Doing some form of background check in churches has become pretty common now, but I’m continually amazed at how many churches still do nothing. The facts are clear from convicted predators, churches are easy targets because have an inordinate trust level of people and an unquenchable need for volunteers. Put those together and a church is very vulnerable to being targeted.
Child molesters are very professional at what they do and they do a good job at it – convicted child molester
You must do background checks in your church ministries, it is essential. A church whom I’m closely acquainted with recently had to suffer through the aftermath of one of their hired youth leaders being caught molesting a young person in their youth group. If that wasn’t bad enough, he had a previous record. That means a simple back ground check would have revealed he had no business working with kids. That particular church is facing significant legal costs and a loss of confidence by the congregation. This is tragic for the victim, their family and the entire church family. This particular church may not financially survive this miss-step in operational procedure.
Here are 5 reasons you must not just background check, but institute a live-scan approach to your volunteers who work with minors:
1. Offenders have many victims
It has been shown over and over again, those who molest children are chronic in their behavior and are always looking for new victims. How many times have we seen in legal cases that once the story unfolds, multiple victims come forward sometimes over multiple decades.
2. Offenders can be the most unsuspecting people
The movies have given us a completely incorrect perspective on predators. They are rarely dark characters that whisk children away from a park or playground. Instead, they are highly trusted individuals who have built trust over a long period of time.
3. Offenders are rarely strangers
To the previous point, offenders are patient and are willing to build trust over a long period of time. They are almost never strangers, they need high levels of trust to ensure their ability to molest over and over again.
4. Offenders often prey upon trusting and vulnerable young people
Because of their desire to have ongoing sexual relationships with children, they know that well adjusted kids with a healthy relationship with a mom and dad, will not be vulnverable to a molester. Instead, they seek relationships with young children who often don’t have a father figure in their life, or have trouble making friends. They pray on this weakness by trying to give something to the child they are not receiving at home.
5. Offenders are often attracted to the faith community
Churches are vulnerable to predators because we naturally believe the redemptive work of God is at work in everyone in our midst. We believe the best in those who are part of our church. Equal to that belief…..we have an insatiable need for volunteers. When you put those two together, we have a perfect environment for putting a predator in right smack in the middle of our children’s ministry, potentially unsupervised.
What we do at Rancho…..
About 10 years ago we began doing background checks on any volunteers who work with our kids at Rancho Community Church. The decision was simple, and we found a company who would do the checks. The problem we found over time, is that most background checks just look at the history up until the moment of the scan. That means that anything that happens even just one day after the scan is not going to show up. The solution ultimately meant doing livescans through the department of justice. The problem is that most providers of livescans charge about $75.00 per scan…..that would mean 10’s of thousands of dollars for our church every year. So ultimately we took the difficult route of placing an application directly (quarter inch thick) with the DOJ and going through the 3 month process.
Now when we scan a volunteer we get a report that does an FBI level background check in 50 states. After the scan it remains active or “live” as long as you keep the volunteer active. This means that if one of your drivers for youth events gets a DUI over the weekend you’ll have an email the following week letting you know.
I can’t recommend enough taking the full live scan approach for your church. The application process is tedious and time consuming, but well worth the effort. This has been the single best safety decision we’ve made to protect our children and youth.
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