Healing and Protection: How Churches Can Respond to Abuse with Victor Vieth | Part One

Former child abuse prosecutor Victor Vieth joins the podcast for a sobering conversation about child abuse within churches and faith communities. Drawing from decades of experience, Victor explains the prevalence of abuse, how offenders weaponize religion to groom and silence victims, and why churches often fail to respond faithfully. The discussion explores trauma-informed theology, the misuse of Scripture, institutional fear of lawsuits, and the urgent need for repentance, reform, and survivor-centered care.

Transcript

Why This Topic Cannot Wait

SPEAKER_03 0:01

On today's episode.

SPEAKER_04 0:03

Sex offenders often state that the safest place for them to operate is inside a religious community. And the reason for that is religious communities often have very weak or non-existent policies. Even if they have kind of okay uh policies, boilerplate, they rarely accompany with the sort of education to really deter an offender. So that's the lay the land an offender knows that a church is often a safe place for them to operate.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz and I'm here today with Pastor Bob Fleischman. And we have a special guest with us today, Victor Veth. Welcome, Victor.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

Thank you. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

We're really excited to have you on the podcast here today, Victor. We are going to talk about a subject that we've never talked about before on the podcast with you. One of the questions that I often get asked when doing the podcast is when are you guys gonna run out of material? And uh I often think, mm, yeah, probably never. Uh there's always new stuff in the news popping up on life and family issues. And then there's topics like the one we're gonna talk about today that we have never talked about on the podcast. Uh today with Victor here, we're gonna talk about child abuse and specifically the connection between child abuse and the church. Uh I would love it, though, you know, as we start here today, Victor, if you would tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

Sure. Uh I'm a former child abuse prosecutor. I did that work here in Minnesota for about a decade, and now for 28 years, I've worked at the national level, mostly operating under grants from the Department of Justice to provide ongoing training and techno assistance and other resources to child abuse prosecutors and investigators. I don't go into court anymore as a prosecutor, but I still periodically come into court as an expert witness on behalf of prosecutors in cases of child maltreatment. And one of my areas of expertise is the intersection of religion and child abuse. So we do a lot of work in uh that particular uh space. We do research, we do seminary education, uh, we uh consult on a lot of clergy abuse cases, and we've done assessment of abuse cases in youth serving organizations, including faith uh communities.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

When people think about child abuse, I would tend to think that they would significantly underestimate how common it is. Uh can you tell us a little some about the numbers um related to child abuse and just help us get a better understanding of um just how common it is?

SPEAKER_04 3:22

Sure. Uh there's research out of Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control called Adverse Childhood Experience Research, which was uh replicated in all 50 states and about 450,000 adults with pretty uh similar results. So according to that uh data, at least among the adult uh population, about one out of four uh women, one out of six men were sexually abused at some point during their childhood. In terms of physical abuse, about one out of uh four uh were physically uh struck to the point of an injury. That may be uh bruises or cuts or uh more uh severe injuries such as broken bones, but more than one out of four were beaten to the point of an injury. About 15 uh percent were emotionally neglected or emotionally abused, emotional neglect means you grew up in a home where nobody said, I love you, I care about you. Emotional abuse is more proactive, you're stupid, you're ugly, I wish you were never born, cruel uh comments such as that. About 10% were neglected physically, which is not a result of poverty, that would not be uh abuse. Uh, but somebody who had the financial means to do so and yet purposefully at times withheld food, clothing, shelter, medical care, uh, or other necessities. So about 10% of adults have endured that. So widespread trauma among our adult population. The good news is that if we look at data among youth today, there are signs that child abuse is declining. In fact, there are signs that say over the past 30 years there's been over a 60% decline in sexual abuse and physical abuse, and a 31% decline in uh child uh neglect, at least uh abuse in the home. In terms of abuse within institutions such as churches, the news is not that great. Uh there's a 20% decline in child sexual abuse and what researchers call the Big Six Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, but no measurable measurable decline in youth serving organizations as a whole. And with respect to churches or other faith communities, there is about a 13% uh decline from a generation or so ago. Uh, but we who are Lutherans or other Protestants should not take comfort in those uh numbers. That's likely almost exclusively in the Catholic Church because they have the most robust uh policies and education, perhaps in results because of the uh large number of lawsuits. So encouraging news uh about uh declining abuse in the home, not so encouraging uh news about the prevalence of abuse within churches or other youth serving organizations.

