Episode Transcript
Hi, this is Rachel Recovery. We've got David Pittman here today. He's going to tell us a little bit about himself and he's going to talk about. Church shootings and how they prepare for.
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Church shootings, but they don't prepare or equip churches for situations of clergy abuse or childhood sexual
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abuse. 3s Well, so do you want me to start? I can go ahead and start. I'm David Pittman. I'm the director of Together with You. And I am part of the Child Safeguarding team. And it's well, it's more to safeguarding. We've just changed the title to safeguarding it. Grace Because it's not just about child safeguarding. It's we handle 1s not just sexual abuse, but spiritual abuse, intimate partner violence, physical property, you know, the, the entire covering the entire spectrum of the church. Um, so, so it handles all of that. And with together we heal. We deal directly with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, specifically, um, and helping the families navigate the steps of what to do as well as the adult survivors on how to heal. 2s How how to just cope day to day. And just helping helping them out, offering them guidance and support. So that's me and that's that's what we do.
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Okay. Um, let's talk about this. Um, tell us about this new article. Give us like a layover
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or review and then it's not a completed one yet. And I've been working on it for a for effect for a few weeks, the summer, summertime. So we, we as like most summer times, there's a lot of we have a lot of visitors coming to see us in Florida, a lot of family and friends. And so my writing and that side of the the work has been as much because we've had so many guests, which is great. And then a matter of fact, in ten days we go to see our first grandchild in California, and I'm really excited about that. So I had to give a plug for Little Asher. 1s Um, but the, the work on the church side of things, right? All the work that we do in church settings and religious environments, I've noticed a trend, um, with all of these mass shootings that are occurring across the country. Um. 1s Churches are cited up left and right, seemingly for active shooter drills. And it reminded me something actually from my childhood when I was growing up, because where we live, we had a lot of tornado activity through the spring and early summer. And so at school, during the first or the second and third quarters, we would have a lot of tornado drills. You know, an alarm would sound. And depending on where you were at the school, it either grab a book and put it over your head, get out of your desk, make yourself small into the corner of a hallway, or if you're outside getting in a ditch to lay down anything that you could do to protect ourselves from a potential tornado. Right now, we also did fire drills. Right. And all of these things, they're good and we needed to practice them in case the real thing ever happened. The school system, they wanted to give us the best opportunity to survive all of these disasters and to protect ourselves. They were trying to best protect us. And as I said, all these are good things. And so I. I think I was. That's what made me connect that to what I'm seeing now with the active shooter drills. Um, and of course, with this just and hate to even use the word because it is very descriptive with this onslaught of mass shootings where we seemingly have, I think the average is more than one a day. Um, but there's this wave of companies that have popped up online offering active shooter drills and they they've seemed to target them at churches and churches are signing up to pay for them. 2s And, you know, let me take one more one step back on this before we begin digging into this. I want to make this crystal clear. I do think churches should do everything in their power to better protect their parishioners in their care. Anything and everything. And that includes active shooter drills. But my question about all of this is the why does it seem. 1s The churches are so easily moved. Just you are quickly to pay for one thing and not for another. To to focus attention on one thing more than another, especially when one of those things happens at such a much lower rate than the other one does. Again, do not I do not want this to be misinterpreted or misconstrued or skewed in any way. That is, I do think churches should do all of these things. But that's not what I'm seeing happily. Right? Over the last. Since Columbine. In 1999. Do you have a can you just if you didn't know, could you take a guess at how many church shootings there have been in 24 years? 3s If you didn't know. Just random guess. I
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mean, think if we've seen a couple on the news or the over the years. I think there's one in South Carolina and you know. 1s And so the exact number to 23. 2s The 23 church shootings in 24 years mean we have because of the time constraints. I'm not going to, but I can. I've got a list right here that can look at it. You've got 1 in 99, 1 in 2001, 1 in 2002. Same in three. There's two and five. I'm just kind of you skipping through. You had three at zero seven, one in oh eight, one and oh nine, nine
and 10 or 11 and so on down the list. And then there was this, of course, in 2020 with with Covid, there was nothing and everybody was was sheltered in and in a 21 there were nine. And then in 22 there were four, right? So we add those four. And of course, it's not just it's not just associated with Protestant churches. Right? Because those those ran the gamut from Baptist churches in Texas to a Catholic church. And your AME Church in Georgia mean there was no 1s it wasn't concentrated at any denomination. And of course, there was the Jewish synagogue, the Sikh temple, the Amish school. This year in March, the school in Nashville. So those were religious affiliated, right? Uh. Um. 2s And so it happens, right? So we have these things. 4s Yeah. But what is occurring more often? 2s When And we know this about sexual abuse, right? Yeah, we. And you can just pop out random or random, but you can you can just get a random gathering of data if you just Google or how many how many sexual abuse cases. Well, it depends on which denomination you're looking at. Um, but according to the Christian Science Monitor News. And this was just as a 2002. The pace of child abuse allegations against American churches averaged 70 a week.
