As Mark Shea would say, “If only Episcopalians could marry…”

not getting near the coverage of the Lacrosse players….wonder why?

“Frank Lombard, associate director at the university’s Global Health Institute, was arrested Wednesday in Raleigh,” …. I bet he’s all for the MDG”s

I know the grace of Christ is enough for even this sinner, but I wish earthly justice were even more punitive.

“I’m not trying to score moral points at the expense of the Episcopalians and neither should you …
But what do you do if you discover that someone you prayed with, took Holy Communion with … turned out to be a Frank Lombard? … Do you issue a statement expressing your horror? … Or do you fall all over yourselves to pretend that your Frank Lombard never existed?”

Getting straight to the heart of the matter as usual, Christopher.

“ICUii”

I see you, small eyes.

I swear “small eyes” is a con name for a child molester, but googling isn’t helping me.

“I’m not trying to score moral points at the expense of the Episcopalians and neither should you. Search your own hearts. You know what evil has resided there in the past or resides there still. Certainly nothing to this extent but all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

St Alphonos Liguori put it more succinctly: “There, but for the Grace of God, go I”.

Follow-up thought: maybe — to stretch to give them the benefit of the doubt — the people at Church of the Advocate are busy erasing all traces of this man from their website because they want to make it clear that he is not *now* a part of their parish life in any way whatsoever — and they will issue a statement soon acknowledging his past role there while expressing their horror, publicly committing themselves to the welfare and security of the little boys, etc. For their own sake one would hope so. We shall see.

No triumphalism from this side of the fence, Christopher.

It’s a peculiarly nasty twist that he adopted these children, apparently for the sole purpose of abusing them, but that seems to be the pattern for paedophiles – men who marry women with young children to have access to them or men who adopt/foster children for the same purpose.

God have mercy on us all.

I hope so, Laura. I hope that the reason they erased Lombard’s existence so quickly was that they were so horrified about what happened that they wanted to immediately forget that they were ever associated with this man which is an entirely understandable sentiment.

Thank you for your balanced yet straight-to-the-heart-of-the-issue approach, Chris. This is so very much à propos for me right now, having in the last 48 hours discovered certain unsavoury facts – though nowhere near in this league, I have to say – about one of my most valued clerical colleagues (“someone [I] prayed with, took Holy Communion with, sat in vestry meetings with, drank coffee after the service with or attended church social functions with”) and being in something of a quandary as to what to do (it’s not clear whether his actions were illegal, but they were surely immoral). But if “everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”, then rather a lot of us are likely to be in trouble, and you’re right to remind us of that. Pray for a good outcome – God’s outcome – both in the situation you relate and in mine.

Why all the repressive shock and horror? From some of the latest garbage I have had the misfortune to have read, five year olds are “sexual beings” just like everyone else. And if adoptive-Pa can make a few bucks in the matter, so much the better. (Sorry. Must go find a screwdriver to remove my tongue from my cheek. Is severely stuck there.)

Two things –

1) Erasing this slimeball from the parish website WITHOUT posting an apology/explanation smacks of cowardice. There’s nothing wrong with taking him down – AFTER you’ve acknowledged that he *was* there, and has been officially removed because of his actions/words, which you do not support, condone, etc.

2) For once, I’ll stick up for TEC. IMHO, this kind of monstrous conduct has nothing to do any church affiliation – it’s a manifestation of evil. A person who would do these things is a true psychopath, and would behave the same whether in TEC, the RCC, LCMS, etc. What I will find more telling is how the parish deals with the matter in the days/weeks to come – as I note in item #1.

“ICUii”

I see you, small eyes.

I swear “small eyes” is a con name for a child molester, but googling isn’t helping me.

I thought the same thing and posted to that effect earlier on SFiF, but someone later posted that ICUii is not connected to pedophilia. You are correct that “short eyes” is a prison term for child molester.

Try Googling “short eyes” and you’ll get it on the first try.

If they only knew how much therapy this poor helpless child will need to even approach normal in this life, they would put Lombard away for life and should consider capital punishment.

And did you know there are those within the APA who are lobbying the APA to consider child sexual relations NORMAL. They should be shot dead by a firing squad for even considering such a thing.

The same month VGR was desecrated, the Kansas legislature entertained a bill lowering the age of consent for sex to 12.
Sick people, sick church (TEO) sick country (Obama is sponsoring Gay pride month). Identifying as ‘Gay’ is a disorder. These people should not be allowed to adopt children.

And by the way, before everyone here starts getting all worked up over the possibility of a Max. 20 year prison sentence (and whether or not that’s a good thing) if this guy is tried and convicted it won’t make any difference how long the sentence is. He won’t last more than a few weeks inside. You can take this to the bank, if he goes to prison he’ll be knifed or beaten to death (as was Fr. Geoghan) in no time.

