Reducing the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse in Your Church: A Complete and Practical Guidebook for Prevention and Risk Reduction

Child sexual abuse strikes children from every social background, race, and age. Often it occurs in settings where children or youth completely trust adults – homes, schools, camps, athletic and park programs, and most sadly, the church. Child sexual abuse can happen in any church – INCLUDING YOURS. A profound legal and moral obligation exists to reduce the possibility of child sexual abuse from ever occurring. The purpose of this book is to help you make your church a safer place. It will assist you to: safeguard the children and youth of your church from sexual molestation, protect church staff and volunteer workers from potential allegations of sexual abuse, and limit the extent of your church’s legal risk and liability due to sexual abuse. This book provides a rationale, policies, procedures, sample forms, and an implementation strategy that your church can use to create a sexual abuse prevention plan. Reflecting a unique blend of information and guidance, the book is organized into three distinct parts. Enlistment: How to motivate key leaders to initiate and support a prevention program in your church ~ Policy Information: How to create policies and procedures ~ Training and Implementation: How to develop an implementation strategy and a training program for church workers. It is suggested that the entire book be read through once to get the big picture, then individual chapters can be used according to your needs.