July 25, 2024 • 34 mins
Can understanding the grooming process in churches save lives? Join us as we sit down with Gregory Love, a leading child abuse prevention expert and lawyer, to explore the vital strategies for safeguarding children in faith-based communities.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church
Leader here with my buddy allthe way from Dallas, Texas,
Gregory Love.
How's it going, Greg?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
We're doing great here in Fort Worth Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, let's go.
Well, man, it's great to haveyou on the show.
You are, you know you're kindof the expert in child abuse
prevention and you are a lawyerand you started a great company,
Ministry Safe.
You've been at this for a longtime, so I'd love for you just
to tell folks a little bit aboutyourself and how you got into
serving the church in this way.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, I mean, of course, as a believer I'm
interested in serving the church.
I mean after doing like 29years of student ministry.
Yeah, church, I mean afterdoing like 29 years of student
ministry.
But professionally it's notlike I was in law school in the
eighties and decided you know,one day I want to be a sexual
abuse lawyer.
Okay, first of all, that'sweird.
Second of all, there was nosuch thing back then, kind of
the way all of this unfolded.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You couldn't.
You couldn't pick your schooland find the degree in that.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, no, that was a.
That was a thin listing, allright, but nonetheless it's like
my wife, who's my law partner,kimberly.
I mean, she was an employmentlawyer by trade as early as like
91, 1992.
Okay, back when we used to drawon cave walls, okay.
So back then there was aseminary student that was trying
to work with children in agroup home and they fired him
(01:23):
for trying to report childsexual abuse.
Okay, which in Texas you canfire someone for just about
anything, but you can't firethem for trying to report under
the mandatory reportingrequirements.
And of course, not only didthey fire him just to make their
point and don't mess with usthey told him they blamed him
for being the abuser.
It's like we'll teach you Now.
(01:46):
What they didn't know was thatthey forced him to sue them
Because you see, if he wants towork with children, you can't go
get a job working with childrenwhen you just lost your last
job for ostensibly molestingthem.
So he went to look for aChristian employment lawyer and
he went and he found my wife.
Okay, so Kimberly's smartenough to know you don't make a
lot of money representing apart-time seminary student who's
(02:07):
fired for being a molester.
But she heard his story, shebelieved him and it made her mad
.
And, frank, you and I are smartenough to know don't make Kim
mad, right?
So Kim took his case, which isessentially a whistleblower
claim, back then.
But part of a case like that in1992 is we had to go find the
people that were claiming tohave been sexually and
(02:27):
physically abused to kind ofsupport the fact that he was
making a good faith claim.
Now, when she and I went backand talked to some of these
people, it's amazing how many ofthese people wanted to tell
their story and said hey, willyou be my voice too?
Kimberly's like absolutelylet's, let them hear from you.
Not knowing that she wasessentially putting together a
multi-plaintiff litigationagainst this group, home went
(02:50):
after we talked to 49 victims ofabuse covering a 30-year period
of time, with multiplemolesters wind up growing.
At the same time, the CatholicChurch was starting its
adventure into child sexualabuse litigation.
Now ours resolved before theirsdid and had people from all
over the country calling andsaying, hey, we know that was
(03:11):
worth money.
Will you help us jump in onthis fact?
Will you help us sue thisorganization?
Now, most of them were wantingus to sue a church, kim and I
realized whoa part of our desireis to teach the church, and the
church is not necessarilyteachable when they feel like
you're suing them on this side,right.
So we decided now we'reimmersed in the issue.
(03:32):
Okay, now we're standing overhow this works.
We're seeing the patterns, butsee that pattern is a good word
in child sexual abuse work.
See, if something has a pattern, it's predictable, and if
something's predictable, it'spreventable.
Unfortunately, it's just notintuitive.
So Kimberly and I were usingall of this background education
(03:53):
, experience that we'vedeveloped in five or six years
of litigating on behalf ofvictims and designed these are
the things these organizationsshould have had in place so that
there would have been novictims.
Ok, it's developing a safetysystem, which we now call a five
part safety system.
I know, brilliant, catchy title, huh, ok, but it's five main
(04:14):
pieces because this is what welearned from litigation and
we're going to try to nowprovide that before there's a
train wreck, so people can startto access those resources.
Because we looked around anddecided, like certainly
somebody's doing this Right andas hard as we look, like there
is no one Clearly hearing Godtelling us no, no, no, I want
(04:35):
you guys to do this Now.
I remember complaining to theLord.
It's like look, we're in thejob business.
Okay, we need to make money.
Feed the little kid you gave us.
Okay, we need to make money,feed the little kid you gave us.
(04:59):
We can make money in litigation.
There's not a lot of money tobe made in prevention,
especially when you're talkingto the church, especially in the
mid-90s, waiting for the churchto wake up to its cancer.
So we've spent the last 20, 25years refining because, you see,
the problem hasn't changed.
Our children's and studentministries by and large haven't
changed, but our culture haschanged and it's getting angry.
(05:21):
So here it all is.
Come and get it Right, allright.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So you spent it started with the litigation.
How long did you?
You said five years.
So was it kind of a five-yearjourney where you're like, oh,
wow, we can take a bunch of thethings we learned because we
interviewed so many victims andso many different cases where
you learned, like here's thepatterns.
Now let me put it into, youknow, some form of training.
(05:48):
And then Ministry Safe was born, or was it?
You started doing kind oftraining and coaching because
churches were calling you andthen one day you woke up and
you're like, oh, I should, weshould create a company that
does this.
Like what was the transitionfrom cases to you know, starting
Ministry Safe as a real like,as a business, like, as a
company that does this?
Like what was the transitionfrom cases to you know, starting
Ministry of Safe as a real like, as a business, like as a
company serving the church?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Well, we didn't stop litigating.
Okay, that was an ongoing.
Now, of course, we won't suethe church, but the narrow area
in which Kim and I will continueto litigate is in the narrow
context of children that werevictimized in cult settings,
where someone has abused andmanipulated that religious
structure to harm a child.
So that is ongoing.
(06:31):
But it's like created all theseresources and we're working
with mostly secularorganizations at that point.
Church didn't want this, noteven our home church at first.
But see, it was a lot of ourfoster care entities, our
adoption entities, some of thepeople that are on the front
line of this risk that don'tneed to be convinced, it's real.
So it started to grow.
Now it got to the point about2007, with one enormous crisis
(06:53):
that I won't identify to whereit became valuable for the
organization to be able tomessage to its parents that it's
safe to bring your kids back tocamp safe to bring your kids
back to camp.
They needed something to bragabout and something to show them
.
This is what we're doing.
But at the same time, they werein litigation and needed to be
able to have some privateconversations.
So it's that when we realizedwe created Ministry Safe as
(07:15):
opposed to the law firm which isLove Norris, because we split
these up kind of like this LoveNorris is like the 9-11
Commission you can climb intothe ditch and help you evaluate
your ditch-like and crater-likeexperience.
Ministry Safe is like HomelandSecurity.
These are the preventive toolsthat need to have a front-facing
(07:36):
talk about this.
Share this with your parents,let them know.
This is what we're doing toaddress this foreseeable risk.
That was about 2006.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Okay, and churches weren't super into it yet.
It was early, new whatever.
But since then we're at 2024.
Now, now you serve thousands ofchurches.
So what's that journey beenlike?
Because that's your heart, yourpassion, you know you wanted to
help the church and help kids.
So, like, how did you, how didit start working in churches?
(08:09):
Like, how did that open up?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Well, it that?
