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I'm Quaker and my wife Catholic so my four children have spent time in both communities. The only times I've later learned someone they were close to at some event was a predator was in Quaker circles. I'm not kidding. There are Quakers who don't want us talking about this stuff but we must.

Hooooo boy is this a conversation Quakers as a body CANNOT handle You bring up creeps and abusers and suddenly people who have never attended a social concerns committee meeting in their lives want to pretend any form of accountability is carceral and start preaching about not judging

I volunteered with my yearly meeting's youth programs throughout my twenties because I wanted to make sure someone had those kids' backs the way someone should have had mine and that's STILL not a conversation I trust the YM to have with any care for my heart

A half dozen FB threads this morning can attest to some very much not wanting this conversation. Sigh…

It's telling how many people find it easier to empathize with accused abusers than they do with survivors And I'm sure a lot of them thinking they're making the difficult principled decision, but if it was that hard, why do so many people do it reflexively

Modern Quakers have a surprisingly hard time with the problem of evil. We find it hard to say “no this is unacceptable” or “yes we will discuss this openly and transparency.” It makes accountability quite difficult.

And it makes us vulnerable to emotional manipulation from within. I’m pretty disheartened by recent examples.

I've been taken in at least twice by very charismatic sex abusers of children. One of them was a Friend. It's embarrassing and difficult to confess to others that I've been groomed secondarily and become a follower of someone who was practicing evil.