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And and again, that was from 2002. So do you think we have more or less than that? 1s You know. 1s So you go from one one thing that you're trying to prevent that happens at a rate of one a year. And another thing that's occurring at over 70 times a week. 3s So again, where should you. Where should you If you had to take your pick? What would you focus time and energy and resources with? Or it's still not going towards child. The child abuse privilege. Oh. Because even even if you look at that number, that's the number of the seven days a week and who knows what it's at now. That's just the documented cases. Hundreds to thousands more go undocumented because the the numbers do not lie. 1 in 4 girls, 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by their 18th birthday. And that goes across all socioeconomic. You know, it's rural, urban, white, black serial sexual predators exist in all areas and they prey on all. 1s And that's my point exactly. And so so all of this leads me to the question of how much. So again, because this is in the the the setting in which I work on a daily basis isn't in religious settings. So how much time, money, energy, resources is spent on child safeguarding versus how much time, money, energy resources is spent on like physical, actual church property, you know? And so we'll go to consider those things like the active shooter drills the arm. Do you see that now? Armed, not just volunteers walking the property to prevent car break ins or church property theft and things like that. But you actually have armed parishioners and they do trainings for that video surveillance at churches and all. I mean, they talk about a lot of cost with that, the software, the hardware, the monitoring services, the monthly fees. Um, and again, so, so we're, we hear these things and we see these things and we're often told by churches, well, because of these things we can't afford sexual abuse or safeguarding training, safeguarding trainings of other kinds. Um. And again, if you if you like I said earlier, if you Google active shooter training, man, you're just going to see it just pop hundreds and hundreds of companies just ready, willing and able. Um, whereas if you Google sexual abuse training, you tend to find one of two things a lot that are, let's just say less than trauma informed that are almost that are usually and mostly tied to insurance companies who are offering this as a way to protect the institution. The organization not really so much for the protection of the individuals. On the other hand, you've got this smaller group of trauma informed organizations, most of which we we know who each other because it's the same handful of people trying to protect the vulnerable in religious settings, school youth, sports programs, camps, all of
those things. So you have a few working hard to protect the many and you have these mini and conglomerate working all protect. Looked at all cases. The powerful thief. Well, it's a little bit
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overwhelming. Since I've started this podcast, there's been a lot of overlap. I'm like, Oh, we're all in the same little community. Oh, 1s mean zero Project Grace. Together we heal.
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Exactly. You know, there's
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just so many. 4s We've had one of the one of the founding members of abuse come on board with us and Grace and do some work on the investigative side. And exactly. That's exactly my point. You know, the ones that are that are trauma informed and whose focus is victim and survivor centric. Right. That that's our focus on helping the individual, not protecting an institution. We do generally know each other, have relationships one another. And you know, you can you you can always say, hey, well, have you worked with them before you? And you can pretty much name a few of the folk. 2s And I'm grateful that because when we started together, we heal, you know, 2011, that was the reason why we started it, because 1s I couldn't find what I was looking for to find some help in connecting with trauma informed therapists for for survivors of sexual abuse. Um, and so we said, well, let's just try to start finding people and connecting them. Um, and.
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Oh, let's see. I was trying at the time and you can even have more now. But like you go to Courage 365 What Ashley will have done, being able to have these peer group peer support groups 1s that SNAP had started decades before. That's that was the first organization that had offered any sort of support for peer support for survivors. Um, and to me, that's one of the greatest ways to do it is to be able to sit in a room or sit, you know, as we do nowadays, just like you and I are doing with these zoom calls and connecting calls. Um. Being able to hear your story in someone else's voice and know that you're not alone.
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Yeah, well, I mean, it's kind of an amazing I mean, I've been doing all this research and yeah, it's. I mean, there's a. 2s I think there's a lot more out there that but it's not talked about and it's hard to find sometimes. Um, there's Open Heart Ministries, um, that's, uh, co-founded with the Allander Center. 1s And. And then Diane Lindbergh. She's got a bunch of resources and information.
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Diane's on our board. Yep. Thought love, Diane. Like you think I got to hear her speak at the local. At Covenant Covenant Seminary. So. No, it's been.
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That circle starts to get real small real quick and there might be a couple.
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And that's kind of what that was really my comparison of, of what's available for something that protects the institution. There are a plethora of and what protects the individual that there's just a rare few and and so and allowed 1s we do this and that's good yeah we're touching all the other topics that are important within this this issue and that's why I just wanted to kind of use the active shooter drill versus training for safeguarding of children as as a as a compare and contrast of of why is there this focus here? 2s And not so much on the other. And obviously, I think there's some psychology behind that because it's very easy to say, look, there's a bad guy with a gun. He's not like us because none of us would ever do something so heinous. And in sexual abuse training and in safeguarding training, it forces us to examine and reveal the bad guy, quote unquote, that is in our midst, that is in our family, that can be in our very home. And that's not work that most people want to do. You know, we're here. We we love the path of least resistance, you know, because you think of an active shooter drill, it's like the old fire drill. You stop, drop and roll. Active shooter drills are very, very it's the same thing. It's very simple, easy, straightforward. Abuse training is about nuance, paying attention to details, challenging work. And I'm a human. I'm you know, you used the word lazy. I don't want to do something that is hard. And throw in something is just here's the real kind of gross part of it. There's a cost benefit cost analysis, right? Active shooter drills don't really cost that much money or time and abuse training, safeguarding training. It's not just about the time that you spend on. It means always being on guard. You can even open up yourself, your church, not yourself necessarily, but the church by doing this to liability issues and God knows pun intended, most churches. 1s Tend to think in terms of risk management versus child protection. And that's the true tragedy of all of this.
