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Wartburg Watch [Raleigh NC]
August 17, 2026
By dee
“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” ― G.K. Chesterton.
Scenario:
Bob was convicted of molesting a 13-year-old girl. The judge sentenced him to 5 years in prison, and he was released after 2 years. He is on the sex offender registry. He was a model prisoner, participated in Bible studies in prison, and even led one group toward the end of his incarceration.
He comes to Country Club Baptist Church and meets with the pastor. He says all the right things.
- I found Jesus in prison.
- I’ve repented.
- I led prison Bible studies.
- I’m ready to lead a Christian life.
The pastor is excited. This is a redemption story he loves to hear. He baptizes the guy and introduces him to his church as “Saved.” Everyone likes Bob. Sure, he doesn’t teach the teens Sunday school class, but he’s always around to move chairs, to man the coffee station after church, and run AV. (I suspect hell will be like being forced to run the AV and every lyric to songs and every Bible verse is the wrong slide.)
Over time, folks forget about Bob being on the sex abuse registry. They even let him make announcements from the pulpit on occasion. Everyone loves Bob and trusts Bob because “He’s found Jesus.”
Except it is most likely a smokescreen.
1. “@93%-95% of convicted sex offenders consider themselves religious”
This 93% figure comes from research by Dr. Gene G. Abel and Nora Harlow, published in their 2001 book, The Stop Child Molestation Book. This was a massive, long-term assessment of 3,952 male sex offenders.
It gets worse.
2. “Hardcore offenders maintaining significant involvement with religious institutions had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims.”
(E. Eshuys & S. Smallbone, Religious Affiliations Among Adult Sexual Offenders 18 Sexual Abuse: Journal of Research & Treatment 279-288 (2006) as quoted by Victor Veith in When Faith Hurts: Recognizing & Responding to the Spiritual Impact of Trauma.)
Why? Are they sincerely seeking? Not many. They are likely to be seeking something else.
3. “A Faith community may provide “cheap Grace” and easy access to children.”
– T.P. Cross, V. Vieth, A. Russell, C.J. Jensen, Adult Sex Offenders against Children: Etiology, Typologies,Investigation, Treatment, Monitoring and Recidivism (co authored with Theodore P. Cross, Amy Russell, Cory Jewell Jensen), HANDBOOK OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE ACROSS THE LIFESPAN (SPRINGER 2021)as quoted by Victor Veith in When Faith Hurts: Recognizing & Responding to the Spiritual Impact of Trauma.)
Well, at least they’re coming to church. But what are they coming for?
4. Unfortunately, even with expert intervention, most reoffend.
Here is a link at the National Institutes of Health: Paraphilia by Kristy A. Fisher and Raman Marwaha that explains this.
Paraphilias are persistent and recurrent sexual interests, urges, fantasies, or behaviors of marked intensity involving objects, activities, or even situations that are atypical in nature. Although not innately pathological, a paraphilic disorder can evolve if paraphilia invokes harm, distress, or functional impairment on the lives of the affected individual or others.
…The DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for paraphilia states explicitly that the patient must have experienced intense and recurrent sexual arousal from deviant fantasies for at least six months and must have acted on these impulses. A paraphilia becomes a pathology, or a paraphilic disorder, only when this behavior causes significant distress and impairment of functioning to the individual or if the paraphilia involves personal harm or risk of harm to others
…However, due to the patient’s reluctance to seek treatment or the legal obligation to obtain treatment, psychiatrists are often forced to exceed the call of duty to the patient to reduce distress but rather focus efforts on protection against potential victimization.
Those with paraphilia are often reluctant to seek treatment. Even when they do, the counselor must focus on preventing harm to another victim.
Read the section called Prognosis. It appears that those with paraphilias are likely to reoffend.
Despite the psychological and pharmacological interventions designed to manage paraphilias and paraphilic disorders; an ultimate treatment or change has yet to be established. Existing interventions merely allow for increased voluntary control through self-management skills over sexual arousal and reduction in sexual drive, with the best-yielded prognosis only from those individuals who are actually motivated to change.[2] Those who do participate in either therapy alone or, ideally, the combined management of psychological and medicinal intervention show improvement with a marked reduction in the intensity and frequency of deviant sexual arousal and resultant behaviors.[18] However, the literature suggests that most sexual offenders are likely to re-offend.[2]
Well, at least they aren’t held up as church leaders, are they? Unfortunately, they are in many instances.
These sex offenders target church members.
Victor Veith spoke to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod gathering at Concordia Seminary in 2015, as reported by The Lutheran: Most child molesters ‘religious,’ and often target church members.
It’s not unusual for “hard-core” child molesters — with more sexual-offense convictions, more victims and younger victims — to be well-respected members of Christian congregations, and to be actively involved as church leaders, warns Victor Vieth, executive director emeritus of the Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center in Winona, Minn.
Religious people are easier to fool.
Religious people can be “easier to fool” than most people, say researchers, and, even when an accusation of child sexual abuse is made, will often stand with the offender, vouching for his good character and even showing up in courtrooms for support.
This talk by Veith was lengthy and went into understanding the trauma of child victims of sexual abuse in church. However, I want to stop here and ask everyone who still attends church to give this post to their church leaders. That harmless, “I love Jesus” former child sex abuse offender is most likely NOT who he says he is. It’s time to wake up and apply tough love to any of these offenders who come into our churches.
What did Jesus say about being wise? Matthew 10:16 NIV
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
It says to be innocent. It doesn’t say to be clueless. It’s time to wake up to the wolves who are child sex abuse offenders.