in what are often multi million dollar cases. It would destroy most people.
The problem appears to be a combination, the bad case law that is driving the questions, and the bad legislation that allows churches and or religious organizations to discriminate.
Wow! I guess that just as it’s unlikely that a poor child might grow up to excel in business exactly because he hated being poor, or a sickly child might grow up wanting to be a doctor because he hoped to ease the suffering of other kids, so too it’s hard to imagine that an abused child might grow up wanting to join a profession where he might help kids avoid abuse. Or maybe not so unlikely . . .
That said, I guess if I were a parent looking for a school, I would want to make sure that the kid’s teacher didn’t have really weird and potentially destructive ideas that might derive from a troubled childhood. Like, you know, thinking it’s ok to stab his first-born son to death after hearing voices. Or deciding it’s ok to obliterate whole towns — men, women and kids — because an imaginary friend thought it seemed like a good idea at the time. Or holding up Lot as a role model — a righteous and godly man — after some of the naughtier things he did. I could imagine that thinking along those lines might indicate significant risk of some seriously bad behavior. And yet I’m pretty sure that almost all christian schools insist that every teacher sign off on all of this, and a lot more.
Exactly. And this is an issue because abuse is such a big problem in churches. It’s an environment ripe for identifying vulnerable people from a position of trust and grooming them to make abuse possible.
And imo church teachings add to the problem because they’re all about trusting in the authority figures no matter what and not questioning or rocking the boat.
Afaik there is actually no evidence that an abusee is more likely to become an abuser. In fact I’m pretty sure the opposite is true. One in four girls and one in seven boys were thought to have been survivors thirty years ago. I don’t know what the numbers are currently.
I think the question is abusive, and further traumatises people. What we need instead is children being taught about such things in the right way and having an adult they can trust to go to if it happens. Given that religious institutions often even refuse to give proper sex education to teenagers (then wonder why they have the highest rates of STDs, teen pregnancy, and abortion) we probably can’t expect them to introduce these programmes for younger children.
One might think the courts would limit themselves in allowing discrimination clearly implicitly sanctioned in the religious beliefs of the organization.
This doesn’t.
I can quite understand why churches do it.
From the point of view of the abused person, it’s just another attack (but why on earth would any sane person want to work for a church anyway?)
From the POV of the church, they would be reckless if they didn’t, for very good reasons.
First, it seems to be conventional wisdom that abusive parents are ‘usually’ ones who were abused themselves as children. I see it mentioned on the TV news all the time.
Second, a combination of over-protective paranoid parents and child abuse ‘awareness’ (I expect it’s trending on Tw*tter) has produced a state of near-paranoia where ‘Father Brown looked at me funny’ is all that’s needed to start a witch-hunt.
And third, there’s the tendency (most marked in the US, but everyone else follows the US in the race to the bottom) of suing for megadollars at the drop of a hat.
So the first thing any ambulance-chasing lawyer is likely to do is search the background for the abuser for anything his/her employers might have asked about (but didn’t) in order to prove negligence.
I can’t blame the church boards, it’s their job to look after the best interests, including financial, of their organisations.
If I apply for car insurance, the insurer wants to know how many claims I’ve had in the last X years. Never mind if they were my fault or not. If I want travel insurance, they will want to know about my past medical history, privacy be damned (and if I don’t declare it, the cover could be refused).
Should I blame the insurance companies for trying to manage their risk?
Any other organisation having staff in contact with minors would be well advised to do the same as the churches – except that the law gives them an alibi, so to speak.
It’s a matter of balancing the right to privacy against the rights of the employer (or their insurers) to manage their risk. I do agree with PCC that churches shouldn’t get an exemption if e.g. schools don’t. It should be all or none.
cr
Why would an animal rights activist get a job in a slaughterhouse?
Oh, OK, I see the catch – it’s in the “want” bit. My animal rights example doesn’t particularly “want” to work in a slaughterhouse, but tolerates it because they want the gory videos and other propaganda materials they can get from the experience.
But even so, there are rational grounds for sane people to seek employment in a church.