Episode Transcript
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Hi, this is Rachel and recovery. We've got a special guest, Pete
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Singer. He's going to tell us
a little bit about himself. He works
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with grace and Pete, tell us
a little bit about yourself. Sure.
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Well, my name is Pete Singer. I'm the executive director over at grace.
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I'll talk a little bit more about
what grace is and a little bit,
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but just a little bit, about
myself and my background. I'm a
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clinical therapist working with kids who have
experienced trauma and adult survivors of childhood trauma.
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In addition to that, have worked
pretty extensively with a variety of organizations,
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schools, law firms, mental health
clinics, healthcare clinics, victim advocacy
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groups and such to better understand what
trauma is and better understand trauma inform practice
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Um and really, since probably about
two thousand five have been working very hard
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to better equip faith communities, with
a focus on the U, with a
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focus on Christian faith communities, because
that's my background, to better recognize,
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prevent and respond to abuse, and
that might be child abuse or that might
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be clergy abuse or other forms of
abuse of power and spiritual abuse and harassment
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which may occur within our churches and
faith communities. So that's a little bit
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about me. And before I got
into the professional work, had some personal
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experiences myself growing up in an I
FB church, independent fundamentalist Baptist Church,
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Um, where there was pretty rampant
abuse, spiritual abuse, physical abuse,
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sexual abuse. Um. Most of
the abuse impacted others far more directly than
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and it did me. Um.
But just seeing that and it it was
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actually to the point where a couple
of people died, um. And so
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seeing that play out, I think
it kind of laid the seed for recognizing
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that as a Christian community, we
need to do a better job of this.
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And then when I was in high
school, Um going to a school
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that knowingly had a sex offender as
one of the teachers and and knew that
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that was the case, but didn't
let anyone know, Um, that that
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was the case. So seeing it
play out within churches and faith communities as
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a child, I think, really
laid the groundwork for me to recognize that
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this is something that needs to be
addressed and addressed well, because those those
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things that I just described, that
church where people died, the Church that
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let a known sex offender, UH, teaching their Christian school. These things
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not reflect the heart of God.
And then a little bit about I'm sorry,
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go ahead, that is I was
going to just say that is so
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true and that is that, like
really is so detrimental to I think,
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how we as the Church represent Christ
to the world at this moment in time.
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Drastically, absolutely, and it gets
to how how people see the church,
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how people see Christians, and then, building on that, it gets
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to how people see God, because
we really do represent Christ, we represent
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God, and how people see us
as how people see God. And I
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don't think this is how God wants
to be represented. No, he does
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not. Um, I guess let's
get an to tell us a little bit
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about grace. Sure. Well,
grace started back in two thousand four a
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God by the name of Bosch Vijion, who was a child abuse prosecutor,
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noticed that when he would prosecute a
case of child abuse that intersected with a
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church or Christian faith community, oftentimes
there would be a large number of people
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from that Church or ministry or faith
community that showed up at the trial,
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but almost invariably they would be showing
up for the perpetrator. They would be
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character witnesses. They would be people
talking about how, oh, he couldn't
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have done that because he's such a
nice person, Um and and hardly ever
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were they there for the victim,
for the survivor. And Bos recognized that
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this just simply did not reflect the
heart of God. And so, Um,
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he started grace, which stands for
Godly response to abuse in the Christian
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environment. Back in two thousand four
he pulled together a team of just some
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incredible, incredible experts in the field, both of uh, the fields of
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child abuse. Child abuse was the
initial focus, Um, and then in
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theology and in really the intersection of
faith and abuse and what happens when those
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two things collide. Bobs himself,
UM, brought in a fair amount of
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capital, just reputational capital, because
he is billy Graham's grandson, and so
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he gathered these people around him and
they began the work of Gralics and and
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grace started back in two thousand four, like I said, really focused on
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child abuse and focused on prevention,
focused on equipping churches by training leaders,
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by training whole congregations, by helping
them have effective policies and procedures. But
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over time the work of grace has
expanded. It's expanded now so that,
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while we still deal probably most extensively
with child abuse, we also look at
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other forms of abuse. We look
at clergy abuse, we look at sexual
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harassment, we look at spiritual abuse
UH and other forms of misconduct that might
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occur within a church setting, and
we still have that very strong focus on
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prevention, on on stopping the abuse
from happening to the extent possible in the
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first place, by adequately training leaders, by training entire congregations so that the
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whole community can work to create a
safe environment, a safe place to worship,
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by looking at policies and procedures making
sure that they don't just address one
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hour on Sunday or two hours on
Sunday, but that they're more comprehensive and
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really lead the church to recognize that
this isn't a box that we check off.
