Even though I realized I was an atheist as soon as I understood the word, I continued to go to church until I was about twenty. During my high school years, this meant a week at church camp every summer refusing to sing or read the Bible in group, and mocking WWJD bracelets and the earnest kids that wore them. Alas, I can’t regale you with most of the stories from my five annual weeks at church camp because my dear ol’ mother reads this blog and she is not in need of a post-haste panic attack.*
The early years of church camp were wildly fun. Mark, Pat**, and I were free to romp around the grounds smoking cigarettes and rewriting the Bible to our hearts’ content. With no parents or teachers to confine us and authority figures too nice to say anything, my friends and I were free to do pretty much whatever we wanted as long as we conceded to a string of petty craft workshops and early wake-up calls.
But we had to put up with one guy, one egregiously sexist asshole of a camp counselor who served as cabin cook and occasionally moonlighted as the father of a pair of twins I grew up with when he wasn’t filandering with his students between classes at Purdue while hiding it from his brilliant scientist wife. His fathering skills consisted of keeping his sons from killing one another with guns and drugs and giving them life advice on nothing but sex, including such wisdom as, “If you can’t put your mouth on it, don’t put your dick in it.”
This was the kind of guy that made public remarks about the growth of the girls’ prepubescent breasts, including mine, and referred to my male friends as pussies because they never tried to cop a feel during the bridge of “Our God is an Awesome God.” He felt free to comment on my body more than once, from my shape to my weight to my hair, my makeup, everything. I remember quite clearly wearing a black shirt with a black skirt for a formal night and him putting down the outfit because it wasn’t as sleek as a dress. He felt free to comment on another friend’s weight when, after losing fifty pounds as a self-conscious and overweight teen girl, he suggested she might pass up a plate of his very own pasta for a green salad. All the time, I remember him performing this masculine act while modeling for my male peers and looking for approval from other adults, all of whom were, as mentioned, too nice to say anything about how grossly inappropriate all of this was. I remember being certain that if I were of age he’d probably be hitting on me in earnest instead of for sport.
I have no idea why anyone approved him as a camp counselor in the first place. His behavior was no secret.
Why do I bring this up? Paul the Spud, documenting sexual assault and rape cases while commenting on sexual offender registries, notes a church camp counselor who was recently arrested for child pornography charges and trying to coerce his campers into posing for pictures and performing sex acts. As Paul says, “all the registries and photo stuffed websites in the world are not going to protect your kids if they’re being approached by creeps in a place where they’re assumed to be safe,” especially when one of those safe places is church. Predators exploit our trust as parents and authority figures, worming into our assumed safe places to warp our children’s lives and expectations to their own advantages.
This Thanksgiving, while discussing the Borat movie, my sister asked whether or not you would call someone out as a racist, sexist, whatever, in polite and/or public company. She wouldn’t, she said.
I would, and do, and this is why.
________
* I did go to church camp pregnant. In hindsight that’s awfully amusing. But while I think about it, egregiously sexist asshole above liked to talk about the size of my engorged breasts and comment on them with my male peers. Not amusing.
** To this day his mother’s house still gets phone calls in the middle of the night. “Is this Patsy? Really? Because I found your number on a bunk bed at church camp.”
Ugh. I know those boys. This explains so much.
No pun, but I hope you gave your sister hell for that chunk of retardation.
Super weak, and not super-unexpected, says the veteran of Sandy Creek Bible Camp outside of Brenham, TX. I will say that it’s the first place I ever heard rap music, though, as somebody brought in a contraband copy of the first Run DMC album and a bunch of churchy little 11-year-olds learned the lyrics to “Peter Piper.” Jesus forgives.
What is this “church camp” you speak of?
I didn’t go to church camp or any camp…
I feel left out.
I remember the Holy Spirit summer Bible School as being mostly arts, crafts, singing songs like “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” with ice cream at snack time. The big lessons were that Jesus loved us, we should love Jesus and each other. I teased my sister for her banner that she assembled to read “my Jesus is friend” versus “Jesus is my friend.” That’s about as heavy and serious as it got dogma-wise. This is a Catholic church that had female alter servers - didn’t find out until college this wasn’t the norm.
Later on though as part of CCD, confirmation or something we attended some youth rally thing that was more cheesy that anything else with really bad skits, etc - no hellfire or damnation speeches.
I guess I was lucky that my parish was very laid-back! Even so I left it and reject my mom’s yearly Xmas plea to attend midnight mass with her.
Please tell me he’s not still at Purdue. I find myself rather enraged at the moment.
I went to a pentecostal church camp for 7 years. I was also a counsellor one year, but couldn’t put my heart into it as I was also grappling with a sexual identity crisis and had a mild crush on the lady who took care of the stables.
I didn’t have a pervy camp counsellor but I had my pastor, who made what are now obvious to me as overt sexual passes, but I was a young teenager and they kinda went over my head. Stuff like mentioning how big my breasts were, and when I fell in love with my best friend, asking me “what we did” in a very non-pastorly manner.
I had a few years of church camp, from grade school into junior high. I also experienced my first kiss, my first real ‘heavy petting’.
Also, I look back and remember distinctly being about 11 and having a serious crush on a male counselor and he courting and responding to me in a way that gives me creeps to this day. I was allowed to cuddle with him almost continuously and while it meant nothing more than attention to me, looking back, I can’t imagine why on earth it was allowed by the other adults there. I am certain that he was/is an active pedophile and wonder every now and then how many young girls he’s preyed on.
