AI Is A Gateway To The Welfare State
October 6, 2026 |
Keith Giles
Every few days, a new headline breaks. A new denomination. A new state. A new child.
And every time, the pattern is the same.
I want to walk you through what’s actually been happening across Christian denominations — not as an isolated scandal here or there, but as a system. Because once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. And once mothers see it clearly, they stop waiting for permission to protect their children.
The Southern Baptist Convention. The Catholic Church. Non-denominational megachurches. Independent fundamentalist congregations. Small-town community churches like Pawleys Island Community Church. Different names on the sign out front, same machinery running underneath.
In 2022, an independent investigation into the SBC uncovered a secret internal list of hundreds of pastors and church workers who had been accused of sexual abuse — a list that had been kept quiet for over a decade by the very leaders responsible for oversight. When the list was finally made public, it named hundreds of credibly accused abusers. Survivors had been asking for a public database since 2007. As of last year, SBC leadership walked away from finishing that database altogether — years of survivor advocacy, and the institution simply decided it was no longer a priority.
The Catholic Church’s pattern of relocating known abusers is so well documented at this point that it’s become dark comedy — the “just move him to another parish” joke isn’t really a joke. It’s a documented, repeated practice: a predator gets accused, the diocese quietly transfers him, and a new congregation — new families, new children, no idea what they’re walking into — welcomes him with open arms. He gets a fresh reputation and a fresh set of victims who don’t know to be afraid of him yet.
And that same mechanism — reassignment instead of removal — shows up in Baptist churches, in non-denominational churches, in churches with no denominational oversight at all. A youth pastor gets accused in one town. He resigns “for personal reasons.” He resurfaces two years later leading a youth group two states away. Nobody warned that congregation. Nobody was required to.
This isn’t incompetence. It’s a system, and it runs on a few consistent parts:
Redemption theology, weaponized. The idea that anyone can be forgiven is core to Christian faith — and I believe in grace. But these institutions have twisted grace into a liability shield. “He’s repented. He’s been restored. Let him back into ministry.” Redemption becomes the excuse for reinstating access to children, not a reason for lifelong accountability and boundaries.
Institutional insurance, not child protection. Many of these organizations carry sexual abuse liability insurance — policies built to manage the financial and reputational fallout when abuse happens, not policies built to prevent it from happening again. The existence of that insurance tells you something: leadership expects this to keep happening, and has planned for the cost of it, not the end of it.
Character witnesses for predators, not protection for victims. I’ve watched congregants take the stand — or write letters to the court — vouching for the “good man” they know, while the child who was harmed sits without that same chorus of support. Churches will mobilize a small army to defend a beloved pastor’s character. That same mobilization rarely happens for the child.
Silence dressed up as discretion. At Pawleys Island Community Church, the pattern spanned two decades — a convicted sex offender given access as a volunteer, a prior youth director situation handled internally instead of reported — with leadership offering explanations instead of accountability. This is what “we’ll handle it in-house” actually looks like. It looks like decades.
And now, legal cover. This week, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled unanimously that clergy are not required to report child abuse learned through confession or confidential religious communication — and that it’s the church, not a judge or jury, that gets to decide what counts as “confidential.” The case involved a father who confessed to abusing his children three separate times to LDS leadership. No one called the police. The court sided with the church. This is not a hypothetical anymore. This is precedent.
Every layer of this system does the same thing: it protects the institution’s reputation at the cost of a child’s safety, and then it silences the person who was harmed.
Victims are told to forgive quickly, to not “cause division,” to consider how their story will affect the church’s witness to the community. They watch their abuser get sympathy, second chances, and sometimes a pulpit — while they get told to keep their pain private for the sake of unity. That’s not accountability. That’s institutional betrayal, and it re-traumatizes a child a second time, often for years, sometimes for life.
And every time an institution protects a predator instead of reporting him, it isn’t just failing one child. It’s handing that predator a new congregation full of children who have no idea what he did to the last one.
Not because every pastor is a predator. Not because every church covers things up. But because the structures — the reporting exemptions, the insurance policies, the redemption theater, the character witnesses, the culture of internal handling — are consistently built to protect the institution first. And when push comes to shove, again and again, across denominations, across decades, across states, that structure chooses the institution over the child.
If the church won’t advocate for our children, we will.
We don’t need permission to ask hard questions before we let our kids anywhere near a youth group. We don’t need to feel guilty for wanting background checks, open-door policies, and public accountability before we trust an institution with our babies. We don’t need to stay quiet to “protect the church’s witness” when our child’s safety is on the line.
Ask who’s supervising the youth pastor, and how. Ask what the reporting policy actually is — not what they say it is, but what’s on paper. Ask what happens when an allegation comes in. Ask if there’s ever been one. Trust your gut when something feels off, even if everyone around you is telling you the man in question is “such a good guy.” Predators are often exactly that — likable, trusted, above suspicion. That’s how they get access in the first place.
Talk to your kids early and often about their bodies, about boundaries, about which adults get to be trusted with access to them and which don’t — regardless of title, regardless of robe, regardless of how many people vouch for him.
And when a church chooses the predator over the child — walk away, and tell other mothers why.
Our babies do not owe their safety to an institution’s reputation. They deserve better than “we’ll handle it internally.” They deserve mothers who stopped waiting for the church to protect them, and started doing it themselves.
We are not the ones who need saving from. We are the ones who are done being silent.