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This is related to our identity in
Christ this is something that reflects the
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heart of God and that we are
called to do and, as such,
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can't just be something that we check
a box and feel we're done with,
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but it has to be something that
we're actively engaged in, that has to
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be tied to our culture, our
identity Um and our entire view of God
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and the Gospel, and so working
with with churches preventatively to have these things
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in place to grow a culture that
recognizes this. And then now we also
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do work real time so that when
church first get an allegation, when they
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first discover that there's a known offender
teaching Sunday school or just attending, when
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they first find out that there's been
a minor on minor situation, what do
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they do? Well, they can
call grace and we can help walk them
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through that situation and determine things like
how do we respond to all the parties
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that are involved? How do we
talk about it to our broader congregation?
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Do we speak about it at all
outside of our congregation, to the broader
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community Um? How do we make
sure that people are treated well and people
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are cared for who have been hurt? How do we make sure that our
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response reflects the heart of God and
cares for the survivor rather than doing whatever
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we can to protect our reputation Um? So just working through those questions with
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them real time and then after the
fact, and we work with Um.
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At this point, probably fifteen to
twenty UH churches and ministries a year to
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do investigations or assessments, and an
investigation we typically have a known perpetrator who
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did a specific act to some specific
people and then we investigate. Um,
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do these allegations appear credible? Are
there other people who might be victims?
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Um, did anyone at the church
know about it and if they did,
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when did they know about it and
if they knew about it, how did
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they respond? And were there policies
and procedures and preventative measures in place when
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this happened? And if they weren't
there when it happened, are they in
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place now? And so Um,
we look at that during an investigation and
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we look at very similar things during
an assessment. And what sets an assessment
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apart from an investigation is that with
an investigation we have that designated perpetrator and
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some specific things that we believe happened, and with an assessment we're more looking
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at the overall culture of the Church
or ministry. There may not be a
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specific perpetrator and it may not be
a specific act so much as just the
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whole way that this church uses power, the whole way that this church views
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a particular group, whether it's how
they view kids, how they view women
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or how they view some other group. But just how is that affecting the
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overall culture of the organization and that
how does that culture uh increase or decrease
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vulnerabilities and and risk to abuse?
No, I mean that's a huge issue
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in the church. Um. What
are ways churches can hold abusers accountable?
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I think there are a lot of
key things that churches can do to hold
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abusers accountable. I think heading into
it, just realizing even the word that
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you use, their accountability, accountability, is actually a good thing. Accountability
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isn't a punishment. Accountability is something
that's put in place to help a person
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grow in their walk. So even
just choosing that term accountability and making sure
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that we see this as it may
be uncomfortable, but this is actually caring
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for a perpetrator. If we hold
them accountable that, if we hold that
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perpetrator accountable, we can help them
hurt fewer people. If we hold them
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accountable, there may be some level
of growth that can occur. And so
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even just the idea of the word
accountable helps us to understand the perspective that
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we should have. Yes, we
are protecting vulnerable people, but it's not
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just a punishment on a perpetrator.
It maybe Um something that the perpetrator truly
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truly needs in their own journey as
well. But things that we can do.
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I'm going to go back to to
what I was talking about before with
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the three areas that that grace focuses
on. Prevention, real time and then
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after the fact, things that we
can do to hold a perpetrator accountable.
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preventatively, train leaders, train the
entire community to recognize and respond to abuse.
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A leader is not going to be
able to hold a perpetrator accountable if
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the leader has no clue what they're
dealing with. So leaders have to recognize
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abuse dynamics. Leaders have to recognize
and understand the concept of grooming and that
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a perpetrator isn't just grooming their intended
victim, but that perpetrator is grooming the
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entire community, that perpetrator is grooming
them, that the leader is the subject
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of grooming from the perpetrator, and
so we have to train leaders to recognize
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this. Ideally, that training would
be something that everybody going through a seminary
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or a ministry program gets. Right
now, you'll be lucky to find five
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or ten percent of programs having anything
close to that. And so we need
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to expand that at the college,
university seminary level. But, absent that,
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in our own individual churches and in
our denominations and associations and movements,
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we need to make sure that leadership, whether that leader is called a pastor
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that leader is called an elder,
a Deacon, a teacher, whatever they
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may be called, that leaders have
this basic understanding of what is abuse,
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what are the dynamics around it,
what is grooming? How does this relate
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to WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST?
