Church Background Checks: The Undetected Sexual Predator

Are you confident that your church background checks will keep sexual predators from volunteering and having access to children?  You might answer “yes” but I would ask you if you are doing more than a criminal background check.

We can address the pitfalls with most church background checks, the reliance on cheap, incomplete criminal databases, but that is another article for another day.

The million dollar question is whether you are doing reference checks as part of your volunteer background screening program?  Do your volunteers complete a comprehensive application?

Our experience in working with and auditing thousands of church and ministry policies related to volunteer background checks that the truthful answer is “somewhat.”  What does that mean?

Many church and ministries have developed policies specific for volunteers that work with children that require reference checks.  However, the reality is that if you are trying to conduct reference checks via the telephone, then the process is time consuming, labor intensive and often generates very limited return on your time.

First, why are reference checks so important?

Would you believe me if I told you that 80% of sexual predators in the U.S, do not have a criminal history?  That is the sad reality.

There are a myriad of reasons some of the most violent offenders in our country are still walking the streets. That many undetected sex offenders are working as:

• Teachers

• Attorneys

• Youth Ministers

• Police Officers

• Youth Serving Programs

• All Professions

Or they are volunteering as youth leaders, youth coaches, or youth mentoring programs.

Sit back and let this soak in.  The majority of sexual offenders in the U.S. are operating among us every day.  We share an office next to them.  We pass them in the hallways.  We bump into them getting a cup of coffee.  Or even worse, we drop our children in their care and custody for practice.

The most common reasons for this are:

• The criminal justice system does not understand the victim of sexual assault. We are still a culture that is fond of victim blaming. “If you weren’t drinking…” “If you weren’t hanging out at…” “If you weren’t wearing…”

• Or the victims are so young that they have nobody to reach out for help considering the vast majority of sexual violence is perpetrated by someone known to the victim. 

As a former violent crime detective, I have heard all of  the excuses why this happened to the victim from fellow police officers, prosecutors and even social workers. I have also traveled all over the world working with communities to end violence against women and children. And in all of my travels, meeting tens of thousands of police officers, I have never heard a victim of a robbery, murder, or burglary become the target of the problem.  Nobody chastises a bank manager, victim of a robbery, for leaving their doors unlocked and allowing the public to walk in freely.

The criminal justice system prefers that our victims all fit into a category of Betty Crocker. Research also confirms that a victim is more likely to have their case prosecuted if they had not been using drugs or alcohol, did not wear anything promiscuous and did not engage in any kind of risky behavior.

• Society does not understand sexual violence. We believe that sexual predators are always strangers, who operate at night on the other side of town. Research confirms that more than 80% of sex offenders (4 out of 5) are known to the victim. They are spouses, former spouses, teachers, family members, neighbors, etc.

• Victims of sexual assault do not report the crime. There are a number of valid reasons a victim might not report the crime. Fear of retaliation.  Guilt for not fighting back.  The perpetrator is a care giver. 

• The criminal justice is less than “user friendly”. Victims have described the “interrogation” by the law enforcement as being as traumatic as the rape.

• The rapists is known to the victim. If I am a child, this might be my primary caregiver. Or I was told I would be killed for reporting. Or something bad would happen to me. Or I am dependent on them financially. Or they are in a position of power and will be believed over me.

• Trauma. The crime is so violent that I literally block it from my consciousness.

So how does this impact church background checks?

Significantly if you are relying exclusively on a criminal record check to keep sexual predators away from your children. You are the path of least resistance.

We can only block 20% of sex offenders from our organization with criminal background checks. And many of your criminal background checks will not even stop sexual predators with a criminal history because they rely on limited database searches or limit the scope of the search to 7 years.

We must adopt other screening procedures to detect the other 80% of sex offenders with no records.  One of the best screening solutions is the reference check. Communicate with people who know your candidates.

That seems so simplistic, I know. The problems with traditional phone-based reference checks is:

• We don’t have the time.

• We don’t have the resources to call 3 references on all of our volunteers.

• We can never get references to call us back.

• They take too long.

• The information provided is reduced to “name, rank and serial number” by corporate policies.

The great news is there is a way to conduct high quality reference checks, quickly, cheaply and without any labor.

What would you say if I told you that you could adopt a software system called RefLynk that completely automates the reference checking process?  And it costs less than a cup of Starbucks coffee. 

Not only does the software automate the process with text messaging and emails, it also automates all of the reminders and then assembles a complex report with colored graphs that are easy to consume.

Would you like to learn more about how RefLynk can transform your reference checking process?

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