December 12, 2017 Show with Michele Rickett on “A Victim’s Victory Over Child Abuse Through the Power of Jesus Christ”

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December 12, 2017: Michele Rickett, President & Founder of “She Is Safe” & coauthor with Kay Marshall Strom of: “FORGOTTEN GIRLS: Stories of Hope & Courage”, who will discuss: “A VICTIM’s VICTORY OVER CHILD ABUSE Through the Power of JESUS CHRIST”

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.
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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 12th day of December 2017 and today we have a returning guest on our program to tell us quite a moving story, a disturbing story about her own life, her own childhood.
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We are going to be discussing a victim's victory over child abuse through the power of Jesus Christ.
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Our guest to do that today is a returning guest, Michele Rickett and Michele Rickett is president and founder of She is
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Safe. She's also co -author with Kay Marshall Strom of Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back for the second time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Michele Rickett.
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Thank you so much, Chris, for having me. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is
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ChrisArnton at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
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Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the
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USA. But if this is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking, and of course a subject matter like this would automatically lend itself to the possibility, a very strong possibility, of people wanting to ask personal and private, very private questions, well, we will grant your request to remain anonymous.
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But other than that, if it's not a personal and private question, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence when you email us a question at ChrisArnton at gmail .com,
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ChrisArnton at gmail .com. Well, before we go into the subject at hand,
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I would like you to once again let our listeners know about She is Safe, the organization that you founded, and also something about the book that we discussed the last time, since there are new people joining the
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Iron Sherpins Iron Radio audience every day, so tell us something about the Forgotten Girls as well,
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Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage, which is the book I mentioned. But let's start with how and why and when you founded
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She is Safe, and what led to that, and more details about what exactly you do with She is
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Safe. Well, great. It really is all connected to a very personal journey for me.
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It was about 15 years ago that we founded She is Safe, and my husband and I were missionaries before that, living in East Africa, and I had just a wonderful family.
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We have two beautiful daughters. I had a great sense of purpose and joy in partnering with God's people there to share the gospel, and then
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I became aware, as so many people have of late, on the issue of modern -day slavery.
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I had never heard of it before. This was really in the mid-'80s when we were living in Kenya, and I learned that girls were often kept home to work, marry or be sold.
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I remember looking into the eyes of a little girl, and I had been trying out my best Swahili on her, which she did not understand because she was from a remote tribal area and had been brought in to the big city of Nairobi.
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She was about, I would say, between 9 and 11 years old, and the lightbulb finally went on over my head.
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This child is a slave. And wow, my own story came rushing in at that moment, and the
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Lord just seemed to say, you know, you needed a rescue, and I gave you one. You needed a new identity and a new family.
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Now what are you going to do for these children of mine? And so that became the seed from my broken heart about these girls, and then learning so much about, you know, the majority of the world's 40 million slaves in the world today are female, with a very disturbing trend toward younger girls being trafficked.
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Ninety -eight percent of all sex slaves are female, and those realities really drove us.
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My husband was involved in founding also. We now have 21 people on staff. We prevent, rescue, restore women and girls from abuse and slavery in seven countries right now.
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We look for the busiest human trafficking corridors, the places where girls are likely to be sold.
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So last year, we intervened for 17 ,918 women and girls in the seven countries.
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Yeah, wow is the word. I never would have dreamed when I was standing there, you know, with this seed coming into my heart, that it would blossom into this much effective work, and our greatest work has been in prevention.
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So we partner with the Indigenous Church on the ground with women who grew up under these abuses and have transcended true
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Christ and have just a passion to see these girls free from abuse and free to become the women
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God created them to be. So it's an exciting and redemptive work for me and for a whole lot of people.
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We have thousands of people nationwide who partner with us and to people who become advocates and volunteers and staff, and that's how we'll grow and that's how we'll shine the light for every girl in every dark corner of the world.
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Our deep desire was to understand, you know, what are the root causes of abuse and slavery of so many women and girls.
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And so Kay Strom and I, Kay was a founding board member of She Is Safe and a very dear friend, and I would tell her some of the stories of the women and girls that I was encountering in our work, and she kept urging me, you know, we need to write a book together.
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And the Inner Varsity Press immediately responded to our proposal and the first book that we wrote together was called
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Daughters of Hope, and it retained the bestseller list for IVP for four years.
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And then they came back to us and said, that first book was wonderful. It was the stories of women helping to understand how, you know, they transcended and what happened in their lives and how we can help them.
