Safety Plan

In this resource, Theresa Lynn Sidebotham, Esq. and Dr. Brent Lindquist have a discourse about safety plans and preventing child abuse.

Part 1: Safety Plan (from Theresa)

Hello Brent,

We’ve talked before about various aspects of child abuse investigations. In this series, I’d like to talk about safety plans. We may talk about several different kinds of safety plans, but to start with, let’s assume that we know we have an offender, guilty of child sexual abuse, and at least one victim. With most of our mission clients, any personnel who have committed child sexual abuse will be permanently removed. But what do we do in a church? Or on a field where a national is involved? Or when the offender is or was another child, who may live with or want to visit his or her family on the mission field?

Let’s talk about the legal and psychological aspects of a safety plan. How do we handle the offender? How do we care for the victim? How do we protect others from being harmed? What are the psychological ramifications for all these people, and for the general community? What types of communications are appropriate?

To get you thinking about this, I’m directing you to this blog post, about a case where a child victim in a church setting got a jury award of many millions, because the church did not protect her:

What is a Church’s Duty to Warn?

If an offender at a church has molested a child previously, what is the church’s duty to other children? Does it have a duty to warn? Does it have a duty to protect in other ways?

A recent appellate case in California, Conti v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc., April 13, 2015, considers this problem. The court decided that the church does not have a duty to warn, but does have a duty to protect children in other ways.

In this case, the offender had formerly molested another child. Congregation leaders knew about it, and he was convicted of a criminal misdemeanor. They removed him as a ministerial servant, and told him not to work with children, but overall, kept the matter confidential.

The offender then molested Conti over a period of a couple of years from the time she was nine to the time she was about 11. He became friendly with her family, and got extensive access to her, including during “field service,” when members went out door-to-door.

Much later, as an adult, Conti sued the local Congregation and the Watchtower. The jury awarded roughly $7 million in compensatory damages and $21 million in punitive damages, which was reduced somewhat after the trial.

The court on appeal held that the Congregation had no duty to warn that there was a child molester. That would cause problems with confidentiality of religious communications, and also be difficult to execute, with continued warnings of every new congregational member. However, the appellate court agreed that the jury could find the Congregation negligent for not supervising the field service and access to children during the field service for this known offender. The elders could easily have controlled the field service. And Watchtower was responsible for either not having a policy preventing child molesters from performing field service with children, or not enforcing the policy on its Congregations.

The appellate court reversed the punitive damages award and left the compensatory damages award in place, which was still a sizable award.

What is the lesson here? Churches should have carefully defined policies on how to handle those who have abused children. If someone has committed child sexual abuse, the person should either be removed from the congregation, or a stringent safety plan put in place. Churches will need to define what is confidential information, what communications are protected under the religious privileges, and who needs to know about abuse according to their spiritual principles. But then they need to carry out their policies and safety plans. One thing to keep in mind is that the safety plan must work, year after year, despite changes of leadership and changes in the congregation.

Part 2: Psychological Aspects (from Brent)

Thanks, Theresa, for setting up this particular thread. It addresses some issues I am wondering about just now. How long a perpetrator is required to be disciplined, punished, under observation, or under some kind of special plan?

There are psychological aspects of a safety plan in the aftermath of an investigation. In my opinion, a safety plan needs to ensure that appropriate boundaries are established and maintained, children and specific victims are protected, and appropriate information is shared with those who need to know.

If, as the result of the investigation, the perpetrator is removed from the church or mission, documentation needs to be maintained in such a way that the person can be turned away if they show up. If the person stays within the community, church, or mission station an explicit plan needs to be maintained and followed. This would include specific items like supervision, accountability, not being alone with children, and other important issues. I would wonder, and would expect, that the whole community would know about this. Maybe you can clarify this, Theresa. These arrangements for boundary-keeping need to be reviewed regularly, and especially brought up when responsible parties for these particular rules are changed.

With regards to protection, I'm assuming that if a person stays in the community, there is a clear-cut description of what behaviors are grounds for immediate dismissal and separation. Once again it seems like a plan would need to be communicated with all parties, Theresa.

I may have already dealt with this above, but I am concerned that any sort of plan for sharing information be clearly thought through. While we need to balance personal privacy of all parties, the person who is been found to be in violation may have less privacy than other people. To a certain extent, I think that this helps the person in the recovery process, because if he or she knows that everyone knows what an infraction looks like, his or her behavior probably can be more self monitored.

My main concern with issues of information and boundaries has to do with the issue "as time goes on." By this I mean the natural tendency for people to forget, standards to be relaxed, small infractions observed and yet not commented on, etc. This allows behaviors to creep back in over time. Therefore, policies need to be reviewed regularly, communication between the person and the authorities needs to be regular and appropriate, and parents and children need to be reminded about how to stay safe.

My main questions from this post have to do with the level of openness, and the scope of information sharing between parties in the community. I hope you can address that in the next post, Theresa.

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"The Rock and the Hard Place" blog is a discourse between Theresa Lynn Sidebotham, Esq. and Dr. Brent Lindquist on the topics of law, human resources, psychology, member care, and the theology of missions. To learn more about this blog and what it's all about, click here.

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham, Esq.

Dr. Brent Lindquist

Disclaimer: not official legal or psychological advice or opinion