Why Churches Freeze When Abuse Surfaces

SPEAKER_02 6:02

When you when you deal with church bodies, and I know you've dealt with a number of uh different church bodies, what uh there's been kind of an evolution over over history over how we react to what have you noticed and how does that translate into action?

SPEAKER_04 6:18

Well, there's certainly greater awareness. You'd be hard-pressed to find anybody who isn't aware of uh the prevalence of sexual abuse uh inside faith communities. So we've had multiple investigations, multiple media accounts of the uh widespread uh abuse that took place in Catholic communities. Uh the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, has had decades of abuse, the revealed by uh journalists that uh resulted in two commission studies by the Southern uh Baptist uh convention. Uh but every faith community has been touched by this sin. Whatever your faith community is, I guarantee I've consulted on cases of maltreatment uh within that. Now, the second part of your question in terms of action, I think as a result of litigation or fear of litigation, there's been some uh reforms in the uh Catholic uh Church, and many of these reforms I think are uh positive, um, but uh not uh as frequent inside faith uh communities. And the reason I think for that is if we talk about it at all, uh we don't reach out to child abuse experts. People like me are usually not uh brought to the table. Instead, we talk to law firms and insurance companies who don't have an expertise on child abuse. They have an expertise on uh protecting you from a lawsuit. So if we look at the Guidepost report, which was one of the investigations commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention, you'll see how lawyers actually perpetuated the problem uh by saying, Oh yeah, we hear all these women calling uh our headquarters saying they're sexual abuse by such and such a person who's still in the pulpit. But if we take any action, that will mean we're assuming responsibility and it might increase the risk that we'll be uh sued. And so there was largely uh no action taken. The Assemblies of God was the subject of an NBC news investigation, and they uh documented, oh yeah, and church-wide uh meetings and headquarters, there'd be conversation, maybe we should require policies and education and other reforms, but according to that investigation, right away the lawyers got engaged. No, no, if you do anything like that, uh it will increase our risk for liability. So one message I give to churches, my Christian friends, is at some point you have to decide whether or not you are willing to elevate the teachings of Christ above the advice of lawyers, because this sort of thinking has not uh prevented abuse at a meaningful level. And here's the irony, and I can say this as a lawyer, that sort of advice, that unchristian advice, has actually increased our exposure to liability. So the Catholic Church had great law firms. Watch the movie uh Spotlight, you'll you'll you'll get a sense of that. It didn't protect them from uh lawsuits or scandals. Southern Baptist Convention had great law firms, it did not uh protect them from exposure uh to their uh misconduct. Uh the Boy Scouts had great uh lawyers, uh, they're in bankruptcy uh today, and I can go on and on and on. So I always challenge my Christian friends. When has the advice of lawyers ever done you any good? The reality is very few survivors want to sue their uh church or other faith institution. They just want us to act Christian, they want us to say we're sorry, they want us to engage in meaningful reform, they want us to engage positively uh theologically uh with this subject. Those are those are primarily uh what they are asking, and because they're not getting it, they often they often feel they have to leave our church.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Now the the one thing that could possibly come from that first of all, I'm a hundred percent agree with what you're saying, that we need to kind of look past a lot of that legal help and draw our strength and our direction from scripture, which is one of the things that get thrown there that I've heard people say is a young man or young woman who filed a complaint or some sort of review is just looking for an apology, but then some lawyer gets a hold of her and says, you know, you got money you you suffered injuries and so forth. You can't advocated for the inner circles that sometimes you gotta be willing to take a risk, you know, in order to do the right thing. And then you find out that what started off as a no noble motivation and the offended party uh all of a sudden becomes inflamed into uh the lawsuit. So um help help me with an argument to knock that one down.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