Maybe this is one of those sins of others that the Episcopal Organizaton might want to apologize for?

“11:38 am: The Episcopal Church of the Advocate is busy erasing all traces of Lombard from their web site.”

They may have missed one item on the Church of the Advocate’s Children and Youth page. I could be wrong, but the top picture in the right sidebar has a guy that looks like the face in the “monster” link above.

Oh common you guys. If only he and his partner had been able to marry in church, he never would have gone in this peculiar direction. It’s so obvious that he is reacting to years of shame and stigma. We need to fight for true equality for gay men so that they are not driven to act out in this unfortunate way.

Bingo, Little Myrmidon. That’s the guy. I’ve been checking Triangle websites for confirmation of the guy’s connection to the parish. Nothing so far. But there he is.

The Church of the Advocate is a totally “social gospel, inclusive” place. It’s their mission. This is why a gay man with two adopted black children was there. They celebrated the image he presented, I am sure. This is not to say that they knew he was a pedophile. I assume they didn’t. But were these two children in the church nursery? Did no one notice anything unusual about the kids? They seemed perfectly normal in every way? Or did church people not focus because, after all, Frank and his children were so wonderful?

Myrmidon,
We could wish that were true, but it’s not. I have a neighbor who served 4 years for sodomizing at least 6 boys, including an 18 month old. He’s out and ready to offend again.

Coincidentally, I got my wife a plastic man-sized silhouette target for her handgun practice. She has three very tight groupings, head, chest, and…..lower. I was so proud of her I set it up in the back field where our new neighbor can see it every day.

Danby, I assume you’ve also alerted all the neighbors within sight who have sons? Four years in prison is not enough. Someone like that is a serious pedophile and my understanding is that they are seldom cured.

Much as I can understand the impulse to drop all ties to a child molester (as suggested by Mr. Johnson) a church in this situation should be all about offering what counseling and help they can to both the perp and his victims. It’s up to God to say “I never knew you.”

Of course, if the church is a “progressive” one that has forgotten the importance of grace, we should not be surprised if the church, presented with a henous thing like this, were to act in a legalistic manner and seperate itself as quickly as possible.

A Christian church would abhor the sin but at least try to save the sinner. The Church of the Advocate doesn’t necessarily qualify.

Wolverine

No triumphalism here, either. God help those poor kids!!!!

One of my (former) Episcopal priest’s favorite lines was “We live in a broken and sinful world.”

It is also true that we are “broken and sinful people” very much in need of the grace of God in our lives to heal and mend us.

We should be praying for Frank Lombard. He needs God’s grace and healing more than ever.

We should be praying for those two little children. They will need a lot of psychological/psychiatric counseling and treatment. They are also the wards of DSS in North Carolina. That is enough to make me pray for their safety. DSS means well, but their track record is not all that great.

We should be praying for the people in the Church of the Advocate, that they will not be blinded by defensiveness and that they will pray for forgiveness and healing in their pride and vanity.

And we should be praying for ourselves, that we not be consumed by self-righteous indignation so that we imagine ourselves better than we are. Yes, we may not be pedophiles, but we are still miserable sinners in need of God’s grace.

Kyrie eleison!
Christe elieson!
Kyrie elieson!

Wolverine,
I hope you are, like John Swift, writing satire. Obviously, a church cannot keep dangerous people in its midst. The idea that a church with children should harbor pedophiles is evil.

I could recommend that the priest visit Lombard in prison. That will be difficult once he’s transferred to DC, but he’ll probably be back to face state charges when they are filed.

The children will be placed elsewhere and never see the Church of the Advocate again, probably. The church will never know where they went.

I keep surfing Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill news sites. The silence about this guy is deafening. When other scandalous stories have hit, we heard what the accused ate for breakfast and what color socks they wore, pretty much. Think about the Duke lacrosse insanity. I don’t think this lack of biographical information about Lombard is because the news people have learned their lesson. I think it’s because as a partnered gay white man with black adopted children he suits their agenda perfectly, and they can’t bear to part with their rosy view.

I wrote a long-ish post that disappeared, but I feel a need to say this:

Perpetua, the church is filled with dangerous people right now, that would include you and me. While I don’t subscribe to “total depravity”, I do take seriously the fallen state of humanity, including myself.

In fact, I have known two congregations that “harbor” sex offenders, and other persons heavily involved in the criminal justice system. People keep an eye on their kids, but you know what: they should be doing that anyway. The church has rapists and child molesters in her ranks right now. Better the known, identified perpetrator.