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While they run at like a business and not a church.
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And so that's why the questions that I think all of us need to ask ourselves about the church we attend. And this is real, real easy. What type of safety training does your church offer? Who provides the training. Look into them. Are they insurance backed? Are or are they trauma informed? Is the training for the benefit of the church as an organization or is it for the benefit of the parishioner? Is it
about risk management or is it about child protection and parishioner protection?
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Yes. And the other question I had for, you know, does grace or together. Do they have procedures in place for noticing like symptoms of sex trafficking as well with children?
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Well, in in in the things that we do. That is a. What you would consider a natural addition. If you are if you go through like the safeguarding training with grace. 1s You. You by definition, will be paying attention to anything that is. Out of the norm. 2s So whether it is one individual preying on one or many children or an individual individual. Incorporating that. Into others, you're still going to be noticing the same things. And that and as we as we tell every single person, pay attention to that little voice. 2s So many times, particularly in the church setting, in a religious environment, the last thing you want to believe is that someone that you believe you know so well, someone that your child knows, trust and loves could ever harm them. But 90 to 95% of all child sexual abuse happens at the hands of someone that they know, someone they trust, someone they love. It's not a stranger that's doing this to them. It's somebody they know. And so if you are paying attention to those things, if you've been taught some things to be aware of, it will become part of your second nature of noticing them. And here's another real simple question that you can ask yourself of the church that you belong. Ask your church. Do they have a written child safeguarding policy? Do they have a written safeguarding policy of any kind? 1s Because most churches don't. 1s Oh, well, you know, we have the two adult rule. Well. 1s That's that's not enough. But you know, or we have them sign in. You need to have a written detailed policy. 1s That all parishioners know, that they understand that they know. Here's how to report a belief of abuse. 1s Now. 1s On. The other thing people don't realize mean even.
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50% of sex traffickers go to church. 2s So there, you know. 1s And, you know, in the United States, we own like 80, 90% of sex trafficking.
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So
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I think that is also into play. You know, that's you know that. So that's a combination of childhood sexual abuse as well.
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Well, of course, if they're being trafficked and they're being viewed. So that's why I said it would be it would go it goes hand in hand with one. You are not discount if you do as an example, the the to grace training, you are not not getting information about trafficking. It's the thing that go hand in hand.
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And well and think now that the movie Sound of Freedom is out. I think at least there's more talk about it. I don't know if we'll actually get any movement. Well, and I just I want to throw in I'm. 2s It's always good when awareness is raised. 2s But I don't believe in in vigilante acts. I believe that as and just as we teach the churches where we go, if you have a belief that something is occurring, the first thing you do is not to tell your church. The first thing you do is to tell law enforcement. You make a report, let professionals do their job. 3s Yes. 3s And the police are getting a little more training in that than they used to. Oh,
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yeah. Much more. Much more. 1s And there was a time when I didn't when I wouldn't have been very 2s hopeful of a report going anywhere. But and actually, what we say is not just tell police, but and it's called something a little different in every jurisdiction, but it's often called the Department of Children and Family Services. And everybody's got a different name for it. But but contact both of those, both the local law enforcement and Department of Children and Family Services, because by doing that, then you give a better hope that nobody falls through the cracks by just notifying one or the other. Mistakes can happen. So if you do both, then you have a better chance of protect the child.
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Yes. 4s Okay. Um. 1s I think. Is there anything else you would like to add?
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No. And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to speak with you today and and to hopefully to encourage everyone. Ask your church, do we have a written safeguarding policy? And if not, then let's go to a legitimate trauma informed care organization and have them teach us how to develop that, how to better protect our children, how to properly respond to both the victims and properly respond to the perpetrators.
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Yes, because that is not well taught or well understood.
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In churches it's often too much about and this could go for hours and I don't want to dive into it. I just want to say real briefly, too much emphasis on forgiveness and not enough on repentance. And so the only way to be forgiven is to be accountable for sin and repent of it. And most times. People in church settings skip right to forgiveness without any accountability, without any consequence for the actions of the crimes. Because remember, we have this nice euphemism called sexual abuse. What it is, is the rape of a child. 1s And the only way that the rape of a child can be found any measure justice because it can never be taken care of, then any measure of justice is for the perpetrator to be brought forth. Criminal for criminal charges.
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Yeah, well, because we both know the long term.
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Long term effects it has on people. It happened to us. It happened. It happens all the time. And in effects every aspect of people's lives. It hurts their relationships. It hurts their.
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Ability to earn income, it hurts them. 1s For the rest of their lives. And, you know, and those are the ones that survive. 1s Exact. 2s Absolutely. So. All right. I'm not. 3s Recovery. Tune in on your favourite social media platform or podcast platform and always follow us on your favorite. 1s YouTube channel. And thanks for listening.