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We'd like a similar book about girls. And so the book Forgotten Girls won their
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Reader's Choice Award and has done really well as an ambassador. I consider it an ambassador for these women and girls.
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They cannot speak for themselves. This is a hidden industry that silences its victims, so they need many ambassadors.
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And the book Forgotten Girls did a great job. Kay and I traveled the world to interview hundreds of girls to help us understand what are the root causes of abuse and slavery so that we can attack there at the big picture and hopefully fell this giant that seems to be looming over every community in the world.
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Well, anybody who wants more details on SheIsSafe .org, that is the website,
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SheIsSafe .org. And you can also listen to the previous interview that I conducted with Michelle Rickett and Kay Strom at IronSharpensIronRadio .com,
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IronSharpensIronRadio .com. And in the top right -hand corner, when you go to that website, you will see a selection for Past Shows and in parentheses,
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Podcast. That is our archive. You can click on that and you will have a search engine there that you can type in anything you want.
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And if you type in Rickett, R -I -C -K -E -T -T, I know for certain that is the only person that I have ever interviewed named
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Rickett, so that is an easy way to find our interview, Michelle Rickett and Kay Marshall Strom discussed in further detail the book
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Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage. And also, they discussed
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SheIsSafe in further detail. So you can listen to that interview at your leisure when this program is over.
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But today, in fact, I only found this out really. I believe it was when we were off the air when the program was over.
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Something that is quite remarkable about Michelle Rickett's testimony and Michelle, if you could tell us specifically why you had such a burden on your heart to found
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SheIsSafe, because it is really, obviously as you have told us, was motivated by your testimony.
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Right. Well, I did not grow up in a Christian home. My parents
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I am sure did the best that they could, but they had some very dark problems.
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And we children, I have a younger brother and I have an older half -sister. For most of our very early years, it was like a war zone in our home.
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Our parents were alcoholics and very violent. And my dad was also a pedophile.
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So when I was about 12 years old, I really felt like I was losing my mind.
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And I spent so much time in hiding. I was hiding in closets and boxes and we had woods behind our house, any way that I could to be invisible.
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And I loved being invisible so much that I began to have thoughts of, you know, just doing away with myself permanently.
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And I was a child. So you can imagine I had problems besides the hiding,
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I was failing to thrive. So I was a very, very underweight child.
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And it was because every waking moment I was in fear that I was going to be hurt again.
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And so when I told my mother I really needed her to protect me from my dad, she was so horrified.
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I remember that night, there was a terrible fight. And within a very short time, my memory isn't exact, being just a 12 -year -old, but within it seemed like just a week or so, my mother packed my older sister and they disappeared.
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And I didn't really see my mother again for 15 years. She left you with your pedophile father.
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Yes. Yeah. And that is remarkably disturbing. It's pretty disturbing.
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I will say, I love saving this part for the last, but we had a wonderful reunion 15 years later, just out of the blue.
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My husband and I were preparing to go overseas as missionaries, just before the
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Africa experience. And this woman called me and said, I'm your mother, I have found you, and I would love to come and visit you for the weekend.
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And there at my kitchen table, I was able to offer her the deepest forgiveness that I could with the
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Lord's help and ask her the hard question, what were you thinking when
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I told you what Daddy was doing and you left? And she gave me the incredible gift of understanding.
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That's one of the most important things I think a person can have if you're on this journey toward forgiving others as Christ forgave you, is understanding.
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She had her own story to tell of her childhood, but she also said, you know, when
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I heard that, I knew he was capable of anything. And I lost my mind.
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She said, I just, it was a fight or flight thing, and I knew I had to get out of there. And so she took my older half -sister and took her to her father and then, you know, just punished herself for 15 years.
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So there at my kitchen table, you know, we had this wonderful moment of understanding each other, forgiving each other, and it wasn't long after that, my mom accepted
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Christ at my kitchen table. She came for the weekend and stayed seven months. Wow. Yeah, so it was, oh, that's the full circle on the story, but in the gap, you know, that from 12 years old until I entered high school, things were really getting bad.
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My dad was a young executive. I mean, he looked great. He looked smart.
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We lived in a beautiful home. And I was terrified that when
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I told someone, they left and they didn't believe me. So there was no point in my trying to tell anyone what he was doing to me.
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And then he was sinking into depression because, you know, his family had unraveled, and I think he had a lot of self -loathing, and he was an alcoholic.
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So he stopped eating and just drank. So it was just horrible.
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And over those years with his abuses, I thought no one could tell anything was wrong.