And that’s true when you go to Walmart, too, by the way. The only true defense your kids have is you. The rest of us are here to help only.

It’s easy to get a visceral reaction to these things. I deal daily with the most heinous of sex offenders, but when one of them wanted to attend my parish, all that professionalism went out the window and it was “not around MY kids”. BTW, I don’t have children and had only one friend with a kid. But they were “my kids”. Anyway, we met with the priest and religius educ director and my guy laid out what he had done. The point is that the people who needed to know knew and he was watched while he went there.

If it’s any comfort, most sexual abuse occurs within the family anyway. Statistically, your kids are safer at church (or Walmart) than at a family reunion. Cold comfort, I know, but it’s true.

Once Lombard is through with prison/jail, either convicted and served his term or acquitted, then yes, FW Ken, he needs to be in church. Like every one of us, he needs God’s forgiveness. He’ll be forever identified and the church will need to see that he never works directly with children. But he is human, and in need of the Savior.

Katherine -

I have been to a couple of “Safe Child” seminars recently, which are mostly case presentations on child sexual abuse. They are never about same-sex abuse. One was men simultaneously abusing their daughters on webcams. The other was about teenage prostitutes – female – advertising on Craigslist and Backpage.

BTW, sex offenders are on MySpace, Facebook, and every other internet network you can name. Parents: watch your kids.

“The point is that the people who needed to know knew and he was watched while he went there.”

FW Ken, how do you determine the circle of people who need to know about a person of proven dangerous propensities? Everybody? Everybody with kids?

What do newcomers learn? Is a person like that assigned a minder?

I can’t believe that people at Church of the Advocate knew Lombard was a child-abusing monster. That means he successfully concealed it from his friends for many years.

JM: the same thing (at least those children weren’t his adopted offspring) applies to John Gallienne (also a sodomite) – who’s now the music-director of “St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church”, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. At his previous post at Kingston Cathedral, he molested a good number of children and was finally put in prison. The bishop of that cathedral said that he instructed all the churches of his diocese to NEVER allow Gallienne anything other than monitored worship; whereas he, after getting out on parole, got accepted at that most “liberal” of all “Anglican churches” of the nation’s capital (for crying out loud!!!).

There he’s supposed to be monitored to ensure he doesn’t interact with children; but, I’d far rather he, given his crimes, were imprisoned for life (or executed) than EVER to be let out under any conditions, PERIOD!!!!

FW Ken: If you do not mind me asking, what do you do for a living that would involve daily contact with sex offenders? Whatever it is, God bless you and support you with His Grace. I would be a completely unraveled basketcase if I had to do work like that.

JM –

Who should know is an interesting question, which I think demands a different answer based on the size and nature of the parish, and exactly what you are dealing with. Our parish has an ASA of 1900, and you certainly don’t want a general announcement. In a small parish, it might be different. Also, if the guy is on parole or probation, he likely won’t be allowed to participate in anything but worship services. I suspect the priest would arrange confessions outside of the scheduled times. In the case I described, Father requred he attend the Sat. evening Mass (no religious ed, mostly older folks), sit in his line of sight, and be on the property only during Mass times and a few minutes either end. This guy ended up coming to our parish only a couple of times, and I was there to watch him both times. He changed to a small charismatic congregation that has a lot of sex offenders and other folks with criminal background. We met with the pastor, went over his history, and I’m not sure what they did otherwise. I do know a parole officer and his wife go to church there, and he was alerted as well. If memory serves, I also let this guy go to a special program for folks with criminal backgrounds on one week night. I had one guy go to a large charismatic church. We met with the pastor, associate pastor, and a police officer who does security for them. That guy always went with a chaperone, got the cop to watch if he needed to use the bathroom, and so on.

diane – thank you for your words, although for my money, the biggest stars should go to folks who work in nursing homes. That’s just a personal feeling. I am a parole officer.

FW Ken,

Bad news — adults who sexually molest children can not be rehabilitated.

The Roman Catholic Church learned that the hard way. Their over emphasis on rehabilitation of the molesters at the expense of the children has been well documented.

Naivete about this is unacceptable in church leaders now. You need to re-direct your compassion towards the innocent children and focus on protecting them.

Perpetua:

I remember reading as much in a number of places. That in itself is an argument for capital punishment of those wretches (among many others!): much of our law-relaxation starting around 1750 was predicated upon the belief of people being salvageable. [Up to then, all you needed to do to be hanged, even as a child of eight in the UK, was to steal a handkerchief.]

Of course, that entire philosophy is based upon the assumption of Mankind being good – which is the furthest thing from the truth!!! [Genesis 8:21, Psalm 51, Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:23 and Matthew 19:17 ALL make it plain that Mankind is evil even from conception.]

