Episode 13: Preventing Child Abuse with Deepak Reju Waiting Tables podcast

Find the show notes and more at https://waiting-tables.com.
Q. Why did you write this book?
Deepak: There are a few reasons why I studied the subject and wrote this book.
First, as a pastor who supervises our children’s ministry and youth staff, I was surprised at how little information was available to help us think about preventing abuse in church settings. And what little was available was out of print. I read and studied in order to help our local church think about how to build a better firewall to prevent child abuse.
Second, as a pastor of counseling, I once had a chance to talk to Dr. Anna Salter, who is one of the nation’s leading experts on sexual offenders. I asked her about her thoughts on how churches handle sexual abuse…and well, let’s just say she was very clear on how churches do a poor job in preventing and responding to child abuse. That put an idea in my head that something needed to be written.
Third, and finally, I was at a conference geared at helping churches prevent child abuse, and I was surprised that the only people speaking were psychologists and lawyers, none of whom had ever worked at a church before. They said a lot of helpful things, but they were some things I felt like they didn’t “get” because they were not coming from the perspective of working on the inside of a church. Somebody needed to say something from the perspective of a pastor who spends his days laboring inside of a church.
All of these reason conspired together to make me write the book.
Q. Is child abuse in the church really a problem? Why is it such a pressing need today?
Deepak: To get a greater sense of the problem, a quick statistical overview of child abuse is helpful:

There are approximately 747,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S. alone.[^fn1]
There are more than 100,000 sexual offenders who fail to report every year.[^fn2]
As many as one in three girls and one in four boys will be sexually abused at some point in their childhood.[^fn3] 
Approximately thirty percent of all cases are reported to authorities—meaning that seventy percent never get proper attention or prosecution.[^fn4]
Over 63,000 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in 2010.[^fn5]
Offenders typically prey on children they know, not strangers. Most perpetrators are acquaintances, but as many as forty-seven percent are family or extended family.[^fn6]
Almost half (forty-seven percent) of the offenders who sexually assaulted victims under age six were family members, compared with forty-two percent of who assaulted youth ages six through eleven, and twenty-four percent who assaulted juveniles ages twelve through seventeen.[^fn7]
The Department of Justice reports that children under age twelve make up half of all victims of forced sodomy, forced fondling, or sexual assault with an object.[^fn8]
Numerous experts have made it clear that sexual predators often have not just one or two victims, but dozens. The Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study found that each child molester averages twelve child victims and seventy-one acts of molestation. An earlier study by Dr. Gene Abel found that out of 561 sexual offenders interviewed there were more than 291,000 incidents involving more than 195,000 total victims. This same study found that only three percent of these sexual offenders have a chance of getting caught.[^fn9]
A 2007 FBI report states the following:

One out of five girls will be sexually molested before her eighteenth birthday;
One out of six boys will be sexually molested before his eighteenth birthday;
One out of every seven victims of sexual assault reported to law enforcement agencies was under age six; and
Forty percent of the offenders who victimized children under age six were juveniles (under eighteen).[^fn10]



Appalling, is…