Since the mid-1990s, Kendall United Methodist Church has required two teachers to be in each Sunday school class for children, said Mary Susan Ward, the congregation's minister of Christian education.
Background screenings are conducted for all paid staff and many volunteers, she said.
Despite measures like this, clergy abuse cases continue to surface.
A Southern Baptist minister, Fernando Garcia, made 26 videotapes of himself abusing numerous children before an 8-year-old boy came forward in Greenwood, S.C., two years ago. He recently began a 60-year prison sentence for sexually abusing 23 children.
Closer to home, Boca Raton Rabbi Jerrold Levy was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison for having sex with a 14-year-old boy he met over the Internet.
The United Methodists have a case before the Florida Supreme Court to resolve whether the denomination can be held accountable for a volunteer at a Pensacola church who allegedly sexually harassed a female staffer.
And just recently, police in South Florida accused two non-Catholic Christian leaders of sexual misconduct.
Last month, Miami police arrested the Rev. Misael Castillo, 41, the pastor of Iglesia Bautista Jerusalen in Allapattah, after officers said they found him naked inside a parked van having sex with a 17-year-old boy. He was charged with having unlawful sexual acts with a minor and released on a $15,000 bond. Castillo will be arraigned May 6.
Castillo has resigned from the church, said the Rev. David Cleeland, executive director of the Miami Baptist Association, a 280-church organization to which Iglesia Bautista Jerusalen belongs.
In January, youth pastor Monte Vaughn Benjamin of the nondenominational A Place Called Hope was charged with molesting two boys, 17 and 14. He has pleaded not guilty and a trial date is set for May 13.
Benjamin has told church leaders he is innocent. He has been relieved of duties until court proceedings and the police investigation are final, according to a church statement. You had to combine three or 4 different religions to get the same quantity of abuse cases as the RCC alone!
And not ONE sentence of these people being shuffled off to another church where they can continue their perversion.
Not ONE sentence where the local Bishops hid their perversion.
Not ONE sentence where these people were allowed to continue in the ministry, all were removed from the ministry, including the one who plead not guilty.
4 of 5 of these you cite in this article were arrested, 2 of them serving time for their perversion, with 2 more facing trial, name ONE RCC scandal like this where ANY Priest is facing charges without his Bishop trying to hide his perversion!
Name ONE Catholic Scandal like this where any of that can be said. You cannot, that is why it is easy to point out the outrage, that is why it is easy prey for the media, that is why I say to leave that religion, your leaders are letting pedophiles molest your children!!
Do you get aroused by hearing about the misery of other religions? It's kind of sad in a way that you profit off the abuse of minors, with the glee you have as the Catholic Church has its problems.
I believe one item you may fail to factor in is important.
How do you know that a person who ministers in one denomination and is found to be an abuser and run off does not wait awhile and cross the country and find another small denomination to minister to and gets run off there and on and on?
Since the there is no Central Registry for ministers in most denominations and the number of denominations would preclude checking them all,if they did,what confidence can you place in the integrity and purity of your ministers?