That's a difficult questionbecause you see, yeah, you're
right, we're serving thousandsof churches, like 25,000 at this
count, probably be 35,000 maybeby February of 2025.
And I can go Whoa, what a greatjob.
Thousands of churches.
But see, my heart is for thebody of Christ, not a count.
And when I realized there's375,000 churches out there, in
(08:35):
25 years I'm serving less than10% of them.
Okay, I don't have another 25years in me, and so my heart is
a urgency that the fields arewhite in terms, at least the
risk.
But see, even rewinding, it'snot like the church finally went
.
Oh, hey, I get this, becausethat's not the way the church
behaves.
(08:55):
Church is the stubborn bride.
Okay, so, frankly, you can goback and you can do a timeline
that certain segments of thepopulation, usually by industry,
are waking up by virtue ofwhatever crisis is nearby,
whether it was the CatholicChurch, whether it was Penn
State, whether it was USASwimming, which is what made the
Olympic Committee call us tohelp design the Safe Sport
(09:16):
Program, and then there was USAGymnastics in 2015.
And then we had Boy Scouts ofAmerica in 2020, 21.
I mean, so it's these differentcrises wake different people up
to certain degrees, and, ofcourse, denominations are having
their own crisis.
As you know, the SouthernBaptist Convention has been very
(09:37):
driven by media and crisis,starting in 2018, 2019.
And so it's.
The church is just a funnybride, and so it's not like the
church has finally awakened,because there's a whole lot more
work to be done.
I just I can't make it movefaster, and that's why the Lord
(09:57):
has led me to buy a yoga mat, apuppy room and all kinds of
things like that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
You went with the puppy room and not goat yoga, so
you got the yoga mat.
You just no, didn't I?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
tried goat yoga.
I tried the wrong kind of goatsBecause I was envisioning the
little baby goats that jump.
These are like the old goatsthat bite.
Yeah, didn't work out.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
No, oh my gosh.
Well, so fast forward, we'rehere today.
I guess, in all of this, yourbig passion is training and
equipping churches.
You want to help prevent thisfrom happening.
So how have you gone aboutdoing that?
What's kind of the hallmark ofwhat Ministry Safe does for
(10:39):
churches.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Part of it is born out of the crisis, right,
because if there was just likeone, oh hey, everybody just
needs a blue pill I'll just gostart manufacturing blue pills
and handing them out.
So we're standing over thecrisis and doing the forensic
work and the postmortems on whatwent wrong and why.
Once I help people understandwhat this risk is, for the sake
(11:02):
of having the Q&A with thosepeople in the ditch, it's the
five words that I hate the most.
Now that you mention it, it'slike I hate those five words.
Okay, I don't want you to getinto a crisis and look back and
go oh, now that you mentioned,I'm smarter now, even after all
these people got hurt.
Now I can move forward.
It's like what is it that I cando to keep us from that?
(11:24):
Dish?
Like experience and what welearned early on is education.
I can tell people you know whatwe need to stop sexual abuse,
and 100 out of 100 people willtell me I agree with you, 100%,
absolutely.
But see, when I go into mychurches, they think they're
solving the problem.
Okay, which is why this is mydiagnostic question.
I can ask this with a smile,you know, so I don't sound like
(12:13):
a lawyer with a clipboard.
It's like, hey, what do you do?
At?
Like, that list will notprotect my child, okay, and so
the barrier to overcome with thechurch is not that sexual abuse
is an important deal, but theythink they're solving this
problem and they're not.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that wake-up call typically doesn't happen until
they have a dish like experienceyeah, you have security, you
have cameras, you have check-in,you have background checks, so
they're doing that.
But you're going like that'sall of those things are like
fine and probably good, butthat's not what actually does it
.
Those are like secondary to thecore thing.
So like, what have you what?
What are the things that do it?
Like, how, what do you trainchurches on to help them?
(13:01):
You know, spot this kind ofbehavior or, you know, just be
more educated on what reallyprevents it.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, and the magic word there is not just training.
Okay, there's all kinds oftraining out there.
It's specific information toallow people to understand.
This is the risk, and this iswhat it looks like, so kind of
peeking behind the curtain.
Most people misunderstand whatis sexual abuse risk?
Ok, they think it's the whitevan with free candy written on
(13:34):
the side of it, driven by a guywith a clown suit.
Ok, it's like it's the strangerdanger idea, right, and so part
of the training isdeconstructing your
misconception to make room forthe information you need to have
.
And the need to haveinformation is your risk is from
an offender.
We call the preferentialoffender, not the abduction
offender.
So when I ask people, hey, whatdo you do to protect children
(13:55):
from child sexual abuse?
And they give me that list.
That's what I call the barbedwire fence.
It's to keep the abductionoffender out.
You see, like a barbed wirefence around your garden, it'll
protect your garden from thecattle, but the bunnies it's
absolutely worthless.
Okay, so I'm building a fence.
I think it solves my problemand you know what?
(14:16):
As it relates to the abductionoffender, it is solving that
problem.
Merry Christmas, well done,you're doing a great job, but I
need for my people to understand.
The abduction offenderrepresents less than 10% of the
problem.
So, as it relates to thatminute part of the problem, your
little barbed wire fence iscrushing it.
Keep it up.
But see if I could have asked abetter question earlier.
(14:38):
It would have been, even thoughno one would have understood me
.
What are you doing to protectchildren from the preferential
offender?
Generally, the response is, I'msorry, the who from the what
Right right, you have no ideawhat I'm talking about.
You're wide open on more than90% of the problem.
So every headline you and Ihave read 80,000 Boy Scout
(14:58):
claims.
None of those 80,000 Scoutswere abducted, preferential
offender or peer sexual abuse.
So the better question is whatdo I need to teach you about the
preferential offender?
To give you eyes to see, whichleads to a mouth that speaks.
That's the magic.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Right, right and preferential offender.
Tell us what that is.
I'm assuming that's people thatyou know, we know it's the
maybe the kids ministry worker,or it's the maybe the kids
ministry worker, or it's theparent volunteer, or it's the
uncle or the grandma Like.
It's somebody you know insidethat is a known person, the kids
know them and they're maybeeven known by the church, kind
(15:37):
of thing.
But that's where the 90 percentof the danger is.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, first of all, what it's not.
It's not the stranger wearingthe trench coat with the beanie
babies okay, it's typicallysomebody here's definitionally
preferential offender Could bemale or female, someone with an
age-appropriate adult willing tohave sex with them but prefers
a child as a sexual partner.
It's what we call a deviantsexual desire.
(16:02):
You prefer a child as a sexualpartner okay, and it's not just
any child, it's usually a childwithin an age and sex of
preference.
So there's some narrowness tothe deviance.
Case in point go to Penn StateJerry Sandusky, preferential
offender.
He wasn't abducting anyone.
He was grooming children forabuse because he had an age and
(16:23):
sex of preference for boys ages9 to 14.
Larry Nassar of USA Gymnasticsno visual profile would have
told you he was dangerous.
He had a pastor backgroundcheck but he was a preferential
offender, though he was marriedand had an age-appropriate adult
willing to have sex with him.
He preferred girls ages 10 to15.
It's messed up.
No visual profile will help usidentify that problem.
(16:47):
And that's the big, big, bigidea.
Frank, you can't recognize thisrisk visually.
We must understand this riskbehaviorally and those behaviors
are called the grooming process.
So, answering one of yourquestions earlier, what's the
magic in the training isteaching people first, undoing a
lot of these things we'rerolling with.
(17:08):
That we think are the rightanswers.
That are not.
I've got to make room for goodinformation.
