Through studying churches that have experienced abuse and particularly child sexual abuse trends or personas have begun to form based on the ways that the church handles abuse and the policies to prevent it. It is not uncommon that a congregation may have multiple personas in dealing with the topic.

1. The Ostrich
2. The Outsourcer
3. Pet wolves
4. Old friends’ network
5. Truth silencers
6. The Redemption story
7. The vigilant

The Ostrich
The Ostrich is a congregation that chooses not to be aware of the times. This is not out of malice, but rather not knowing where to start, or a belief that since they are a faith organization, everyone they interact with is incapable of such evil. It is also very common with churches that adopt the ostrich technique that due to where the congregation is located and because of no prior history, no need is seen to implement plans to help protect and/or prevent abuse in their congregation.

The Outsourcer
Outsourcers are churches that outsource the responsibility of child protection to a third party. A very common example of this is the exclusive use of background checks for those dealing with the youth of a congregation. No other policy or practices are put into place. The safety of the congregation is outsourced to a mechanism used to identify those who have been caught, not those who have not yet been caught.

Pet wolves
Wolves are wild animals. One can attempt to domesticate them but any attempt to do so with only four hours of effort a week is destined to fail. Congregations that will chaperone known offenders are attempting to domesticate a wolf. This is often done with only a handful in the congregation aware that a wolf is present. This is a deception by those in the know and poses a greater threat because of how we as Christians have been trained to treat our fellow churchgoers. When we see a pet wolf in public, we are often unaware that they are indeed a wolf leading to opportunities for interaction with our children while we are unaware of the risk.

Old friends network
The old friends’ network is very similar to the pet wolf. The main difference in the old friends network is that the wolf originated from within. In order to protect reputations and maintain friendships and offender is hidden by their network leaving the broader congregation at risk.

Truth silencers
Truth silencers are those who are so bold to believe that they must be the public relations firm for The Almighty God. In reality these individuals are not too different than the old friends network. The main difference being they work from a different angle which is slightly more insidious. Truth silencers are the ones so bold to approach someone who has endured abuse and state that if they speak up about what happened they are a gossip and are opposing God. No law enforcement allowed, no requests for justice, if so you are to be labeled as wicked.

Redemption Story
The redemption story persona is one that is leveraged to show how much an individual has changed often in an extremely short period of time. Due to the quick turnaround this individual is put on a pedestal due to the miracle that occurred in their life. The unfortunate reality of this persona is that often the praise, pedestal, and pressure become too much and the object of redemption crumbles. It is at that time other personas take over to protect the one on the pedestal.

The vigilant
The vigilant congregations are the ones that have a policy in place, have all employees review and sign it annually. They regularly train those who work with the youth on the signs to look for regarding grooming. These congregations have a policy of how to deal with convicted offenders that ensures that they are unable to see the children of the congregation at all. These are the congregations that in the event of an incident will both announce from the pulpit and send in writing to current and recent former members what happened. Vigilant congregations do not investigate, they invite law enforcement to do what they are trained to do. Vigilant congregations will do what is required to have the appropriate counseling provided. Vigilant congregations then ensure that the survivor is protected and have a zero tolerance policy on retaliation. The vigilant expel the wolf from their midst.