A couple of things. Uh Kelly Clark, who's now deceased but made a lot of money suing religious uh institutions, uh wrote a great article saying doing the right thing is also the smart thing. Uh so when your lawyers say don't apologize, don't implement reforms, don't take any action, you're you're guaranteeing uh that a survivor's uh anger level will go up, uh, that they'll seek a lawyer and you're gonna get sued. And uh so you can prevent them from walking into that lawyer's office by by being a a Christian. The second point I would make, though, is they're entitled to justice. That too is a Christian concept, right? Uh the book of Romans, uh, God gave us the government uh to rein in our misconduct. And the sad reality is without lawsuits, there'd be no reforms. Even with law, many lawsuits, we're still uh reluctant to implement a reform. And so uh people who are cruelly treated, who are abused, or damaged physically, emotionally, spiritually, they are entitled uh to damages. They are entitled uh to recourse. Uh God is perfectly capable of using both the criminal justice system that I'm part of and also the civil justice system to punish uh churches who have failed to reform, who have failed to act in a Christian uh way. Uh Russell Moore, who used to be part of the SBC and now is editor-in-chief of Christianity, wrote a great article and said at some point we need to thank God for lawsuits and journalists who have fulfilled what Christ uh told us would happen, that uh what's done in the dark will be brought to the light. We should thank God uh for these journalists and law firms who've exposed uh our cruelty, our sins to the world, uh, and now we need to repent of that misconduct.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

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How Offenders Weaponize Religion

SPEAKER_03 13:22

Can you explain uh for for us how religion is weaponized and used in child abuse cases? I was able to read uh a lot of the things that you had written in preparation for this. And I was just really shocked by a lot of it. And I think it would be really great if you were able to explain some of that to our listeners.

SPEAKER_04 13:49

Yeah, sex offenders often say to clinicians, treatment providers, and some researchers that the safest place for them to operate is inside a religious uh community. And the reason for that is uh religious uh communities often have very weak or non-existent policies, even if they have kind of okay uh policies, boilerplates, they rarely accompany it with the sort of education to really deter an offender. So that's the lay of the land. An offender knows a church is often a safe place for them to operate. And then what they do is uh they work their way into a ministry, uh perhaps as a volunteer where they can access uh children, uh, and then they do what all offenders do, which is to groom the child, desensitize the child, move them toward uh being sexually abused, so that may involve uh a sexual conversation. But what is unique of what goes on in a religious community is they will then incorporate a religion. So I've consulted on cases where a youth minister will say uh to children things such as, well, how often do you masturbate? How often have you looked at pornography? What sort of things are you thinking of uh when uh you touch your genitals? Uh I need to know this, otherwise I can't help you as a Christian. You need to be honest, you need to confess these uh sins uh so that I can address it, and then each week we'll uh discuss what progress you're are being uh uh made. Uh they may uh speak about their own sexual activities with a spouse, uh, and they'll again couch it in religious terms. Oh, you should wait until you're married, and this is how amazing it will be. But it's all part of the initiation process to see uh the comfort level of children, and then they uh will take it a step higher uh than that. When they get to the point of actually sexually abusing a child, again, they're gonna have to use religion to justify that. So I consulted on a case where a priest uh said to a woman he was sexually assaulting, this is not abuse, it's a unique form of holy uh communion. I am the vicar of Christ. When you uh are engaged in sexual activity with me, you are communing uh with Christ. This will eliminate any time in purgatory. Uh, this may actually clear a path for sainthood uh one day. Or if you look at the Southern Baptist Convention in the Caring Well Report, one of the Baptist ministers said to his uh victim uh who was a boy, uh, this is not a sin. Uh this is very akin to the very special relationship between Jonathan and David. Uh so they they will use religion to justify uh the abuse. Even if at some point they acknowledge to the child this was wrongful behavior, they will make the child feel complicit in the sinful activity. Oh, they'll say to a victim, I touched you, you had a biological reaction, you had an erection or something else. So you enjoyed it as much as I did. You're equally to blame, you're equally sinful. Let's pray together. I'll forgive you if you uh forgive uh uh me. So they'll they'll incorporate a religion. And then if I could go one step further, if any of the abuse ever comes to light, dollars to donuts, as the pastors and the other teachers and the other religious leaders, the elders, and so on and so forth, if they're not trauma-informed trained, which very few of them are, uh the devil will come to them and say things like, Oh, Matthew 18, it's just one child making an outcry. Uh, you know, we need a second uh witness. Uh uh, or uh they'll say, uh, as happened in one uh case in the Independent Funnel Baptist uh church where a pastor confessed to sexually abusing a child. Well, he confessed, he repented, right? Uh we all need to get uh together and work through this. Uh it would be wrong uh to turn this over to a secular governmental uh authority. So religion is involved from the very idea of I'm gonna go to church because I want to abuse a child, the offender will say, and then religion is incorporated throughout uh the entire uh process. It's used in selecting the child, grooming the child, silencing uh the child, and then justifying uh inaction uh when abuse comes to light.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah, I mean when I was reading that and even just hearing you talk about it now, it makes me angry. It's just really hard, I I mean, as as a Christian, to even hear how people are using that and and how that's being just used in in these circles. What kind of like what am what am I supposed to do now with that anger? I mean, I just you know, it's disturbing um to hear that.