You need to re-direct your compassion towards the innocent children and focus on protecting them.

Perpetua, with all due respect, how do you know FW Ken is not doing so?

Perpetua -

In what sense does your comment relate to anything I wrote? I said nothing about “rehabilitation”. And you really don’t have a clue about were my “compassion” lies.

Perhaps you feel grateful to God that you are not as these men are, but I prefer the old saw I learned in the Baptist Sunday Schools of my youth: there but for the grace of God go I.

Thank you, FW Ken. Perpetua’s comment rubbed me the wrong way, too, and it wasn’t even directed at me, LOL.

Thank God, the DC Police and the Feds for stopping Lombard. Pray that the child receives the love and support he will need to grow up strong and live in peace.

My name is Keith Smith. I was abducted, beaten and raped by a stranger. It wasn’t a neighbor, a coach, a relative, a family friend or teacher. It was a recidivist pedophile predator who spent time in prison for previous sex crimes; an animal hunting for victims in the quiet suburbs of Lincoln, Rhode Island.

I was able to identify the guy and the car he was driving. He was arrested and indicted but never went to trial. His trial never took place because he was brutally beaten to death in Providence before his court date. 34 years later, no one has ever been charged with the crime.

In the time between the night of my assault and the night he was murdered, I lived in fear. I was afraid he was still around town. Afraid he was looking for me. Afraid he would track me down and kill me. The fear didn’t go away when he was murdered. Although he was no longer a threat, the simple life and innocence of a 14-year-old boy was gone forever. Carefree childhood thoughts replaced with the unrelenting realization that my world wasn’t a safe place. My peace shattered by a horrific criminal act of sexual violence.

Over the past 34 years, I’ve been haunted by horrible, recurring memories of what he did to me. He visits me in my sleep. There have been dreams–nightmares actually–dozens of them, sweat inducing, yelling-in-my-sleep nightmares filled with images and emotions as real as they were when it actually happened. It doesn’t get easier over time. Long dead, he still visits me, silently sneaking up from out of nowhere when I least expect it. From the grave, he sits by my side on the couch every time the evening news reports a child abduction or sex crime. I don’t watch America’s Most Wanted or Law and Order SVU, because the stories are a catalyst, triggering long suppressed emotions, feelings, memories, fear and horror. Real life horror stories rip painful suppressed memories out from where they hide, from that recessed place in my brain that stores dark, dangerous, horrible memories. It happened when William Bonin confessed to abducting, raping and murdering 14 boys in California; when Jesse Timmendequas raped and murdered Megan Kanka in New Jersey; when Ben Ownby, missing for four days, and Shawn Hornbeck, missing for four years, were recovered in Missouri.

Despite what happened that night and the constant reminders that continue to haunt me years later, I wouldn’t change what happened. The animal that attacked me was a serial predator, a violent pedophile trolling my neighborhood in Lincoln, Rhode Island looking for young boys. He beat me, raped me, and I stayed alive. I lived to see him arrested, indicted and murdered. It might not have turned out this way if he had grabbed one of my friends or another kid from my neighborhood. Perhaps he’d still be alive. Perhaps there would be dozens of more victims and perhaps he would have progressed to the point of silencing his victims by murdering them.

Out of fear, shame and guilt, I’ve been silent for over three decades, not sharing with anyone the story of what happened to me. No more. The silence has to end. What happened to me wasn’t my fault. The fear, the shame, the guilt have to go. It’s time to stop keeping this secret from the people closest to me, people I care about, people I love, my long-time friends and my family. It’s time to speak out to raise public awareness of male sexual assault, to let other survivors know that they’re not alone and to help survivors of rape and violent crime understand that the emotion, fear and memories that may still haunt them are not uncommon to those of us who have shared a similar experience.

My novel, Men in My Town, was inspired by these actual events. Men in My Town is available now at http://www.Amazon.com

For those who suffer in silence, I hope my story brings some comfort, strength, peace and hope.

For additional information, please visit the Men in My Town blog at http://www.meninmytown.wordpress.com

[...] THE REST OF THE STORY– “What makes this story more than something to mention in passing, is that there is a [...]

No, FW Ken,

“I deal daily with the most heinous of sex offenders, but when one of them wanted to attend my parish … Anyway, we met with the priest and religius educ director and my guy laid out what he had done. The point is that the people who needed to know knew and he was watched while he went there…”

doesn’t cut it.

The parents deserve to know who the heinous sex offender is that you are allowing into their midst. I everyone in the church deserves to know this man’s past. If he is truly repentant, he will not object. If he is using your church to get to other children, then he will object.

And people who don’t want to risk having their children around him deserve to go find another church without any guilt trips from you.

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