Because if it slips back to being a
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checkbox, we're not going to do
well, we're going to fail. But
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if we keep it part of our
identity in Christ then it becomes a hard
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issue, not a check mark issue, and we need to make sure that
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our communities as a whole are trained
on this so that everybody plays a part
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in creating a safe community, and
not just that, but that people play
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a part and holding leadership accountable.
The church that I'm going to right now
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we started going to in the middle
of the pandemic. We we ended up
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having to choosing to switch churches during
the pandemic and and we were listening to
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services online. And so we get
to this church and we listen to their
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service online and the pastor is preaching
about humility. And he's not preaching about
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humility telling the church that they need
to be humble. He's preaching about humility
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saying the leaders of this church need
to be humble and this is what you
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should expect from us when it comes
to humility, and if you see us
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not being humble, you have every
right to call us on it and if
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we're not responding to you calling us
and not being humble, making sure the
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rest of the rest of the leadership
at the Church knows about the concern,
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because you deserve to have leaders who
are humble and recognize that they're not the
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source of power. God is.
They're not the authority God is. We
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go to that church so leaders that
understand that helping churches, the broad church
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community understand that so that they can
hold their leaders accountable and so that they
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can also help watch for kids and
the vulnerable, because the leaders can't be
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everywhere all at once. So that
training for leaders and the community as a
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whole clear policies and procedures that don't
just say don't abuse a child if your
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policy is don't abuse a child,
your policy has failed. But a policy
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that sets clear boundaries well ahead of
time that aren't just going to make it
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harder to abuse but are going to
make it harder to groom that give quite
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a bit of a buffer so that
when you see something that makes you think,
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hey, that violates the policy,
you're not noticing that only after abuse
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has already occurred, but hopefully noticing
that allows you to prevent the abuse from
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occurring in the first place. And
that policy should have really clear boundaries,
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really clear ways to respond to policy
violations. It needs to not just cover
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behavior at church, not just cover
behavior in the building, because most abuse
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occurs outside of the Church building and
so the policy needs to go beyond the
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church building. And people in the
church need to know the policy, because
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how are they going to help uphold
the policy and recognize the culture that the
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policy is supposed to represent if they
don't know about the policy? So we
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have to have education, we have
to have clear policies, we have to
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not wait until it's an issue.
We have to preach about it. When
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we preach about it we're helping to
hold a perpetrator accountable. When we preach
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about it, we are making it
harder for the perpetrator to then twist scripture
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and abuse people with that scripture.
So we preach about things like David and
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Bathsheba and we don't call it the
affair that David and Bathsheba had, we
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call it David's rape of Bathsheba.
We look at these things within scripture,
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we tease them apart, we pull
out the theology behind it and how this
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helps us understand abuse dynamics. We
talk about and preach about sheep's and wolves
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clothing. And so we established through
what we preach that this is a safe
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place. We established through what we
preach that if you have been hurt,
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you have a safe haven here,
and we established through what we preach that
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if you attend to abuse people here, your best move on, because this
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church value safety not just as something
that's there, but as a god given
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responsibility. And because of that we're
going to hold you accountable and we,
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as a church body and as leadership, will do what we need to to
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do that. We need to look
at our theology, because our theology,
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if we view it appropriately, in
my mind, our theology compels us to
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hold the perpetrator accountable doesn't just make
it a good thing to hold them accountable,
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it compels us to hold them accountable
and we have to recognize that we
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are going to hit on things that
we have no clue what to deal with,
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and that means we need to be
open to consulting with outside subject matter
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experts who get this, who will
be able to help you understand how best
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to hold a perpetrator accountable. Now
that's the prevention side, but real time,
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when you first find out that person
a may have abused person B,
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I can't emphasize enough the importance of
getting outside counsel in order to effectively hold
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that abuser accountable. You need some
distance because, like we were talking about
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before, the perpetrator has probably been
grooming you, and if you've been the
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subject of that grooming, you might
have a hard time holding the person accountable
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because you may not believe that they
actually did it. Yep, because you
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may think it was just a slip
up, or if your doctrine is off,
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you may consider it an affair rather
than abuse, and holding a person
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accountable to not have an affair is
very different than holding in a person accountable
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to not abuse. And so we
have to recognize abuse for abuse and not
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pass it off as an affair.
