Tag: sexual abuse

#ChurchToo: Sexual abuse victims ‘fed up’ with silence

March 2, 2018

Social media advocacy empowers survivors, pedophile preacher’s son says.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

For far too long, victims have been silenced.

Finally, they have an outlet to spotlight their painful ordeals.

That’s how Jimmy Hinton characterizes the social media movements — first #MeToo and now #ChurchToo — where sexual abuse survivors are recounting their real-life nightmares.

“Quite simply, millions of abuse survivors are fed up with the church protecting abusers while shaming the victims,” said Hinton, minister for the Somerset Church of Christ in Pennsylvania, who reported his own father to police when he learned the longtime preacher was a child molester.

Hinton is a certification specialist with the advocacy organization GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment). He cites frequent private messages he receives “from survivors who were either not believed by their church leaders or, worse, were humiliated, shamed and blamed for the abuse.

“These survivors are desperate to know that not all church leaders protect abusers,” Hinton told The Christian Chronicle. “Because they know my story, I think they feel safe to share their stories. Many of them are left confused because of how the church responded to their abuse, and some have a distorted view of God. #ChurchToo has empowered survivors to stand up to the churches that keep attempting to silence them.”

Read the full story.

This story appears in the March 2018 edition of The Christian Chronicle.

 

Sidebar: Expanded Q&A with Jimmy Hinton on sexual abuse in churches

Editorial: Sexual abuse is evil. Period.

Related: A child molester’s son shines a light (reporting from Somerset, Pa.)

Amid scandal, Baylor’s first woman president brings fresh start to Baptist university

June 27, 2017

Linda Livingstone has a history of bucking tradition.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

WACO, Texas (RNS) Two decades before she took office as the first woman president in Baylor University’s 172-year history, Linda Livingstone helped break down a different barrier in this Central Texas city.

Then and now, Livingstone — who first nurtured her Christian faith in a little white church building in small-town Perkins, Okla. — insists she wasn’t trying to make history but simply to follow God’s direction.

In 1998, as a business professor during her first stint at Baylor, Livingstone served as co-chair of Calvary Baptist Church’s pastor selection committee.

“I remember very distinctly that we were given the resume of Julie Pennington-Russell and her sermon tape,” Livingstone, 57, said in a recent interview on Baylor’s tree-shaded, 1,000-acre campus on the banks of the Brazos River. “I can remember I went home, and I listened very closely to her sermon tape, and I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s really good. She’s a really good preacher.’”

But Livingstone, whose Methodist upbringing familiarized her with female pastors, worried that Pennington-Russell’s status as the only woman candidate might be biasing her perception. So Livingstone, who first joined a Baptist church while playing basketball at Oklahoma State University from 1978 to 1982, listened to the tape again. She liked it even more the second time.

A majority of the congregation agreed, voting 190-73 to hire Pennington-Russell as the first female senior pastor in the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The decision, as Livingstone recalls, caused “wonderful families” to leave the church and drew protesters on the first Sunday that Pennington-Russell preached.

“It was controversial in the church,” said Livingstone, who left Baylor in 2002 to oversee the business school at Church of Christ-affiliated Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. “But I have to say it is one of the things that I’m most pleased to have been involved in, because she was absolutely the best person we had in the pool for that church at that particular time. She did amazing things in the church.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service whose media partners include The Associated Press, USA Today and the Washington Post.

‘The devil is smart,’ says minister working to protect churches from child predators

April 19, 2016

‘The devil is smart,’ says minister working to protect churches from child predators: Pennsylvania preacher Jimmy Hinton says the stories he’s heard have ‘taken an emotional toll on me.’

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

The sex, lies and videotapes don’t surprise Jimmy Hinton anymore.

“No surprise at all,” the Pennsylvania preacher said of the latest case to make headlines — this one involving an Oklahoma youth minister.

“The devil is smart,” said Hinton, minister for the Somerset Church of Christ and co-founder of the nonprofit Church Protect Inc. “We assume that the church is safe, that nobody could fathom abusing a child if they are a Christian. Child predators know this and take advantage of this false assumption.”

The Christian Chronicle first profiled Hinton in a January 2015 story headlined “A child molester’s son shines a light.”

That story detailed how Hinton learned that his preacher father, John Hinton, was a longtime child molester who had sexually abused young girls and escaped discovery for decades. The younger Hinton reported his father to police, and John Hinton is now serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence.

This story appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.

His dad was a preacher — and a pedophile

December 16, 2014

After discovering his father’s secret, Jimmy Hinton strives to create awareness of sexual predators.

First Place, Feature Writing, Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists

Second Place, Feature Article, Associated Church Press (a different story of mine won first place in this category)

Honorable mention (part of three-story portfolio), Magazine News Religion Reporting, Religion News Association

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

SOMERSET, Pa. — Jimmy Hinton grew up at the feet of the wolf.

