UNITED STATES
World Magazine
Posted Oct. 18, 2013
by Jamie Dean
SEXUAL ABUSE | When pastors, churches, and other caregivers fail to report sexual abuse, they may aid and abet crime–and it some states are subject to prosecution themselves–along with subjecting abuse victims to lifelong trauma
BRADENTON, Fla.—From the floor-to-ceiling windows on the sixth floor of the Manatee County Courthouse, a sweeping view extends across the Manatee River as it spills into Tampa Bay. The skies darkened as heavy rains poured down here in Bradenton, Fla., on a September day. In courtroom 6-A, another storm brewed: Jeremy Bicha, 29, seated behind a wide defense table, heard testimony from two women he’d already admitted to sexually abusing when they were young girls.
The women gave shocking details about the abuse. When the district attorney asked the women to describe their relationship to the defendant, each gave equally shocking answers: “He is my brother.”
The tragedy of sexual abuse in a family once involved in local churches and stationed on a foreign mission field only deepens: Adults also connected to their community knew about the abuse while the girls were minors but didn’t report it to authorities. Those adults include a Christian schoolteacher, a longtime pastor—and the parents of Bicha and his sisters.
As adults, two of Bicha’s sisters he abused reported the abuse to police in 2010. Bicha pleaded no contest to charges of sexual battery. When Circuit Court Judge Thomas Krug sentenced him on Sept. 27 for crimes committed as a youth, he also castigated the adults who failed to report those crimes: “Frankly, they deserve to be in prison.”
Krug’s statement carries legal weight. Florida state law mandates any adult who suspects or knows about a case of child sexual abuse to report it to authorities. Failure to report carries a maximum penalty of $5,000 or five years in prison.
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