We have to manage the conversation in in
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these situations. I've had several churches
described to me that once an accusation was
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made the abuser, the perpetrator went
on a public relations campaign. That's not
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allowed and the church can help manage
the conversation, not in the way that
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has been done at times by don't
gossip here, but as a way that
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limits the alleged perpetrator's ability to raise
up an army of supporters against the victim
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and that limits that person's ability to
continue grooming even in the midst of the
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allegations. So we manage the conversation. We have to talk to the whole
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congregation about it. There are a
lot of factors that are going to impact
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how we talk to the congregation about
it, but it has to be something
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that's done directly. It has to
not be sugarcoated, because the congregation needs
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to know what's going on. And
then we need to make sure that we've
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contacted law enforcement and child protection if
that's called for, and even if we're
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not positive that it's called for,
we're going to air on the safe side
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and contacting law enforcement and child protection
helps us hold that person accountable. And
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then, finally, we're going to
limit access. This is easiest to do
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if we have a good policy in
place that says, when an allegation is
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made, this is how we're going
to respond, and then when you respond
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that way, it's clear that you
are just following the policy. A lot
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of times churches are afraid that if
they limit the person's access, it'll seem
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like we're saying we believe they did
it before we've had any chance to look
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at it. Well, then put
a policy in place that says you're going
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to limit access and then when you
do limit access, you just say we're
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following the policy, we haven't had
a chance to look into it. So
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we know statistically the vast majority of
reports are accurate, but we can't say
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for sure on this specific one yet. Maybe we are looking into it and
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until we've had a chance to look
into it, our policy says they won't
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be on property, or whatever you
choose for that policy to to be.
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And so limiting access and then after
the fact, when you find out that
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a person in the past may have
offended or may have allegations against them.
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Corey Jewel Jensen has written an incredible
article, and you can find it online
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open access, on how churches can
minister two offenders, and part of that
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is she talks at length about limited
access agreements. Limited access agreements limit how
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much, I at all, a
known perpetrator can be on site and under
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what conditions. The direct monitoring,
not by a person that they're close to,
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but by somebody who can be objective
and somebody who's trained in abuse dynamics
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to recognize different things, that that
limited access agreement doesn't just cover what happens
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at church, but it also covers
what happens outside of church, and if
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you violate our limited access agreement outside
of Church then you need to find a
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different place to attend that we hold
that person accountable when it comes to repentance
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and forgiveness. So often we have
this desperate desire to extend repentance and forgiveness
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even or to extend forgiveness even when
there isn't repentance. Um, an assaulter
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whom uh you've interviewed on this program
before, talks about that and talks about
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the offenders with whom she has spoken
that identified church as an easy target because
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they want to believe the best.
They want to forgive you. You can
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cry a few tears and everything will
be fine. That's not holding the offender
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accountable. And so understanding what repentance
and forgiveness are again, consult. Don't
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just rely on yourself. Seek an
outside professional who understands this. And then
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for some, for some churches especially, it'll be very, very important to
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understand. How does the confessional role
of clergy relate to this? Some people
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hold a belief that if I gained
this information that the person is an abuser
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during a confessional process, I can't
let anyone else know and I can't really
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hold them accountable if they say they
don't want to talk about it outside of
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the confessional. And if we understand
that that actually is not the intent of
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the confessional and if we understand that
even if the law might give an out
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for confessional privilege, that doesn't mean
that necessarily, morally and ethically, there's
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an out for confessional privilege. Victor
VI from the Zero Abuse Project has written
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a very powerful Um article looking at
confessional privilege within the Lutheran church Um and
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how that relates to reporting abuse,
and argues very well, I think that
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confessional privilege does not remove a moral
and ethical man to still report abuse that
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you might hear of, and that's
part of holding the perpetrator accountable. All
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right, we'll wrap it up for
this week. Um Pete will be back
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next week and tell us the rest
of the rest on grace and his experience
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with spiritual abuse. Um Pete,
thanks for being here. Um, thanks
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for having me. It's been an
honor. Well, Um, it has
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a lot of good resources for those
that are struggling right now and that are
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in different stages just through their recovery, whether it's the spiritual sexual abuse combination
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or just spiritual abuse in itself.
Um, and are just abuse in general.
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Um. And then, AH,
Al Right, guys, this is
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uh wrapping up. Follow us on
our social media and find us on your
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00:27:59.480 --> 00:28:03.960
favorite so real media platform and,
as always, if you need to reach
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00:28:03.960 --> 00:28:07.440
out to Rachel and recovery, go
to Rachel and Recovery Dot Com. Thanks
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for listening.
