Colorado Youth Pastor Sexual Misconduct Case Gets International Notice

[MineralMan]

Looks like churches need to keep a closer eye on their youth pastors, I think.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5451617/Youth-pastor-sexual-relationship-high-school-senior.html

Married youth pastor, 35, is arrested for having 'a sexual relationship with a high school senior' and allegedly gave her a birthday card that read 'we're legal' when she turned 18

*Joshua Clemons, 35, has been charged for sexual assault on a child by a person in position of trust, according to police
*He also has two counts of the same charge in Douglas County, Denver
*Clemons worked as a youth pastor at Cross Roads Community Church in Parker, Colorado, from 2008 until 2017
*He is believed to have sexually assaulted three victims of the youth program
*The married man allegedly had the affair with a teen victim that included sexual intercourse from September 2014 through August 2015
*On the girl's 18th birthday he allegedly gave her a card that said 'we're legal'
*The two would continue their relationship after the girl went to Colorado State University with Clemons driving up to the school to have sex with her

More details at link...

[safeinOhio]

1. Dont worry about taking God out of the class room

until you put Jesus back in the Church.

[MineralMan]

3. Indeed. Who Would Jesus Molest?

Youth pastors are common abusers of young people. I'm not sure if people become youth pastors because of that or because they're around young people who trust them so much.

We had an offending one in my church when I was a teenager. He selected a troubled teen girl for his attentions. Eventually, he was caught in the act with her by a church member. Arrested? Nope. He was sent away to somewhere else and nothing more was said of it. Except for the girl, who confided in some peers.

Many, many churches have such a story. My wife's high school church had an offender, as well. It seems to be so endemic that I'd be concerned about youthful participation in church activities if I had children.

I'm sure others here on DU have stories about such things, as well. I'm not sure what the answer might be, but the combination of trusted religious leaders and adolescents seems to be a perfect situation for such instances.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Any organization that is or includes a youth program

sometimes attracts people who should not be working with children. The Boy Scouts ended up implementing a careful screening program for exactly this reason. People in positions of authority and trust can and sometimes do abuse their positions to satisfy their own desires; it happens in churches at least in part because church members, both children and parents, are especially inclined to assume their clergy people, having a special relationship with God, are naturally going to be good, decent, and would never do anything inappropriate. Obviously churches need to make a special effort to weed out such people - it should probably start at the seminaries and other training programs. There probably are such programs now in the major denominations, but the fringier ones sometimes don't even have any training.

[MineralMan]

4. All of that is true, of course.

I'm not sure how predictable such behavior is for individuals. One of the problems is that adolescents are prone to crushes on adults not too much older than themselves. Given the trust assumed of pastoral workers, that can lead to situations where a youth pastor is presented with youthful charges who develop such crushes.

In some cases, perhaps far too many, the temptation to take advantage is simply too difficult to resist for some in those positions. Similar things happen, of course, in schools and other settings, but without the religious element, which can lead to even deeper crushes for some young people, given the competing challenges that exist in so many at that age.

So, perhaps such cases are more or less inevitable in a certain percentage of situations. Looking at people being hired for such youth ministry positions often means selecting from a limited group of potential applicants, really. Background checks are really unlikely to reveal past offenses, which may never have occurred, or were never reported. It's impossible to predict future response to temptations, too, I think.

I don't have an answer to any of this. It just seems to me like the situation is fraught with peril, both for the adolescent youngsters and the generally youngish youth ministers. Assessing character in advance is extremely difficult. So, I doubt this sort of thing is likely to stop occurring. The environment is part of the problem.