Reporting Abuse

 

It is our moral, Christian duty to report abuse.

If you are aware of:

sexual abuse of children or adults in the church,
physical abuse of children or adults by employees,
financial abuse in the church

You are encouraged to contact the police and your local leaders. If you do not not get an appropriate response, or if you are fearful of reprisal, there are two ways to report.

 

One site is run by an independent Adventist group: Project Safe church. The advantage of this site is that you will be contacted and offered resources. This can be very helpful. This site is it does not go directly to the church lawyer but through a third party Adventist nonprofit committed to helping eradicate abuse. They will com-municate with you before making any further action (unless a minor is involved). The disadvantage is this site is there is an extra step before the church received the report.
 

For a completely anonymity site where you will not be contacted, you can reach the General Conference lawyer by going through the independent company hired for this job, NAVEX: https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/76151/index.html . Several Adventist entities are listed including many divisions, ADRA and the General Conference. Choose the entity that has the closest jurisdiction to your problem and then file an anonymous complaint. This is the best site to report financial abuse in church funds. They reach out to pre-appointed people against abuse outside the USA and followup. The reporter will not get any information or a call back. If the response of the local Adventist official is not appropriate, report again to the GC lawyer.

The NAVEX site has instructions for filing but cannot be easily accessed at the Navex home page. Some people who have used this site feel worried it is a misdirect and that their complaint was not accepted. However, the GC stated that they did receive the report from the independent company. You can get a number to verify followup but you will not be notified of actions taken.

Lastly, I would recommend contacting your conference lawyer. (In my conference this person was listed as the trust agent), but they acted very quickly. Again, you will feel like the response is neutral. They will not confirm any employees, they will not thank you for calling or verify that they will take action. However, laws in The USA are very strict and as lawyers they know they must investigate every report.

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If you are in a country where you do not trust the Conference, Union or Division to truly follow through, I suggest reporting to both the ethicspoint/Navex site and Project Safe Church.

It is always appropriate to call the police if you have evidence of child abuse.