For 27 years, his father, John Wayne Hinton, proclaimed the Gospel to the sheep of the Somerset Church of Christ — a century-old congregation in this southwestern Pennsylvania coal-mining community.

“I went into ministry because of him,” said Jimmy Hinton, 35, the middle child of 11 brothers and sisters.

But three years ago, the son — who became Somerset’s preacher in 2009 — learned a horrible secret: John Hinton was a longtime child molester who had sexually abused young girls and escaped discovery for decades.

Jimmy Hinton uncovered the truth after an adult molested as a child confided in him. The Holy Spirit, he believes, drove his response.

“I believe you,” he told the victim.

He reported his father to police and prompted an investigation that resulted in the pedophile preacher, now 65, pleading guilty to sexually assaulting and taking nude photographs of four young girls, ages 4 to 7.

While his father — inmate No. KP7163 — serves a 30- to 60-year sentence in Rockview State Prison, Jimmy Hinton works to help heal his home congregation and create awareness far beyond Somerset, a town of 6,300 about 75 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the January 2015 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Christians battle human trafficking in the U.S.

June 10, 2014

p18_dallasPD_0714

Part of a special package tied to the abductions of 270 girls in Nigeria.

Christians battle human trafficking in the U.S. (reporting from Dallas): Across the nation, individuals and ministries associated with Churches of Christ bring hope and freedom to victims. 

DALLAS — Think of Katie Pedigo as a modern-day abolitionist.

A Church of Christ preacher’s daughter who grew up to become an attorney, Pedigo wages a daily battle against sex slavery — in the heart of the Bible Belt.

It’s a fight that surprises some Christians.

“A lot of people think that if it’s sex trafficking, then it’s happening overseas, it’s happening in India or Thailand or somewhere else,” said Pedigo, executive director of New Friends New Life, a faith-based nonprofit that works to restore and empower victims. “So it’s important for us to realize that it’s happening right here, in every city in our country.”

Once known as Amy’s Friends, New Friends New Life grew out of a grassroots ministry that started 16 years ago when a woman in the sex industry became involved in a women’s Bible study at the Preston Road Church of Christ.

“The average age that a girl enters the sex trade in America is between 13 and 14 years old,” said Pedigo, who has a 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. “It’s not OK for your daughter, not OK for mine, to have to endure that trauma and the abuse that comes with that.”

Across the nation, individual members and ministries associated with Churches of Christ increasingly are taking up the fight to bring hope and freedom to trafficking victims, The Christian Chronicle found.

This story appears in the July 2014 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

From modern-day slave to slave for Christ

June 10, 2014

p17_moviephoto_0714

Part of a special package tied to the abductions of 270 girls in Nigeria.

From modern-day slave to slave for Christ: Chong Kim escaped captivity and became a crusader against human trafficking. 

Chong Kim had a secret.

She was pregnant, but that wasn’t her secret. Everybody knew about the baby. Her unborn daughter was what brought her to a Christian maternity home in West Texas.

She had worked as a prostitute, but that wasn’t her secret, either. She freely shared that part of her story, even seeming to enjoy the shock value.

But the young Korean-American feared revealing the full truth. Feared for her safety. Feared for her family’s safety.

No one at Christian Homes of Abilene knew about her abduction by a man she thought was her boyfriend.

No one knew about the untold hours she spent handcuffed and chained to a doorknob.

No one knew about her years-long captivity as a doped-up sex slave forced to perform countless tricks.

Certainly, no one knew that she struck a driver on the head with a stiletto heel and swiped a car outside a Las Vegas casino in a harrowing escape from a domestic human trafficking ring — a frantic effort to save her baby from being born into that lifestyle.

This story appears in the July 2014 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Stripping away the stigma: Ministries help women escape sex industry

May 12, 2014

Stripping away the stigma (reporting from Colleyville, Texas): Christian ministries help women escape sex industry.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

COLLEYVILLE, Texas (RNS) — The smoke, the loud music and the smell of perfumes trigger uncomfortable memories for Polly Wright.

But Wright ignores those reminders of her past as she and a troupe of women make their way to the strip club’s dressing room to deliver gift bags filled with fingernail polish, colorful earrings and handwritten notes with messages such as “I’m praying for you.”

The bags also contain tubes of lip gloss with contact information where dancers can receive help and support. A finger can cover the tiny print so a pimp or abusive boyfriend can’t see it.

“We are in there saying, ‘You are loved, valued and cherished, and you are not alone,’” said Wright, founder and executive director of We Are Cherished, a faith-based organization that regularly visits more than 50 adult entertainment venues throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Across the nation, dozens of similar ministries, such as Treasures in Los Angeles, Jewels in Salt Lake City and Beauty From Ashes in Fort Myers, Fla., provide emotional support and a potential way out for prostitutes and other sex workers.

Such organizations often partner with law enforcement authorities to identify and help the tens of thousands of women and teens who feel trapped in an X-rated industry that generates billions of dollars a year in profits.

This story was published May 12, 2014, by Religion News Service. The Washington Post published the story on its website.