SCARY
Not really the headline you expect to see over morning coffee:
“Ohio Pastor Pleads Guilty To
Sex Trafficking of Minors”
A pastor? No, not a pastor.
How about three pastors?
At least that’s the contention of police in Toledo, Ohio who recently arrested three pastors on charges that they had sex with underage girls, sometimes in their churches, and even traded photos and videos of the girls with each other. One of the pastors, Kenneth Butler, 38, pleaded guilty this week to several counts of sex trafficking of children and faces up to 18 years in prison. The other two pastors have not gone to trial yet.
Human trafficking, especially sex trafficking, has been a hot button topic in recent years, and when it first became a headline news item everyone pointed a finger at strip clubs. In response, the adult nightclub industry started COAST (Club Owners Against Sex Trafficking) and over the years COAST has educated thousands of gentlemen’s club employees on how to recognize victims of human trafficking and how to report those incidents to authorities. COAST routinely receives accolades from federal agencies about its proactive approach to the issue.
Interestingly enough, human trafficking incidents rarely occur at adult nightclubs. Only a few instances have been reported over the past five years, while there have been hundreds of incidents reported in the news involving restaurants, hotel chains, individuals like gang members and pimps, and, yes, the clergy.
When something horrible is happening in the world of sex, people tend to look at the farthest arc of the pendulum. Oh, it must be the strip clubs, they say. They don’t look on the other side at that farthest arc of the pendulum, and say, oh it must be the churches. I am a Catholic and I do support my religion, but the Catholic church’s systematic sexual abuse for centuries of children by its priests is well documented.
I spent years as a newspaper reporter, writing some incredible stories that proved to me that anything is possible. I wrote an article once about a guy who was shot 12 times by his brother with a .22 rifle and he lived, while a month later I wrote an article about a girl who was accidentally shot in the neck with a mere pellet gun by her brother and she died.
Anything is indeed possible.
Strip clubs banding together to fight sex trafficking.
Pastors banding together to engage in sex trafficking.
Scary.