I also remember in my junior high years two pastors who were there as counselors who made constant passes at me and a couple other females, whether physical touching, comments or ‘massages’. I knew by then that they had sexual atraction, but again was not old or mature enough to understand exactly that what they wanted was more than simply flirtation, that a girl should not construe sexual advances as approval of her as a person, or how inappropriate it was considering their age.
I was never instructed on how to protect myself, about sexuality, puberty nor given any concept of what boundaries were, I did not make the same mistake with my girls.
I was never instructed on how to protect myself, about sexuality, puberty nor given any concept of what boundaries were, I did not make the same mistake with my girls.
THANK YOU!! Forewarned is forearmed! The best defense I can give my children is a solid grounding — a background of non-judgmental information about sex and frank discussion so they know the subject is not off-limits; clear communication about what is age-appropriate; clear instruction for how to spot inappropriate conduct, and clear direction for how to deal with it. If I do my job right, any of my children in their prepubescent years ought to be emotionally capable of coming to me or to another responsible adult and saying, “Mr. Z did X. Is that okay, or is that something he shouldn’t do?”
Also, I’m very concerned at accounts I have read over the years about people knowing of and ignoring adults with a history of sexually charged behavior with and access to children. It is my experience that people can turn their heads more easily when nobody requires them to take responsibility. I recommend the following question:
“Will my child have contact with anyone here that you have reason to believe may be sexually attracted to children?”
Anyone with a brain knows that if they have been ignoring the rumors about Mr. Davis, and they say no, then their ass is now on the hook in both a moral and likely a legal sense. (That’s a very broad answer, and legal situations will vary by state and by the person’s position, but I am a lawyer, and as a rule, someone who makes an affirmative misstatement on that subject or omits important information when asked directly is in a lot worse position than someone who simply never speaks out — the latter can more easily claim to have had no duty). If the person you’re talking to dodges the question or acts like the room just got very warm, then you know there is a problem.
One of the things about the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal that disturbs me — beyond the obvious, of course — is the idea that this only happens because priests are celibate, that this is an unnatural state, yadda yadda (we won’t even get into the witchhunt for gay priests that has come out of this, as if it was gays and not, say, pedophiles and ass-covering that created the scandal).
It disturbs me because it lets people like your asswipe camp counselor off the hook. Here’s a guy who’s married and a father and *clearly* acting inappropriately toward young girls. But he’s okay, because he’s married, and a father.
My church never really did outings or camp — or if they did, I never knew about them because they were for the people who actually went to church on a more-than-desultory basis. But of course, there are opportunities aplenty for priests to be alone with young kids. One of our priests was, in fact, sexually abusing the altar boys over a period of years and was whisked out of the parish one year. In fact, the diocese replaced *everyone* in the parish, except maybe the nuns (we moved away that year, so I don’t remember). Guess they didn’t want to rise any suspicions (it was 10 or more years later that victims started coming forward. They were altar boys, and it was a big honor and important to their families).
Wow, this post is very timely for me.
I am dealing with a parent in my son’s scout den who is an ASS and has repeatedly victimized my son verbally at scout activities. It seems to be sport for him, he ENJOYS it. He makes comments to my son (who has fine motor skill problems) like “I see you have to have your mommy dress you” (when I fix his kerchief), or “hey, look at who came in wearing a dress” (when my son has failed to tuck in his shirt). Despite being talked to, he continues. As a matter of fact, that almost seems to fuel him.
Because there is a zero tolerance policy, the council directed the pack to expel this parent. However, the leader at the pack level tasked to do the job has not acted on it. Interestingly enough, the leader is also a teacher and therefore a mandated reported and certainly someone who I would expect would be versed in what constitutes inappropirate behavior towards a child. ANd yet has chosen to dismiss my complaints and instead protect the interests of the abuser.
His reasons? “This parent is so PROUD that his son is in scouts, and I just hate to make him miss that experience with his own son…” He has also cited my son’s disability as a reason NOT to kick the guy out, because my son “has issues” and is probably “reading the guy wrong” and “other boys know how to put up with this sort of thing and just roll with it”.
Yeah, its not the guy. He’s a father, so he must be “good”. He’s a guy, so he must be an asset to scouting.
Certainly better than the complaining single mom and her disabled son.
Anyhow, I had not blogged about this issue because I wasn’t exactly sure how far I wanted to get into it, but after reading your post I think I will. I think sometimes we all need to be reminded that even in seemingly safe and nurturing environments, abuse and victimization can and do occur, and often those other people in a position to stop it don’t–because they are afraid of the reaction or fallout, or maybe because they just don’t want to be rude. And in the absence of checks and balances, the abuse can thrive.
I think sometimes we all need to be reminded that even in seemingly safe and nurturing environments, abuse and victimization can and do occur, and often those other people in a position to stop it don’t–because they are afraid of the reaction or fallout, or maybe because they just don’t want to be rude. And in the absence of checks and balances, the abuse can thrive.
Shit, someday I’ll write about my softball coaches.
Please do, Lauren. Next to cross-country, softball is one sport I feel called to coach (particularly if I ever have daughters.) I love the tactics of the game.
I’m very interested in making sure that kids who play sports feel safe and challenged at the same time.
Well I finally blogged about the incident I talked about a couple comments up. Thanks Lauren for the inspiration.
Yeah, its not the guy. He’s a father, so he must be “good”. He’s a guy, so he must be an asset to scouting.
So pull your son out, and send a note to every parent explaining precisely why you thought you couldn’t continue sending your kid to this troop. You might start a trend.