First, deconstruct that andthen bring the good information,
which is your problem is thepreferential offender.
You can't recognize himvisually.
You must understand him or herbehaviorally, and the behaviors
are called the grooming process.
And there we go, and here it isyeah.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So your training, uh, I mean what?
Like talk to us about you, likeyou go around the country
educating people all over theplace.
That's one of the things you do, just as a you know it's your
passion.
It's obviously part of yourbusiness, but it's also your
passion.
So when you go into a uh, a newyou know church or denomination
(17:47):
, how are you guiding themthrough some of this training?
Where do you start?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Typically I'm going to have a conversation with
somebody who's a decision makerto help them understand this is
what the risk is.
So they can downstream that totheir member churches if it's a
hierarchical denominationBaptists, for example, nazarenes
oftentimes those have to learnthis church by church by church,
unless somebody isdownstreaming good information
(18:13):
to them.
But what I'd first like to dois I know what the barriers are,
frank, like I've learned 1,800ways to fail at this and I can't
even get a door to open to comedo some live training.
Unless somebody firstunderstands, are the training
worth having?
Okay, so part of thecommunication is exactly what
I've already gone through at thedenominational and leadership
(18:33):
level.
It's.
Please don't presume youunderstand this problem
correctly and have a solution.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Right, potentially because there was a crisis, or
maybe there was a nearby crisis,like something that you know.
Maybe it wasn't them, but itwas like someone they knew, or
it was another organization thatthey were close to, or
something that sparks it, and sothen there sounds like that's
when they're a bit more open tolistening to you.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
All right.
It's like when the Catholicchurch got into the ditch, like
all these Protestants werelooking at like, ooh, at least
we're not Catholics, are youhigh?
That's the wrong takeaway.
It's the exact same groomingprocess.
They just had a differentliturgy and form of worship.
Okay, so denominations arefunny that they'll see something
happen in that denomination andbelieve that the reason why
they had a problem is because ofour theological distinction, or
(19:21):
until it becomes yours, so it'sthe church, church leaders.
Humans are really good athearing about somebody else's
crisis and then looking atthemselves and finding a way in
which to help them understandit's not my crisis until it is.
Now.
We're seeing a lot of change injust the human response to, but
(19:42):
we're also seeing, frank, isinsurance companies are feeling
this Okay, because you see, itused to be.
To settle a sexual abuse claimin the 90s was about $250,000
per victim.
That number has steadily grownas our culture, which makes up
our jurors, get angrier andangrier about the fact that this
(20:02):
was allowed to happen in aplace that children should have
been safe, right.
So today actually in 2023, it'sup to $2.5 million per victim
for an insurance carrier tosettle that case.
It's $10.3 million per victimif it goes to trial.
Wow, okay.
So financially the insurancecarriers are saying we can't pay
(20:24):
that and just increase yourpremiums a little bit.
So all the insurance carriersthat write coverage for churches
and child serving organizationsare essentially saying we are
not renewing your coverageunless you do something at your
church to make it safer there sothat we won't get a claim Right
.
And interestingly, they'rerequiring them to use ministry
(20:45):
safe.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right, yeah, so what does the training look like?
You obviously go out and dostuff, but you had to do this in
a way that scales to thousandsof churches, like I don't assume
Greg can fly around everysingle day of his life training
every church on the planet.
So you've created, you know itstarted back in you know 07 or
so, but now you've built a wholekind of infrastructure to train
(21:07):
churches.
What does that look like?
If a new church comes in andthey're like yep, we want to do
this, how do they get thetraining and deliver it to their
volunteers?
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, it's much like online giving.
Covid was a game changer interms of the use of technology
to accomplish things Right.
Even in ministry, it alwaysseems like ministries are 10
years behind everybody else inleveraging technology.
But so my wife Kimberly and Iwe're on five airplanes a week
going in certain directions tobe able to teach at this
(21:37):
seminary or this conference orthis denomination or go help
this organization.
Navigate a ditch, and thenCOVID hit and shut down most of
the travel.
Right, navigate a ditch, andthen COVID hit and shut down
most of the travel.
Now we're already an onlinetech business that's delivering
content and make it scalableonline, and now we don't get all
the people complaining, like in2007, about their dial up or
(21:57):
their bandwidth and things likethat.
So all of it was prepared to bescale.
We just needed the market tostart understanding they need it
and then start asking for it,and so COVID forced everybody to
get a Zoom account, everybodyto get some type of form to
communicate to theirstakeholders electronically, and
(22:17):
we were already positioned todo that.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
So pre-COVID probably like you, we were getting, you
know, trying to do onlinemeetings and you know you'd
spend a certain percentage ofthose meetings educating the you
know church person that we weretrying to get with.
Like how do you get on a Zoommeeting or a Google Meet or a
GoToMeeting, whatever theplatform was?
Like OK, open your browser,click this link, do this, you
(22:43):
know, to get it to work.
Like that happened all the time.
But COVID hits and like notanymore.
Everybody knows how to use Zoomand online tools and is
comfortable doing things kind ofon camera and on their computer
.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, so we used COVID to refilm, with very, very
professional crews, the basicsexual abuse awareness training,
but that's not the only contentthat ministry leaders or
child-serving organizationalleaders need.
So we created the peer-to-peersexual abuse understanding the
risk of third-party liabilitywhen you let people use your
facilities.
(23:16):
Understanding background checks, sexual harassment, your
facilities understandingbackground checks, sexual
harassment.
I mean, there's like 23separate offerings that we
create because there's a lot oforganizations that need more
than just sexual abuse awarenesstraining.
Now, that's the core piece, andwe're training about a hundred
thousand people online per monthright now and just issued our 4
millionth certificate ofcompletion.
(23:36):
Okay, there's a golden ticketwinner right there.
They're going to get a mug, allright it's something like that's
yeah, no doubt, and soleveraging technology to deliver
content has really kept me offairplanes.
But it also allows us to livestream certain training, and
it's driven typically by thecrisis that a particular
(23:56):
industry is having.
So we did one for an insurancecarrier with about 900 people on
.
It's like it's peer-to-peersexual abuse to prepare camps
across the country, or after BoyScouts, like when, holy cow,
someone's using our facilitiesand we could wind up in the same
ditch.
So we'll provide instruction,so we can craft it and customize
it.
But of the things that we knowthere's a demand for, we filmed
(24:18):
it, produced it and have anonline system to be able to
deliver that at scale.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
What, um, when you're, whenchurches are going through this
uh, you've kind of shared a lotof the crisis moment kicks it
off, things like that.
But when you get into thetraining on the behaviors and
the pattern matching and thegrooming process, where does the
(24:47):
light bulb go off for churchleaders?
Where do they go?
Oh, I get it and they fully buyin and get excited about things
.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Well, there's a different light bulb moment
depending on who you are, andthat's why we've done the
training in such a way and someof the workshops that we do are
meant to address okay, third ofthe room is going to light bulb
at this issue.
25% of you on this issue, so,but the top light bulb issue
typically is it's not theabduction offender, okay, and
(25:18):
it's it's that point's like.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
People don't even get it.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
They're like oh, and even saying that's not enough.
Right, it's like going, I'llcome, I'll say what it's like.
No, no, no, no, let's come atit this way.
It's like the way we this ideaIf I don't know you and you look
(25:47):
different from me, I presumeyou are unsafe and I act
accordingly.
But see, the opposite is true,that if you do look like me and
you're on the inside of mycommunity, I presume you are
safe.
Right, the preferentialoffender is on the inside.
