10472622?

This issue is a real consideration. In took a long time to start to expose Catholic clerics.

Yes, hiding inside and behind religion has to go.

This kind of info. Is knowledge USA citizens need to hear and react to.

Every denomination has pedos I would guess.

Their activity needs to be shouted from the housetops and stopped.

Not socially and legally accepted.

kestrel9

I'm not criticizing self professing Christians, but I do condemn child abuse, sexual assault, torture, child neglect, and child endangerment. Anyone laying claim to any self righteous mantel to justify carrying out these behaviors and crimes against humanity, is no less self deluded than a non religious pedophile who thinks that molesting a three year old qualifies as a "loving relationship".

2012 report

In this state, unlicensed religious homes can abuse children and go on operating for years. Almost 30 years ago, Florida legislators passed a law eliminating state oversight of children's homes that claim government rules hamper their religious practices.

The Tampa Bay Times spent a year investigating more than 30 religious homes that have housed children in recent years across Florida. Some operate with a religious exemption, legally regulated by a private Christian organization instead of the state. Others lost their exemption and operate with no legal accreditation at all.

  • State authorities have responded to at least 165 allegations of abuse and neglect in the past decade, but homes have remained open even after the state found evidence of sex abuse and physical injury.

  • The religious exemption has for decades allowed homes to avoid state restrictions on corporal punishment. Homes have pinned children to the ground for hours, confined them in seclusion for days, made them stand until they wet themselves and exercised them until they vomited...

kestrel9

For years the Florida Association of Christian Child Caring Agencies has listed its primary address as 2603 SW Brim St., a three-bedroom house in Lake City.

The agency's two full-time employees and two part-timers must process new applications and fan out across the state to monitor and investigate more than 20 Christian child care facilities.

Every year, association officials say, they check on the nearly 700 girls and boys whose parents have placed them in the homes. Many parents come to the homes in desperation, hoping religion or strict discipline can get their child off drugs or correct severe emotional problems.

"They've been through state-supported or state programs. None of the programs have worked for them," said Doug Smith, a former board member who runs Safe Harbor Maritime Academy with his wife. "And for some of these children, this is a last resort."

Parents who can afford it pay tuition that can reach $20,000 a year or more. Some must take out loans, dip into college funds, or accept scholarships provided by the homes. In addition, the state has paid more than $600,000 in McKay money to parents for use at FACCCA-accredited homes.

In Florida alone, unlicensed religious homes collected at least $13 million in 2010, according to available IRS filings.

Association leaders say they spend months vetting new homes. They visit multiple times and review a home's policies. They also are required by law to run a criminal background check on all employees. The head of the home must have at least a high school diploma and a few years' experience running a home.

There is no litmus test to determine whether a home is truly guided by religion. Morrow said FACCCA officials use their own judgment to determine that during inspections.

I doubt that people in general realize the lengths to which pedophiles will go to access kids or how well they maintain "spotless and exemplary" reputations in the fields of volunteering to help kids. Troubled kids are have been great targets for them over the years, though that's in part to either broken homes, and non-caring families.

The Department of Children and Families takes complaints made against unlicensed religious homes when someone calls Florida's child abuse hotline. And it sends workers to investigate potential abuse and neglect.

But in the nearly 30 years since Florida began allowing religious exemptions, state officials have never tallied up how much abuse was occurring at the homes they stopped regulating.

The Times, in the first effort of its kind, requested public records noting abuse complaints for homes currently or formerly accredited by FACCCA. It also reviewed emergency dispatch records, police reports and court records.

The records show authorities have been called to the homes hundreds of times over the past decade for everything from runaways to suicide threats to child abuse allegations.

DCF alone has conducted at least 165 investigations into the mistreatment of children.

Its investigators found evidence to support allegations in more than a third of those cases — 63 incidents at 17 homes with a list of offenses that include physical injury, medical neglect, environmental hazards, threatened harm, bizarre punishment, inadequate supervision, mental injury, asphyxiation and sexual abuse.

For example:

Among the cases DCF "verified:" a 16-year-old girl in Orlando pressured to perform oral sex on a counselor she considered a father figure.

Pedophiles are skilled in exploiting a troubled child's lack of a parent figure, or someone with trust issues, and becoming close to the child so that when the abuse happens, the child often blames themselves and not the 'kindly' father figure.

It's logical to believe that sexual abuse may be more prevalent then reported for that reason. And within certain Christian communities, a pedophile would find it easy to gain trust from the adults, as they may be more trusting and more easily charmed in general, by a pedophile who knows how to say all the right things.