SPEAKER_04 18:28

Anger is not always sinful. That's why Jesus took a whip and uh uh utilized it against some of the religious leaders of his uh ear. It's why Moses broke uh the Ten Commandments. So um that anger is holy anger, it's righteous indignation. Uh the question now is what do we do with that uh anger? Uh what do we do in response to this uh shocking level of blasphemy in the house of God? We know Jesus would flip over tables. Um uh what is it that that we need to do is the next question.

Trauma-Informed Theology And Better Teaching

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Right. And uh one of the things that that I have seen you written on to, and I would love it if you would just uh expand a little bit on it. Um you even just mentioned it too, is the trauma-informed uh theology. Uh can you tell us a little bit about what that is?

A Denomination-Wide Model For Reform

SPEAKER_04 19:19

Yeah. Uh uh SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, has developed a definition of what it means to be trauma-informed, and then they have several principles that we should try to achieve to be uh trauma-informed. So one is do we do we recognize how widespread trauma is? Do we realize signs and symptoms of trauma in children or families we may be working with? When we see these signs, do we know uh what research says would be a good uh response? And can we speak about this in our job? So as a pastor, can we speak about this from the pulpit and in Bible class and in other theological forum forums that do not re-trigger uh a victim, but may uh in actuality empower uh a victim to feel safer in our community and if need be to come to us for uh spiritual care or other services. So that's uh that's uh in in in part uh the goal. I I did an analysis of four Lutheran study Bibles. So the EHV study bible published by the Wells, the uh uh study Bible published by the Missouri Synod, their old Concordia uh one that's no longer in print, and then the ELCA uh study Bible as well. And then I looked at uh how uh they addressed various accounts of sexual assault or exploitation of the Bible. Uh how do they handle David and Bathsheba? How do they uh comment on the rape of Tamar, the sexual assault of Dinah, the uh decision of Lot uh that the New Testament uh tells us is a righteous man, and yet we we know in the Old Testament account he offered his own daughters uh to be gang raped and likely uh murdered. Uh how do we how do we address that? And then I took the Samsung standards and said, is there any compassion in the commentaries? Any uh recognition of what's going on here? Any recognition of how religion is being distorted to justify uh the misconduct? Any anything that would be inviting to a survivor of abuse? And sadly the answer is very little. Sometimes there was silence when we needed to speak up, other times we spoke up and did so in a in a cruel uh way. And let me give you one example. Uh John Schutze from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary did this pioneering analysis some time ago and published it in Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, where he looked at, I think, twenty five Bible commentaries and uh wondered how they handled the sexual exploitation of Bathsheba. And he found that 80% cast either equal or even primary blame on Bathsheba for her own exploitation. And Professor Schutze says, wait a minute, wait a minute, where on earth could you possibly get that from? From the text. Early on, the inspired writer tells us, Well, all the other kings are away at war, David stays behind. So already we're being alerted, he's up to mischief, he's up to no good. And what do we see next? He's prowling on the roof of his uh palace when he should be away doing kingly duties, and he engages in the sin of voyeurism. When the writer cuts to Bathsheba, what is she doing? She's bathing in the courtyard, which is where she would be bathing in that era. But the writer also tells us why she's bathing. It's not anything erotic. Uh, Shutzi says she's not taking a bubble bath, it's just the opposite. She's honoring God by cleansing herself after her menstrual cycle, which under a Hebrew tradition at the time is what you would be doing. So, in contrast to David shirking his kingly duties, she is honoring God uh through the cleansing of her body. And then uh we're told that David summons her. She doesn't wake up one day, I'm gonna go visit the hot king. No, he summons her. She has no choice but to honor that. And uh Schutze points out, she almost certainly had no reason to believe she's gonna be exploited. Uh the Bible tells us David is a man after God's own heart. How could that enter her mind? And then mercifully the writer spares us the details. He uses her, abuses her, sends her back to never be heard from again. Except you know the rest of the story. She becomes pregnant. And then the sin accelerates to the point where David engineers a murder and takes her into his concubine. When God intervenes and sends the prophet Nathan, he does not send Nathan to David and Bathsheba, which he easily could have done, because now she's uh residing inside the palace. Nathan goes to David and tells a story, and in that story Bathsheba is likened to a helpless you lamb who is slaughtered. How much clearer can God uh make this for us? And then when David begins to repent, Nathan, as a godly man, tells him the truth. You are the man. Not you and Bathsheba, you are the man uh who did this uh wicked uh deed. If we can't get that right, and eighty percent of the time we're not getting it right, we have no credibility with uh women, men, or children who are trafficked. I have a good friend who's a victim of trafficking, and like many, she ran away from a home where she was being sexually abused. She gets trafficked, and her owner, the man who owns her, who is trafficking her for sexual exploitation, gives her a choice. You submit to these deeds with these men I'm making money from, or I'm gonna put you in films where you have sexual activity with animals, which was her worst fear. It's ludicrous to think she had any choice. We also cannot witness to families uh uh persons of color who in their ancestry uh have uh slaves. I read a great biography of Sojourner Truth. I visited her gravesite in Battle Creek, Michigan not uh long ago. If you go to her gravesite, she's there buried with some of her kids. But not a husband. Because if we read about her history, her owner came to her and said, This is your husband this time. Right? That is a reality that persons of color understand that we white people often do not, and traffic victims know exactly what's going on when this king says to her, This is what's going to happen today. She had no realistic choice. She couldn't call out to her husband as a way of war. Who's going to protect her from the king? She had no realistic choice. And this is why, for many survivors of abuse, the church just lacks credibility.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

