Sunday, June 24, 2012

Predators Can Look Like Us

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like white-washed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” -- Matthew 23:27-28

Child predators have certainly been in the news lately. The Jerry Sandusky trial makes headlines daily and that brings out all sorts of comments and focus on other, lesser known cases.

What is so striking is that so many predators were “normal” people. They were well respected. Some were in positions of authority. They had power over their victims because the victims knew no one would believe them. They were probably right.

Because we have a stereotype floating around in our minds of what someone who abuses children looks like. We know what sort of family he or she comes from. We know what to watch for -- and it is never the family next door, the coach, the pastor, or someone who sits a few pews down from us at church.

And that is part of the problem. We don’t see child abuse, we don’t hear it or believe it, because we can’t see past the exteriors of those who look, act and seem just like us. The thought is just too horrifying.

One woman said her son didn’t want to go to the coach’s house but she made him anyway. Who wouldn’t? He was well respected. He was married with kids of his own. His influence could only be good. Right?

It sure seemed that way, except for the nightmare that those kids endured. And still endure. Because abuse never leaves you. It shapes who you are. You can grow past it but you can never undo what it has done to your psyche.

That’s especially true for those kids who tried to tell someone what was going on. It takes a lot of courage to tell an adult someone has done something wrong to you. Can you imagine how devastating it is to have that adult get angry, tell you that you’re lying? Do you know how alone those kids must feel when no adult can see past the exterior to understand the horror of the interior?

People aren’t always who they seem to be. Sounds simple. We know it. We do. We just don’t believe it when it comes to the people around us, people we know personally. We expect we’d just “know” that something was off but Satan is very cunning.

Sure, we should trust people but we also should be wary. Watchful. Alert. And we should remember something really important: Better to believe a child and have that child be wrong than to dismiss a child and have that child be right.