If the preferential offenderisn't already on the inside,
that's what the preferentialoffender wants to do is get on
the inside.
Preferential offender is notgoing to come up to my door and
knock on my door and say, excuseme, I know you don't know me,
(26:07):
but is that your little girl outthere swinging?
She's lovely.
Can I take her to my house forjust an hour?
We'll make cookies.
I'll bring her right back.
Right, I'm in Texas.
What do you think I'm going todo?
Right, but see, thepreferential offender knows that
.
So the idea is the preferentialoffender wants to first win my
trust, get on the inside, thenthe barriers of protection of
(26:29):
the child go down.
So once I've explained that, andnow, because this is so
ubiquitous.
You know, one out of fourAmericans has been sexually
victimized.
So when you're talking topeople, they're going.
Now that circumstance that wehad in our family 10 years ago
makes sense.
You're just providing languageto an experience I didn't
(26:49):
understand.
Light bulb come on andtypically there's going to be
something they remember.
It's like that explains it,right.
Or I was being groomed.
I wasn't sexually abused, but Iknew it felt weird and I just
couldn't put my finger on whatit was.
And so the training actuallyprovides language to have people
(27:12):
understand experience.
So those are generally whereyou start seeing the light bulbs
come on, and even from thosepeople who have been victimized
that aren't talking about it,and you start walking through
this and it's almost like thereit is.
That's, that's okay.
And now I'm satisfied.
(27:32):
I'm not the only one.
Right, there was nothing wrongwith me.
There was not me that wasdressed in a certain way, acting
a certain way to make thatperson choose me.
Okay, so it's a it's amultifaceted way in which this
information is being processedby the hundreds of thousands of
people that are that are thatare consuming this information
every couple of months.
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, that's a.
I mean it's incredible what youguys do, what, what like if
you're getting with churchleaders now and you're into the
portion where you're talkingabout the grooming process, like
give us the short version ofyou know what that process looks
like and how church leaders canyou know if they're watching
(28:13):
this video, if they picked upwith a couple of things and want
to go learn more, but what'sthe key points in the grooming
process?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Okay and want to go learn more.
But what's the key points inthe grooming process?
Okay, what I'd want to do first, regardless of who the audience
is, is set up the idea that thepreferential offender has a
deviant sexual desire and ageand sex of preference of that
deviant sexual desire is goingto drive where they seek access,
right.
So if it's somebody with adeviant sexual desire for
five-year-olds, daycares, pre-ks, kindergartens, children's
(28:41):
ministries, okay, it narrows.
Where we gather those types ofchildren in our culture, the
church.
We gather them all okay.
So our target, regardless ofthe age and sexual preference,
is helping people understandthey want to go from the outside
to the inside, okay, and whatthat means of going on the
inside at a church is they'regoing to need a name tag.
Okay, whether you're going topay them or not, staff member or
(29:04):
volunteer, they're going towork to go through your process.
So that's one of the firstchallenges to the church how
hard is it to get a name tag atyour church, and is that
different depending on theprogram?
And then what the abuser isgoing to do is gain access,
which is typically grooming thegatekeepers.
It's grooming the adult leaders.
It's going through anybody theabuser has to go through to gain
(29:25):
trusted time alone with thechild.
Okay, so it's going to begaining access, then selecting
one or more children in such away that the child is chosen by
virtue of how easy is it for theabuser to carve that little one
away from the herd intoisolation for trusted time alone
, where there will beinappropriate touch and talk
Along.
That way there will be theintroduction of nudity and
(29:47):
sexual touch through sexualdiscussion, sexual joking,
sexual banter.
And now we get the opportunityto get refined, depending on who
the audience is, because, see,the grooming process now will
take on a different feel if it'sa teenage girl versus a teenage
boy, or if it's in a youthsport program or an overnight
(30:08):
camping.
This is typically how thisunfolds.
Okay, so that's when wegenerally can go as deep as you
want if we get the opportunityto get in front of people and
refine it.
And then ultimately thegrooming process kind of has
wrapped into the whole situationof keeping the victim quiet.
Shame, embarrassment, threatNumber one, reason why a sexual
(30:28):
abuse victim won't tell you.
No one will believe me, right?
Sadly, most of the times wedon't, Right?
Okay, so this instruction alsotries to untake that stinger out
so that the grooming processcan be unpacked where people can
see it, but also give couragefor those people to say
something with an audience thatwill receive it.
(30:48):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, what?
What about the impact?
Like you guys have been at thisyou said 25 years you know
you've trained thousands,millions of people, thousands of
churches, like what kind ofimpact have you seen over the
course of 25 years?
Speaker 1 (31:05):
That used to be a difficult question to answer,
when people would ask with anattitude of well, can you prove
it works?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I feel like I know you've
had an impact.
I want to hear the stories oflike where you've seen you know.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Here's what here's.
We got two things that justhappened today.
All right, we get a feedbackfrom an educator, and educators
are hard because they'rebeginning sexual abuse trainings
for years and years and years.
And here's an educator actuallyout of San Lorenzo, california.
The ministry safe course wasoutstanding.
I've been a Christian schoolteacher for 45 years and seen a
lot of videos and trainings onthis topic, but this was one of
the best I've seen Clear,informative, authoritative,
(31:41):
efficiently and effectivelycommunicated.
Thank you for putting ittogether and make it easy to
access.
Getting compliments like thatfrom my educators is pretty huge
.
But there's also something thathappened even this weekend in
the Southern Baptist Convention.
They voted for and got a newpresident okay, and he pastors a
church in North Carolina andthat church has had a challenge
(32:04):
recently involving a studentministry volunteer, and this was
actually came out in thatBaptist publication.
This is regarding sexual abusereform.
Freshly spoke on his churchrecently reporting a case
involving a student ministryvolunteer, and he goes on to say
the SBC is much further downthe road than we've ever been.
He said on the convention'ssteps toward abuse In 2018, we
(32:25):
weren't even talking about abuse.
Hickory Grove's use of MinistrySafe prepared volunteers for the
situation no church wants toface.
We knew what to do, and so,when the crisis hit, our people
responded, said Presley, it'slike I've never met the man, but
it's an encouragement and wehear those types of things all
the time that we're notblindsided anymore.
(32:47):
You've given us the language,you've given us eyes to see,
which leads to a mouth thatspeaks, not only to prevent it,
but in the God forbid acircumstance that does unfold,
we can at least start tonavigate it well, so that we
don't compound the crisis,re-victimize victims and some of
the things that all the socialmedia says that we're bad at,
(33:07):
which most of the times they'reright.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Right, yeah, no, I love that.
Those are cool.
Man, it's awesome what you guysare doing.
It's a pleasure to have you onthe show.
Where should folks go to learnmore about Ministry Safe and
sign up for the trainings, ifthey're not already taking them?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yep, ministrysafecom, and it's all very, very
intuitive.
Yeah, you can downloadinformation, you can preview
things.
You can call one of my staffmembers.
They'll find them extremelygenerous.
Whether you're a cowboy churchout in the sticks or whether
you're a mega church withmultiple campuses, you know
we're easy to find access tocontent.
(33:43):
It's easy to get.
And just hear me say if you'reone of those churches that
really says I can't afford it,okay, and if I believe you and I
remember people lie to me for aliving, I'll give it to you.
I don't want ever there to bemoney being a reason why we
can't be able to protect ourchildren from sexual abuse.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
I'll pay for it.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Frank, I know you're going to be right behind me and
you'll pay for it right after me.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Amen, a hundred percent.
That's so good.
Ministrysafecom Guys go checkit out.
