The size of the scandal

Sensationalist news stories have become less and less shocking. It seems there’s always one scandal or another in the news, whether it be a celebrity (such as the Tiger Woods fiasco) or a politician (Mark Sanford and his Argentinian mistress springs to mind) or a church leader (Ted Haggard’s homosexual propositioning). Certainly these are head-shaking moments, but not earth-shattering ones.

At this point, after years of scandalous indiscretion making the news, another “breaking news” revelation about some hypocritical action hardly ruffles my feathers. But perhaps it should.

I’m not saying that I’m going to pull out my Uncle-Sam finger to point out impropriety, charging down the street with a moral high-ground attitude; nor do I aspire to be incapacitated by outrage with every breaking news scandal.

But I am thinking that there’s a healthy level of indignation to be had - not to revel in my own superiority, but rather to learn to recognize moral corruption. After all, there are a lot of stories out there that never hit the level of high scandal, but still reek of indiscretion and impropriety.

As an example, I would suggest we look no further than scandal within the Christian church.

Here we can clearly see instances to illustrate the discrepancy between professed statements of belief and actions - from priests molesting children to evangelical pastors being caught in adultery. The most well-known examples are the televangelists that are surrounded by high scandal, caught in the midst of sexual and monetary indiscretion. After years of tax fraud, misappropriated funds and adultery, it hardly seems surprising when another church-leader scandal hits the headlines - from Jim Bakker to Jimmy Swaggart to Ted Haggard. Their scandals explode because of their inflated church-celebrity status.

But what about those stories that never hit the front page, that slip through the news in the back pages? It’s not just the big league church leaders that should cause high scandal. One of the most disturbing patterns of misconduct can be found in the figure of the youth pastor, those leaders entrusted with the care and spiritual development of burgeoning adults.

Dan Savage, activist, writer and sex-advice columnist, tracks these news stories on his blog, under the heading “Youth Pastor Watch.” Drawing from the beach convention to hang a “Shark Attack Watch” sign when there are known attacks in the water, Savage posts any stories he finds in the news that concern youth pastors being accused or indicted of molestation, sexual assault or violation of trust.

Savage lists dozens of stories from the past year. Here’s a brief sampling:

- One youth counsellor / minister from Connecticut is accused of having sexually abused several young men. Troy Grant insisted, however, that he was not gay and was saving himself for marriage, saying, “[It] was more a release for me, because I am engaged to a woman I have not been sexual with yet … We are getting married in August of 2010, and I do not want to have sex before marriage.” Grant is a minister and former executive director of a program for at-risk youth.

- A youth minister from Virginia was indicted on charges that she had sexual relations with a 15-year-old boy - 10 counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and 10 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Jennifer Michelle Brennan, 36, met the boy through her position as a youth minister. Apparently, the boy’s mother said that Brennan had counselled her son and his girlfriend against premarital sex.

- Former youth minister Adrian Estrada is currently on death row in Texas for killing a teenage church member who was pregnant with his baby. Subsequently, two more teens have come forward and accused Estrada of raping them. When these allegations were brought to church leaders, no action was taken. Currently, one of these girls is suing the church and the lead pastor for their complicity.

- Indiana youth pastor Jonathan James Hartman was arrested in April 2009 and charged with molesting three girls under the age of 15, impregnating one of them and pressuring her to get an abortion. Even though he has not been convicted and his trial is still pending, Hartman made headlines again when he tried to hire a hit man to kill the three teenage girls with whom he was accused of having sex, and to kill the child of one of the victims (which he believed to be his).

These stories should produce outrage: they are not only scandalous but morally reprehensible. Yet they don’t make headlines like Tiger Woods or Ted Haggard, despite the magnitude of the offenses. It shouldn’t just be the fame of the celebrity that dictates the level of scandal.

The prevalence of these occurrences should be scandalous in itself. The frequency with which youth pastor violations occur should be recognized and the imagined cloud of safety that surrounds the trustworthy figure of the youth pastor should be dispelled.

Of course I’m not saying that every youth pastor is a molester or sexual predator - please do not mistake that. But I am saying that the atmosphere of silence that surrounds occurrences of youth pastor sexual misconduct should be shattered, if for no other reason than how often it occurs. It is a false notion that a youth pastor should be trusted simply because of what he/she claims to believe.

In this instance, silence itself is what’s scandalous.

Check out Youth Pastor Watch by going to www.thestranger.com and entering “Youth Pastor Watch” in the “Search” field.