A few years ago, uh ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, was uh dealing with these issues. Can you kind of recall what was going on in that church body and uh what what became of all that?

Part One Wrap And Next Steps

SPEAKER_04 25:58

The ELCA certainly uh uh like other church bodies has been pursued. There was a large uh settlement uh uh against one of their seminaries in Ohio, uh, and they've had other lawsuits uh as as well. Um but in the past uh couple of years uh um there's been a movement from the ground up in the ELCA to to do a better job of responding to abuse. And I I I know exactly how that movement began. I I developed a friendship with Craig Nesson, who at the time was the dean at Wartburg Theological Seminary. Um I'm a graduate of that seminary. I didn't go to be a pastor, obviously, but uh to grow my knowledge and to be able to engage theologically uh in a healthier way with this uh subject. So Craig and I developed a friendship, and uh he and his seminary journal published a lot of my writings on this uh topic. And then Craig said, well, we should we should have an official theological statement that guides uh the church here. And then he starts this uh process uh of what it might look like, and then he gets a resolution passed at a number of synods. Eventually, it comes to the churchwide assembly, the ELCA uh body recommends that it it it go to the council for uh approval. Craig and I fly to Chicago, their council approves the development of this statement. Um even then it has to go through a lot of drafts and then eventually be approved by a two-thirds vote of their council. So that couple of years of work is done, and in November of last year it was published. And I encourage folks to read it. To my knowledge, this is the first time a major Christian denomination has issued a formal, official, theological uh statement on child abuse, and then from that statement uh make recommendations, one of which is our churches should strive to be uh meeting the trauma form standards promulgated by uh SAMHSA. Uh there's some profound uh statements there. Obviously, in the Wells and uh other bodies there may be some theological uh disagreements, but there should be no disagreement on the need to engage uh theologically. So that's how that happened. It's not the hierarchy of the LCA saying let's do something. It was a ground floor uh movement that led to uh change, which by the way is usually what happens in history. It's usually not top-down change, it's bottom-up change, and we as Lutherans should understand that sometimes it just takes a hammer and nails and a really good uh and sturdy church door to start a revolution.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

This concludes the first half of our episode with Victor. We had a great episode with Victor, and we were able to record for over an hour. So we will bring the second half of that episode to you next week. Thank you so much for joining us, and if you have any questions on this episode or any of our other episodes, please reach out to us at lifechallenges.us. See you back next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us at Hobbycast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLiferesources.com. May God give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.