Greg, thanks for coming on theshow, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Thanks, Frank.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Cool.
Thanks guys, Definitely spreadthe.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church
Leader here with my buddy allthe way from Dallas, Texas,
Gregory Love.
How's it going, Greg?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
We're doing great here in Fort Worth Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, let's go.
Well, man, it's great to haveyou on the show.
You are, you know you're kindof the expert in child abuse
prevention and you are a lawyerand you started a great company,
Ministry Safe.
You've been at this for a longtime, so I'd love for you just
to tell folks a little bit aboutyourself and how you got into
serving the church in this way.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, I mean, of course, as a believer I'm
interested in serving the church.
I mean after doing like 29years of student ministry.
Yeah, church, I mean afterdoing like 29 years of student
ministry.
But professionally it's notlike I was in law school in the
eighties and decided you know,one day I want to be a sexual
abuse lawyer.
Okay, first of all, that'sweird.
Second of all, there was nosuch thing back then, kind of
the way all of this unfolded.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You couldn't.
You couldn't pick your schooland find the degree in that.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, no, that was a.
That was a thin listing, allright, but nonetheless it's like
my wife, who's my law partner,kimberly.
I mean, she was an employmentlawyer by trade as early as like
91, 1992.
Okay, back when we used to drawon cave walls, okay.
So back then there was aseminary student that was trying
to work with children in agroup home and they fired him
(01:23):
for trying to report childsexual abuse.
Okay, which in Texas you canfire someone for just about
anything, but you can't firethem for trying to report under
the mandatory reportingrequirements.
And of course, not only didthey fire him just to make their
point and don't mess with usthey told him they blamed him
for being the abuser.
It's like we'll teach you Now.
(01:46):
What they didn't know was thatthey forced him to sue them
Because you see, if he wants towork with children, you can't go
get a job working with childrenwhen you just lost your last
job for ostensibly molestingthem.
So he went to look for aChristian employment lawyer and
he went and he found my wife.
Okay, so Kimberly's smartenough to know you don't make a
lot of money representing apart-time seminary student who's
(02:07):
fired for being a molester.
But she heard his story, shebelieved him and it made her mad
.
And, frank, you and I are smartenough to know don't make Kim
mad, right?
So Kim took his case, which isessentially a whistleblower
claim, back then.
But part of a case like that in1992 is we had to go find the
people that were claiming tohave been sexually and
(02:27):
physically abused to kind ofsupport the fact that he was
making a good faith claim.
Now, when she and I went backand talked to some of these
people, it's amazing how many ofthese people wanted to tell
their story and said hey, willyou be my voice too?
Kimberly's like absolutelylet's, let them hear from you.
Not knowing that she wasessentially putting together a
multi-plaintiff litigationagainst this group, home went
(02:50):
after we talked to 49 victims ofabuse covering a 30-year period
of time, with multiplemolesters wind up growing.
At the same time, the CatholicChurch was starting its
adventure into child sexualabuse litigation.
Now ours resolved before theirsdid and had people from all
over the country calling andsaying, hey, we know that was
(03:11):
worth money.
Will you help us jump in onthis fact?
Will you help us sue thisorganization?
Now, most of them were wantingus to sue a church, kim and I
realized whoa part of our desireis to teach the church, and the
church is not necessarilyteachable when they feel like
you're suing them on this side,right.
So we decided now we'reimmersed in the issue.
(03:32):
Okay, now we're standing overhow this works.
We're seeing the patterns, butsee that pattern is a good word
in child sexual abuse work.
See, if something has a pattern, it's predictable, and if
something's predictable, it'spreventable.
Unfortunately, it's just notintuitive.
So Kimberly and I were usingall of this background education
(03:53):
, experience that we'vedeveloped in five or six years
of litigating on behalf ofvictims and designed these are
the things these organizationsshould have had in place so that
there would have been novictims.
Ok, it's developing a safetysystem, which we now call a five
part safety system.
I know, brilliant, catchy title, huh, ok, but it's five main
(04:14):
pieces because this is what welearned from litigation and
we're going to try to nowprovide that before there's a
train wreck, so people can startto access those resources.
Because we looked around anddecided, like certainly
somebody's doing this Right andas hard as we look, like there
is no one Clearly hearing Godtelling us no, no, no, I want
(04:35):
you guys to do this Now.
I remember complaining to theLord.
It's like look, we're in thejob business.
Okay, we need to make money.
Feed the little kid you gave us.
Okay, we need to make money,feed the little kid you gave us.
(04:59):
We can make money in litigation.
There's not a lot of money tobe made in prevention,
especially when you're talkingto the church, especially in the
mid-90s, waiting for the churchto wake up to its cancer.
So we've spent the last 20, 25years refining because, you see,
the problem hasn't changed.
Our children's and studentministries by and large haven't
changed, but our culture haschanged and it's getting angry.
(05:21):
So here it all is.
Come and get it Right, allright.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So you spent it started with the litigation.
How long did you?
You said five years.
So was it kind of a five-yearjourney where you're like, oh,
wow, we can take a bunch of thethings we learned because we
interviewed so many victims andso many different cases where
you learned, like here's thepatterns.
Now let me put it into, youknow, some form of training.
(05:48):
And then Ministry Safe was born, or was it?
You started doing kind oftraining and coaching because
churches were calling you andthen one day you woke up and
you're like, oh, I should, weshould create a company that
does this.
Like what was the transitionfrom cases to you know, starting
Ministry Safe as a real like,as a business, like, as a
company that does this?
Like what was the transitionfrom cases to you know, starting
Ministry of Safe as a real like, as a business, like as a
company serving the church?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Well, we didn't stop litigating.
Okay, that was an ongoing.
Now, of course, we won't suethe church, but the narrow area
in which Kim and I will continueto litigate is in the narrow
context of children that werevictimized in cult settings,
where someone has abused andmanipulated that religious
structure to harm a child.
So that is ongoing.
(06:31):
But it's like created all theseresources and we're working
with mostly secularorganizations at that point.
Church didn't want this, noteven our home church at first.
But see, it was a lot of ourfoster care entities, our
adoption entities, some of thepeople that are on the front
line of this risk that don'tneed to be convinced, it's real.
So it started to grow.
Now it got to the point about2007, with one enormous crisis
(06:53):
that I won't identify to whereit became valuable for the
organization to be able tomessage to its parents that it's
safe to bring your kids back tocamp safe to bring your kids
back to camp.
They needed something to bragabout and something to show them
.
This is what we're doing.
But at the same time, they werein litigation and needed to be
able to have some privateconversations.
So it's that when we realizedwe created Ministry Safe as
(07:15):
opposed to the law firm which isLove Norris, because we split
these up kind of like this LoveNorris is like the 9-11
Commission you can climb intothe ditch and help you evaluate
your ditch-like and crater-likeexperience.
Ministry Safe is like HomelandSecurity.
These are the preventive toolsthat need to have a front-facing
(07:36):
talk about this.
Share this with your parents,let them know.
This is what we're doing toaddress this foreseeable risk.
That was about 2006.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Okay, and churches weren't super into it yet.
It was early, new whatever.
But since then we're at 2024.
Now, now you serve thousands ofchurches.
So what's that journey beenlike?
Because that's your heart, yourpassion, you know you wanted to
help the church and help kids.
So, like, how did you, how didit start working in churches?
(08:09):
Like, how did that open up?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Well, it that?
That's a difficult questionbecause you see, yeah, you're
right, we're serving thousandsof churches, like 25,000 at this
count, probably be 35,000 maybeby February of 2025.
