How churches can better support parents and guardians in their own child sexual abuse prevention efforts
Vice President, Risk Management Services
Philadelphia Insurance Companies (PHLY)
As Greg Love writes in his article, the cycle of child sexual abuse is only truly broken by effective preventative protocols in the home and within child-serving programs — including church and ministry programs. You’re encouraging church and ministry programs to go even further by better supporting parents and guardians in their own prevention efforts. Can you expand?
Andrew Shockey: Absolutely, yes. First, I want to clarify that ‘going even further’ is just calling on churches and parents / guardians take a reasonable step forward.
Think about the amount of time a child spends at school, whether they’re in class, playing sports, in band — the individuals in charge are background-checked and trained on this topic. As a quick example, I’m a parent who happens to be an assistant soccer coach. To get my team’s roster, I have to complete sexual abuse awareness training. Absent that sports leadership experience, where might I get that training?
Obviously, parents and guardians are, hopefully, very present in a child’s life. And although this type of training isn’t required by law, the materials are out there. Making them available is one of the ways in which insurers are aiming to interrupt the abuse cycle for the sake of protecting children — especially since parents and guardians are also targets of the sexual predator.
Certainly, churches have limited time and resources. We know that. I want to make sure that what we’re suggesting here fits the context of a reasonable step.
Related to child sexual abuse prevention awareness and training, one of the barriers Love discusses in his article is a sense of hesitation that he’s witnessed among denominational and associational leaders (i.e., “upstream”) to provide clear guidance to churches (“downstream”) concerning sexual abuse risk and appropriate steps for prevention. Have you observed something similar?
Shockey: So, like I said, churches are limited in talent, resources and finances. Certainly, there’s no denomination I’ve encountered that doesn’t acknowledge the threat of child sexual abuse; but managing the energy and finances associated with prevention efforts is a challenge. And when a church or a denomination hasn’t had a sexual abuse crisis, they don’t always have a top-of-mind perspective on prevention efforts. I think that’s where the perceived ‘hesitation’ may come in.
My observations are that the Church can and should continue to do more. I think they’re doing more than they have in the past, but I wish to encourage those leaders to take another step. I’ll give you a few contexts in which this could be done simply.
As new parents and guardians become familiar with the church and get an overview of how their children are cared for in your care, it’s a great time to talk about the preventive policies and procedures in place. Or it could be as simple as having these adults scan a barcode to get more information from a parent’s or a guardian’s perspective. (This is where MinistrySafe comes in, as they offer training like this.)
For current church members with children, an agenda item could be added to a congregational meeting wherein a senior pastor or executive pastor introduces a resource for parents and guardians, because who’s carrying this message is just as important as the message itself. Have that leader take a few moments to emphasize a few key prevention procedures that might bear reminding or need strengthening.
I think of it this way: every church offers proactive resources on a number of topics that haven’t happened yet within their congregation.
We’re simply recommending — suggesting, imploring — that this be one of them.
If a church decides to commit itself to helping parents and guardians develop their own child sexual abuse prevention awareness, what might that look like in practice?
Shockey: I want to leave your readers with just two ideas.
Look, child sexual abuse is an uncomfortable topic. Before bringing it up in any form, make sure you’re giving an appropriate trigger warning; you just never know what a person has experienced in his or her lifetime.
Doing this shows understanding and care in itself. Frame it as, ‘We’re going to have this conversation because it’s important for the safety of your child.’ The vast majority of parents and guardians will embrace an uncomfortable conversation for their kids’ sake.
Aside from this, again, as we’re tapping into the church’s ability to provide care and support for parents and guardians, I want to emphasize that it doesn’t have to be an all-afternoon seminar. You can make it concise and still get the message across.
Obviously, the biggest “win” of supporting parents and guardians in this sense is preventing sexual abuse incidents from happening in the first place. But are there additional benefits for a church that chooses to go above and beyond?
Shockey: Yes. To me, it’s a chance to interrupt the cycle of sexual abuse by teaching kids — today — about the policies and procedures, the check-ins and check outs, and so on. Hopefully they’ll carry these experiences with them as they become parents and guardians themselves.
Also, I want to encourage churches to make their insurance brokers keenly aware of the preventive efforts they’re taking. It should come up at least at every renewal. Churches should make sure their brokers have a copy of their policies, procedures and training.
Then they should ask, ‘Is there anything our carrier can be doing to help us do even better?’ I say this because when a carrier better understands the risk, it can lead to more accurate pricing.
More than that, though, it speaks to the whole point: preventing an incident before it ever happens.
— Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh
