Or as I recall from college, hook up with as many freshman girls as possible.

I've heard of some churches now requiring criminal background checks for anyone who wants to work with children at the church. That's a start, but it can only be so effective, as many of these youth pastors are pretty squeaky clean prior to molesting someone at their church.

...and I guess the Slog is as good a place as any.

Jails?

Oh, and on the "evil" taking place "regularly" in "secular venues"..... given that the only "non-secular" venues are SECTARIAN (i.e., religious) venues it would make sense that numerically there may be more incidents in secular venues.... BUT that does not reduce the horror we all feel when allegedly-safe places like churches are the site of abuse.

I'd be curious to see a study on the incidence of sexual abuse in secular vs. sectarian settings. Without doing even a moment of research I am pretty sure that there are a larger percentage of "religious" folks abusing children than secular people. Certainly, outside of sexual abuse within a family, I would think that children are more likely to be abused in a religious setting than not. But of course there are a number of factors involved, not the least of which is the expectation that parents have that their children will be safe at church. The violation of trust is extreme when the violator is attached to a religious organization.

Heck, let's just limit our comparison to the Catholic Church and public schools. In these two settings, where is a child more likely to be abused? Anyone?

Dan chose to include him in Youth Pastor Watch, I guess, because the kid is also a wrestler? I don't know, that's the best reason I could come up with. I can see no other reason why this kid was lumped in with a bunch of criminals.

Dan Savage is an entertaining read, but an incredibly irresponsible journalist. Period. His bosses should be ashamed.

I resent that, Beardo. I am not a journalist.

And seriously, as someone in the journalism biz, you should know that if it's in the news, it's because it's unusual. Do you report every incident of vandalism or only murders?

C'mon, be intellectually honest and post a "Youth Teacher Watch." Let's see you keep up with those numbers. I doubt that there will be room for anything else on Slog.

I don't doubt statistics will back you up, because it's a fact that plenty of people abuse or take advantage of youths in situations where youths and adults interact, especially in situations where a third party can't intervene for the safety of the child. But unlike, say, Denny's servers or youth softball coaches, individuals in leadership positions at religious institutions (such as youth pastors) consider themselves the arbiters of moral speech and conduct for their communities and, in some sick instances, the entire country or world.

This self-proclaimed stance makes the offenses these sectarian criminals commit especially heinous and extremely hypocritical. It's the absolute height of hypocrisy: a religious leader telling his "disciples" what they can (and cannot) do in the bedroom and who (and what gender) they're allowed to penetrate (and with what) even if all parties are consenting adults, while these same religious leaders break the law, ruin a young person's innocence virtually guaranteeing that victim a lifetime of self-loathing, self-destructive behavior, or worse a desire to do the same thing to another child. Essentially, these "leaders" are caught doing exactly what they rail about. All while taking the hard-earned money or their too-trusting audience.

You can argue all you want about statistics and probabilities, but I sure as shit know I'm not supposed to trust my little girl alone with a cracked -out toothless Denny's server, and it's about time these religious ignoramuses pulled their heads out of each other's asses and realize they sure as hell shouldn't trust their children with religious clergy, either. Wolves in sheep clothing, indeed.

Dan?

You also missed my point. You said, "[parents] shouldn't trust their children with religious clergy, either." So you're not going to trust your children away from your sight ever? Will you let them play soccer and travel on a bus? Or go on an overnight trip without you at any age? Hypocrisy sucks, but how are clergy any more dangerous than other people to whom people entrust children?

They're not.

Attacking hypocrisy is great and Dan gets plenty of joy from exposing it, but blind rage is not.

It's not a shock that people who want to abuse children gravitate to jobs that involve unsupervised time with children. But there are a lot of youth pastors in this country (at least 300,000 by my quick and dirty statistical calculation.) That a few dozen or even an few hundred of them abuse children every year is a tragedy, and those individuals deserve to be strung up. But it's not fair or sensible to extrapolate from that onto the whole profession.

I'm no longer religious, but growing up I interacted with three youth pastors, all of whom were kind, compassionate, and wise individuals. I would hate to see them tarred with the same brush as these rapists.

Hasn't a (pretty, young) white woman gone missing lately? Well, why the heck not? You think I want to read about global warming, presidential politics, and what crap the FDA allows off-shore firms to put in my food?

But see, shark attacks are newsworthy because they're *rare.*

If we are going to be critical we have to use facts and truth not retoric.

I bleive Pasto Spink meant that while we have come to accept that they terrible crimes happen against children in secular settings...when they happen in church it is more upsetting for these are to be safe havens and people who should live by a higher standard...and that is what makes them more grievious. It would be like someone at Children Services raping kids would be looked at as worse than say a carnival bathroom.