And I can go Whoa, what a greatjob.
Thousands of churches.
But see, my heart is for thebody of Christ, not a count.
And when I realized there's375,000 churches out there, in
(08:35):
25 years I'm serving less than10% of them.
Okay, I don't have another 25years in me, and so my heart is
a urgency that the fields arewhite in terms, at least the
risk.
But see, even rewinding, it'snot like the church finally went
.
Oh, hey, I get this, becausethat's not the way the church
behaves.
(08:55):
Church is the stubborn bride.
Okay, so, frankly, you can goback and you can do a timeline
that certain segments of thepopulation, usually by industry,
are waking up by virtue ofwhatever crisis is nearby,
whether it was the CatholicChurch, whether it was Penn
State, whether it was USASwimming, which is what made the
Olympic Committee call us tohelp design the Safe Sport
(09:16):
Program, and then there was USAGymnastics in 2015.
And then we had Boy Scouts ofAmerica in 2020, 21.
I mean, so it's these differentcrises wake different people up
to certain degrees, and, ofcourse, denominations are having
their own crisis.
As you know, the SouthernBaptist Convention has been very
(09:37):
driven by media and crisis,starting in 2018, 2019.
And so it's.
The church is just a funnybride, and so it's not like the
church has finally awakened,because there's a whole lot more
work to be done.
I just I can't make it movefaster, and that's why the Lord
(09:57):
has led me to buy a yoga mat, apuppy room and all kinds of
things like that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
You went with the puppy room and not goat yoga, so
you got the yoga mat.
You just no, didn't I?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
tried goat yoga.
I tried the wrong kind of goatsBecause I was envisioning the
little baby goats that jump.
These are like the old goatsthat bite.
Yeah, didn't work out.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
No, oh my gosh.
Well, so fast forward, we'rehere today.
I guess, in all of this, yourbig passion is training and
equipping churches.
You want to help prevent thisfrom happening.
So how have you gone aboutdoing that?
What's kind of the hallmark ofwhat Ministry Safe does for
(10:39):
churches.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Part of it is born out of the crisis, right,
because if there was just likeone, oh hey, everybody just
needs a blue pill I'll just gostart manufacturing blue pills
and handing them out.
So we're standing over thecrisis and doing the forensic
work and the postmortems on whatwent wrong and why.
Once I help people understandwhat this risk is, for the sake
(11:02):
of having the Q&A with thosepeople in the ditch, it's the
five words that I hate the most.
Now that you mention it, it'slike I hate those five words.
Okay, I don't want you to getinto a crisis and look back and
go oh, now that you mentioned,I'm smarter now, even after all
these people got hurt.
Now I can move forward.
It's like what is it that I cando to keep us from that?
(11:24):
Dish?
Like experience and what welearned early on is education.
I can tell people you know whatwe need to stop sexual abuse,
and 100 out of 100 people willtell me I agree with you, 100%,
absolutely.
But see, when I go into mychurches, they think they're
solving the problem.
Okay, which is why this is mydiagnostic question.
I can ask this with a smile,you know, so I don't sound like
(12:13):
a lawyer with a clipboard.
It's like, hey, what do you do?
At?
Like, that list will notprotect my child, okay, and so
the barrier to overcome with thechurch is not that sexual abuse
is an important deal, but theythink they're solving this
problem and they're not.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that wake-up call typically doesn't happen until
they have a dish like experienceyeah, you have security, you
have cameras, you have check-in,you have background checks, so
they're doing that.
But you're going like that'sall of those things are like
fine and probably good, butthat's not what actually does it
.
Those are like secondary to thecore thing.
So like, what have you what?
What are the things that do it?
Like, how, what do you trainchurches on to help them?
(13:01):
You know, spot this kind ofbehavior or, you know, just be
more educated on what reallyprevents it.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, and the magic word there is not just training.
Okay, there's all kinds oftraining out there.
It's specific information toallow people to understand.
This is the risk, and this iswhat it looks like, so kind of
peeking behind the curtain.
Most people misunderstand whatis sexual abuse risk?
Ok, they think it's the whitevan with free candy written on
(13:34):
the side of it, driven by a guywith a clown suit.
Ok, it's like it's the strangerdanger idea, right, and so part
of the training isdeconstructing your
misconception to make room forthe information you need to have
.
And the need to haveinformation is your risk is from
an offender.
We call the preferentialoffender, not the abduction
offender.
So when I ask people, hey, whatdo you do to protect children
(13:55):
from child sexual abuse?
And they give me that list.
That's what I call the barbedwire fence.
It's to keep the abductionoffender out.
You see, like a barbed wirefence around your garden, it'll
protect your garden from thecattle, but the bunnies it's
absolutely worthless.
Okay, so I'm building a fence.
I think it solves my problemand you know what?
(14:16):
As it relates to the abductionoffender, it is solving that
problem.
Merry Christmas, well done,you're doing a great job, but I
need for my people to understand.
The abduction offenderrepresents less than 10% of the
problem.
So, as it relates to thatminute part of the problem, your
little barbed wire fence iscrushing it.
Keep it up.
But see if I could have asked abetter question earlier.
(14:38):
It would have been, even thoughno one would have understood me
.
What are you doing to protectchildren from the preferential
offender?
Generally, the response is, I'msorry, the who from the what
Right right, you have no ideawhat I'm talking about.
You're wide open on more than90% of the problem.
So every headline you and Ihave read 80,000 Boy Scout
(14:58):
claims.
None of those 80,000 Scoutswere abducted, preferential
offender or peer sexual abuse.
So the better question is whatdo I need to teach you about the
preferential offender?
To give you eyes to see, whichleads to a mouth that speaks.
That's the magic.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Right, right and preferential offender.
Tell us what that is.
I'm assuming that's people thatyou know, we know it's the
maybe the kids ministry worker,or it's the maybe the kids
ministry worker, or it's theparent volunteer, or it's the
uncle or the grandma Like.
It's somebody you know insidethat is a known person, the kids
know them and they're maybeeven known by the church, kind
(15:37):
of thing.
But that's where the 90 percentof the danger is.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, first of all, what it's not.
It's not the stranger wearingthe trench coat with the beanie
babies okay, it's typicallysomebody here's definitionally
preferential offender Could bemale or female, someone with an
age-appropriate adult willing tohave sex with them but prefers
a child as a sexual partner.
It's what we call a deviantsexual desire.
(16:02):
You prefer a child as a sexualpartner okay, and it's not just
any child, it's usually a childwithin an age and sex of
preference.
So there's some narrowness tothe deviance.
Case in point go to Penn StateJerry Sandusky, preferential
offender.
He wasn't abducting anyone.
He was grooming children forabuse because he had an age and
(16:23):
sex of preference for boys ages9 to 14.
Larry Nassar of USA Gymnasticsno visual profile would have
told you he was dangerous.
He had a pastor backgroundcheck but he was a preferential
offender, though he was marriedand had an age-appropriate adult
willing to have sex with him.
He preferred girls ages 10 to15.
It's messed up.
No visual profile will help usidentify that problem.
(16:47):
And that's the big, big, bigidea.
Frank, you can't recognize thisrisk visually.
We must understand this riskbehaviorally and those behaviors
are called the grooming process.
So, answering one of yourquestions earlier, what's the
magic in the training isteaching people first, undoing a
lot of these things we'rerolling with.
(17:08):
That we think are the rightanswers.
That are not.
I've got to make room for goodinformation.
First, deconstruct that andthen bring the good information,
which is your problem is thepreferential offender.
You can't recognize himvisually.
