Pastor Pleads Guilty to Abuse

You've seen that headline over a thousand times. Somewhere around the 1,742nd time you see it, you just get a small pain in your gut, murmer "how awful," and go on to the next news story.

Then, on the 1,743rd time, the pedophile is someone you knew. Your age. A peer. Someone the church you grew up in hired after you'd left for college. Someone you saw when you came home for holidays.

A young man who helped your church acquire a magnificent pipe organ. A gifted musician. Someone who played the hymns at your mom's funeral.

Someone you ate dinner with at Clyde & Alice's house.

A good actor. No doubt about it. A great actor. An actor who spearheaded your church's effort to stage "A Christmas Carol" as a gift to the community. And, what a staging it was, too! He transformed your sweet but ordinary fellow paritioners into such convincing actors.

Someone your good friend had a bad feeling about. Ah, but he was such a good actor. Nobody listened to her. How could she be so suspicious of this wonderful young man?

A man who eventually left your church under something of a cloud. Someone who never should have been allowed to work with kids again.

The 1,743rd time you see the headline, you weep.

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/693302.html