Editorial: Southern Baptist Scandal Shows Need to Act

Columbus Dispatch
February 14, 2019

https://www.dispatch.com/opinion/20190214/editorial-southern-baptist-scandal-shows-need-to-act

It seems that nearly every day there is a fresh story of children being sexually abused. This time it’s evidence of such abuse going on inside the Southern Baptist Convention.

The temptation is to hope there is an easy fix that involves setting up training or some other measure against all future abuse. The truth is that this is a complex problem that crops up in so many places because it stems from an evil embedded in human nature. To guard against it, we need our institutions to act proactively, to create a culture of speaking up and acting on evidence rather than ignoring it.

The Catholic Church is grappling with evidence of priests who abused children for decades. This has prompted calls to allow priests to marry and to give laypeople broader authority in the church.

But the experience of the Southern Baptist Convention suggests making such changes won’t solve the problem. A Houston Chronicle investigation showed sexual abuse at the hands of hundreds of pastors and volunteers in a denomination in which pastors are allowed to marry and laypeople historically take on large roles in their churches.

And consider the problem of predators in our schools and universities, where the environment is different from church, and yet, sexual abuse continues to happen. The data on child sexual assault show a widespread problem. According to a 2013 study by researchers at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, the rate of lifetime sexual abuse or assault at the hands of adults is 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys. If you were not sexually abused as a child, you almost certainly have a friend or relative who was.