You must understand him or herbehaviorally, and the behaviors
are called the grooming process.
And there we go, and here it isyeah.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So your training, uh, I mean what?
Like talk to us about you, likeyou go around the country
educating people all over theplace.
That's one of the things you do, just as a you know it's your
passion.
It's obviously part of yourbusiness, but it's also your
passion.
So when you go into a uh, a newyou know church or denomination
(17:47):
, how are you guiding themthrough some of this training?
Where do you start?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Typically I'm going to have a conversation with
somebody who's a decision makerto help them understand this is
what the risk is.
So they can downstream that totheir member churches if it's a
hierarchical denominationBaptists, for example, nazarenes
oftentimes those have to learnthis church by church by church,
unless somebody isdownstreaming good information
(18:13):
to them.
But what I'd first like to dois I know what the barriers are,
frank, like I've learned 1,800ways to fail at this and I can't
even get a door to open to comedo some live training.
Unless somebody firstunderstands, are the training
worth having?
Okay, so part of thecommunication is exactly what
I've already gone through at thedenominational and leadership
(18:33):
level.
It's.
Please don't presume youunderstand this problem
correctly and have a solution.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Right, potentially because there was a crisis, or
maybe there was a nearby crisis,like something that you know.
Maybe it wasn't them, but itwas like someone they knew, or
it was another organization thatthey were close to, or
something that sparks it, and sothen there sounds like that's
when they're a bit more open tolistening to you.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
All right.
It's like when the Catholicchurch got into the ditch, like
all these Protestants werelooking at like, ooh, at least
we're not Catholics, are youhigh?
That's the wrong takeaway.
It's the exact same groomingprocess.
They just had a differentliturgy and form of worship.
Okay, so denominations arefunny that they'll see something
happen in that denomination andbelieve that the reason why
they had a problem is because ofour theological distinction, or
(19:21):
until it becomes yours, so it'sthe church, church leaders.
Humans are really good athearing about somebody else's
crisis and then looking atthemselves and finding a way in
which to help them understandit's not my crisis until it is.
Now.
We're seeing a lot of change injust the human response to, but
(19:42):
we're also seeing, frank, isinsurance companies are feeling
this Okay, because you see, itused to be.
To settle a sexual abuse claimin the 90s was about $250,000
per victim.
That number has steadily grownas our culture, which makes up
our jurors, get angrier andangrier about the fact that this
(20:02):
was allowed to happen in aplace that children should have
been safe, right.
So today actually in 2023, it'sup to $2.5 million per victim
for an insurance carrier tosettle that case.
It's $10.3 million per victimif it goes to trial.
Wow, okay.
So financially the insurancecarriers are saying we can't pay
(20:24):
that and just increase yourpremiums a little bit.
So all the insurance carriersthat write coverage for churches
and child serving organizationsare essentially saying we are
not renewing your coverageunless you do something at your
church to make it safer there sothat we won't get a claim Right
.
And interestingly, they'rerequiring them to use ministry
(20:45):
safe.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right, yeah, so what does the training look like?
You obviously go out and dostuff, but you had to do this in
a way that scales to thousandsof churches, like I don't assume
Greg can fly around everysingle day of his life training
every church on the planet.
So you've created, you know itstarted back in you know 07 or
so, but now you've built a wholekind of infrastructure to train
(21:07):
churches.
What does that look like?
If a new church comes in andthey're like yep, we want to do
this, how do they get thetraining and deliver it to their
volunteers?
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, it's much like online giving.
Covid was a game changer interms of the use of technology
to accomplish things Right.
Even in ministry, it alwaysseems like ministries are 10
years behind everybody else inleveraging technology.
But so my wife Kimberly and Iwe're on five airplanes a week
going in certain directions tobe able to teach at this
(21:37):
seminary or this conference orthis denomination or go help
this organization.
Navigate a ditch, and thenCOVID hit and shut down most of
the travel.
Right, navigate a ditch, andthen COVID hit and shut down
most of the travel.
Now we're already an onlinetech business that's delivering
content and make it scalableonline, and now we don't get all
the people complaining, like in2007, about their dial up or
(21:57):
their bandwidth and things likethat.
So all of it was prepared to bescale.
We just needed the market tostart understanding they need it
and then start asking for it,and so COVID forced everybody to
get a Zoom account, everybodyto get some type of form to
communicate to theirstakeholders electronically, and
(22:17):
we were already positioned todo that.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
So pre-COVID probably like you, we were getting, you
know, trying to do onlinemeetings and you know you'd
spend a certain percentage ofthose meetings educating the you
know church person that we weretrying to get with.
Like how do you get on a Zoommeeting or a Google Meet or a
GoToMeeting, whatever theplatform was?
Like OK, open your browser,click this link, do this, you
(22:43):
know, to get it to work.
Like that happened all the time.
But COVID hits and like notanymore.
Everybody knows how to use Zoomand online tools and is
comfortable doing things kind ofon camera and on their computer
.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, so we used COVID to refilm, with very, very
professional crews, the basicsexual abuse awareness training,
but that's not the only contentthat ministry leaders or
child-serving organizationalleaders need.
So we created the peer-to-peersexual abuse understanding the
risk of third-party liabilitywhen you let people use your
facilities.
(23:16):
Understanding background checks, sexual harassment, your
facilities understandingbackground checks, sexual
harassment.
I mean, there's like 23separate offerings that we
create because there's a lot oforganizations that need more
than just sexual abuse awarenesstraining.
Now, that's the core piece, andwe're training about a hundred
thousand people online per monthright now and just issued our 4
millionth certificate ofcompletion.
(23:36):
Okay, there's a golden ticketwinner right there.
They're going to get a mug, allright it's something like that's
yeah, no doubt, and soleveraging technology to deliver
content has really kept me offairplanes.
But it also allows us to livestream certain training, and
it's driven typically by thecrisis that a particular
(23:56):
industry is having.
So we did one for an insurancecarrier with about 900 people on
.
It's like it's peer-to-peersexual abuse to prepare camps
across the country, or after BoyScouts, like when, holy cow,
someone's using our facilitiesand we could wind up in the same
ditch.
So we'll provide instruction,so we can craft it and customize
it.
But of the things that we knowthere's a demand for, we filmed
(24:18):
it, produced it and have anonline system to be able to
deliver that at scale.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
What, um, when you're, whenchurches are going through this
uh, you've kind of shared a lotof the crisis moment kicks it
off, things like that.
But when you get into thetraining on the behaviors and
the pattern matching and thegrooming process, where does the
(24:47):
light bulb go off for churchleaders?
Where do they go?
Oh, I get it and they fully buyin and get excited about things
.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Well, there's a different light bulb moment
depending on who you are, andthat's why we've done the
training in such a way and someof the workshops that we do are
meant to address okay, third ofthe room is going to light bulb
at this issue.
25% of you on this issue, so,but the top light bulb issue
typically is it's not theabduction offender, okay, and
(25:18):
it's it's that point's like.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
People don't even get it.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
They're like oh, and even saying that's not enough.
Right, it's like going, I'llcome, I'll say what it's like.
No, no, no, no, let's come atit this way.
It's like the way we this ideaIf I don't know you and you look
(25:47):
different from me, I presumeyou are unsafe and I act
accordingly.
But see, the opposite is true,that if you do look like me and
you're on the inside of mycommunity, I presume you are
safe.
Right, the preferentialoffender is on the inside.
If the preferential offenderisn't already on the inside,
that's what the preferentialoffender wants to do is get on
the inside.
Preferential offender is notgoing to come up to my door and
knock on my door and say, excuseme, I know you don't know me,
(26:07):
but is that your little girl outthere swinging?
She's lovely.
Can I take her to my house forjust an hour?
We'll make cookies.
I'll bring her right back.
Right, I'm in Texas.
What do you think I'm going todo?
Right, but see, thepreferential offender knows that
.
So the idea is the preferentialoffender wants to first win my
trust, get on the inside, thenthe barriers of protection of
(26:29):
the child go down.
So once I've explained that, andnow, because this is so
ubiquitous.
You know, one out of fourAmericans has been sexually
victimized.
So when you're talking topeople, they're going.
Now that circumstance that wehad in our family 10 years ago
makes sense.
You're just providing languageto an experience I didn't
(26:49):
understand.
Light bulb come on andtypically there's going to be
something they remember.
It's like that explains it,right.
Or I was being groomed.
I wasn't sexually abused, but Iknew it felt weird and I just
couldn't put my finger on whatit was.
And so the training actuallyprovides language to have people
(27:12):
understand experience.
So those are generally whereyou start seeing the light bulbs
come on, and even from thosepeople who have been victimized
that aren't talking about it,and you start walking through
this and it's almost like thereit is.
That's, that's okay.
And now I'm satisfied.
(27:32):
I'm not the only one.
Right, there was nothing wrongwith me.
There was not me that wasdressed in a certain way, acting
a certain way to make thatperson choose me.
Okay, so it's a it's amultifaceted way in which this
information is being processedby the hundreds of thousands of
people that are that are thatare consuming this information
every couple of months.
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, that's a.
I mean it's incredible what youguys do, what, what like if
you're getting with churchleaders now and you're into the
portion where you're talkingabout the grooming process, like
give us the short version ofyou know what that process looks
like and how church leaders canyou know if they're watching
(28:13):
this video, if they picked upwith a couple of things and want
to go learn more, but what'sthe key points in the grooming
process?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Okay and want to go learn more.
But what's the key points inthe grooming process?
Okay, what I'd want to do first, regardless of who the audience
is, is set up the idea that thepreferential offender has a
deviant sexual desire and ageand sex of preference of that
deviant sexual desire is goingto drive where they seek access,
right.
So if it's somebody with adeviant sexual desire for
five-year-olds, daycares, pre-ks, kindergartens, children's
(28:41):
ministries, okay, it narrows.
Where we gather those types ofchildren in our culture, the
church.
We gather them all okay.
So our target, regardless ofthe age and sexual preference,
is helping people understandthey want to go from the outside
to the inside, okay, and whatthat means of going on the
inside at a church is they'regoing to need a name tag.
Okay, whether you're going topay them or not, staff member or
(29:04):
volunteer, they're going towork to go through your process.
So that's one of the firstchallenges to the church how
hard is it to get a name tag atyour church, and is that
different depending on theprogram?
And then what the abuser isgoing to do is gain access,
which is typically grooming thegatekeepers.
It's grooming the adult leaders.
It's going through anybody theabuser has to go through to gain
(29:25):
trusted time alone with thechild.
Okay, so it's going to begaining access, then selecting
one or more children in such away that the child is chosen by
virtue of how easy is it for theabuser to carve that little one
away from the herd intoisolation for trusted time alone
, where there will beinappropriate touch and talk
Along.
That way there will be theintroduction of nudity and
(29:47):
sexual touch through sexualdiscussion, sexual joking,
sexual banter.
And now we get the opportunityto get refined, depending on who
the audience is, because, see,the grooming process now will
take on a different feel if it'sa teenage girl versus a teenage
boy, or if it's in a youthsport program or an overnight
(30:08):
camping.
This is typically how thisunfolds.
Okay, so that's when wegenerally can go as deep as you
want if we get the opportunityto get in front of people and
refine it.
And then ultimately thegrooming process kind of has
wrapped into the whole situationof keeping the victim quiet.
Shame, embarrassment, threatNumber one, reason why a sexual
(30:28):
abuse victim won't tell you.
No one will believe me, right?
Sadly, most of the times wedon't, Right?
Okay, so this instruction alsotries to untake that stinger out
so that the grooming processcan be unpacked where people can
see it, but also give couragefor those people to say
something with an audience thatwill receive it.
(30:48):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, what?
What about the impact?
Like you guys have been at thisyou said 25 years you know
you've trained thousands,millions of people, thousands of
churches, like what kind ofimpact have you seen over the
course of 25 years?
Speaker 1 (31:05):
That used to be a difficult question to answer,
when people would ask with anattitude of well, can you prove
it works?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I feel like I know you've
had an impact.
I want to hear the stories oflike where you've seen you know.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Here's what here's.
We got two things that justhappened today.
All right, we get a feedbackfrom an educator, and educators
are hard because they'rebeginning sexual abuse trainings
for years and years and years.
And here's an educator actuallyout of San Lorenzo, california.
The ministry safe course wasoutstanding.
I've been a Christian schoolteacher for 45 years and seen a
lot of videos and trainings onthis topic, but this was one of
the best I've seen Clear,informative, authoritative,
(31:41):
efficiently and effectivelycommunicated.
Thank you for putting ittogether and make it easy to
access.
Getting compliments like thatfrom my educators is pretty huge
.
But there's also something thathappened even this weekend in
the Southern Baptist Convention.
They voted for and got a newpresident okay, and he pastors a
church in North Carolina andthat church has had a challenge
(32:04):
recently involving a studentministry volunteer, and this was
actually came out in thatBaptist publication.
This is regarding sexual abusereform.
Freshly spoke on his churchrecently reporting a case
involving a student ministryvolunteer, and he goes on to say
the SBC is much further downthe road than we've ever been.
He said on the convention'ssteps toward abuse In 2018, we
(32:25):
weren't even talking about abuse.
Hickory Grove's use of MinistrySafe prepared volunteers for the
situation no church wants toface.
We knew what to do, and so,when the crisis hit, our people
responded, said Presley, it'slike I've never met the man, but
it's an encouragement and wehear those types of things all
the time that we're notblindsided anymore.
(32:47):
You've given us the language,you've given us eyes to see,
which leads to a mouth thatspeaks, not only to prevent it,
but in the God forbid acircumstance that does unfold,
we can at least start tonavigate it well, so that we
don't compound the crisis,re-victimize victims and some of
the things that all the socialmedia says that we're bad at,
(33:07):
which most of the times they'reright.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Right, yeah, no, I love that.
Those are cool.
Man, it's awesome what you guysare doing.
It's a pleasure to have you onthe show.
Where should folks go to learnmore about Ministry Safe and
sign up for the trainings, ifthey're not already taking them?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yep, ministrysafecom, and it's all very, very
intuitive.
Yeah, you can downloadinformation, you can preview
things.
You can call one of my staffmembers.
They'll find them extremelygenerous.
Whether you're a cowboy churchout in the sticks or whether
you're a mega church withmultiple campuses, you know
we're easy to find access tocontent.
(33:43):
It's easy to get.
And just hear me say if you'reone of those churches that
really says I can't afford it,okay, and if I believe you and I
remember people lie to me for aliving, I'll give it to you.
I don't want ever there to bemoney being a reason why we
can't be able to protect ourchildren from sexual abuse.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
I'll pay for it.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Frank, I know you're going to be right behind me and
you'll pay for it right after me.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Amen, a hundred percent.
That's so good.
Ministrysafecom Guys go checkit out.
Greg, thanks for coming on theshow, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Thanks, Frank.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Cool.
Thanks guys, Definitely spreadthe.
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