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I tried really hard to look normal, but I had a friend at school who asked me some thoughtful questions, and she just out of the blue asked me what my dad was doing to me, and I was not prepared for the question.
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And I told her a little something, and she said, you know, he can't do that to you.
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That is illegal, and we've got to get you out of there. And I thought, well, you don't know daddy.
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You know, he had so intimidated me that I didn't believe I'd ever be free of him.
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But she meant what she said, and she told her mom. Her mother called the school counselor.
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Within a day, I was rescued from the home because of that courageous girl who really cared about me.
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And how long after your mother left was that? About, let me see, about four years.
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So it was a very dark four or five year period that suddenly changed because of one child speaking up for another child, and then all the adults that took action.
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And you might think, well, you know, you're free at that point.
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Everything should be all right. But I was placed with the family who called the school, so thankfully they allowed me to live there in a foster situation until I could graduate high school.
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But I was nowhere near back to normal. You know, I needed so much renewing of the mind from so much brokenness.
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And so there were what I call everyday heroes all along my life path. I could write a book chapter by chapter of the courageous and caring people like my friend, like her parents, you know, and the mentors that I have had since then that have really done the heavy lifting of helping me to be renewed in my mind and my life and heart.
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So I know you may have said this already. It may have just slipped by my mind, but how young were you when your father started sexually abusing you?
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It was actually from my earliest memory. I remember being a preschool child, and I was an early riser, but I would stay in bed until I heard other voices in the household because I knew
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Daddy would do uncomfortable things to me. So this man had, you know, a fixation with children, and I'm sure it was not just with me.
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There were some other questionable incidents with other kids. Nothing I could, you know, prove, but my mother said, oh yes, when he and I were dating, he and his friends would go see prostitutes and he would always ask for a child.
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Wow. Your mother was dating him? Yes. So she knew about this?
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Yes. And I'm sure they just assumed it was a quirk or something.
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Who knows? What's going on in people's minds, where we know now pedophilia is, this is something that's almost incurable, and something goes off in the mind of a human being that they prefer children, even if they know they're hurting children.
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They prefer that to being with an adult. Now, why on earth did your mother marry him?
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I mean, did she tell you, because that is an obvious question, I don't know if you've asked it, but why on earth did she follow through and marry him knowing this?
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Well, I do think, you know, this was many, many years ago. I don't think there was the revulsion about all different kinds of, what, indiscretions of men and boys concerning women and girls.
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It's just like, boys will be boys, and so she thought that they would have a normal marriage,
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I'm sure. But they were, you know, they both had their issues when they came together. They were very young.
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My mom was 16 with her first marriage, and I think 19 when she married my dad, and she was 16.
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They both, at that point, were already drug and alcohol dependent. So I do think that the drug and alcohol introduction into the family life early on, that that allowed both of them terrible liberties.
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You know, it takes away the inhibitions, and people do things they wouldn't if they had the positive peer pressure around them that they,
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I would have hoped they would have. You know, as a young couple with children, my dream always was that they would have met some nice Christian families who could have introduced them to Christ and helped them deal with their issues in different ways.
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But of course, it's just a dream. Yeah, so if I'm figuring out the timeline correctly, for the first 16 years of your life, which may have even gone back to infancy for all you know, because it's as far back as your early memory can recall, you were molested by your father.
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Was this like a weekly thing, an everyday thing? It was extremely common, and as I got older, it was much more sophisticated.
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So when I was really little, it was just opportunistic and appropriate touching.
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And then as I got older, he would literally arrange for us to be alone together, send everybody out on an errand and say, you know, that I was grounded.
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And then it became much, much more intense and terrifying. I mean,
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I was watching him lose his mind and be drunk in the middle of the day, and then
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I knew that would mean trouble at night, because he would crash in a stupor and then kind of prowl at night.
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And I could almost see him wrestling with himself. And then finally, it would overtake him, and he would have to come and abuse me.
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So it was quite a horrible cycle for a child to grow up under.
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And I really did think he, at a certain point, he showed me a gun because I told him,
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I can't live like this. I'm going to have to tell someone and get out of here. And so he showed me a gun, and he said, you know,
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I don't want to live anymore. And he said, but the first thing I'd do is blow your head off, and then I'd kill myself.
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And I believed him. He was crazy enough to do anything. Wow. So what was the relationship like outside of those horrifying experiences?
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Did you have any fondness for him or attachment to him as a father?
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Well, certainly not in the normal sense, but it's a very weird relationship when you love your abuser, because I wanted my daddy's approval, and I wanted a normal dad, and I kept hoping that he would straighten up.
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You know, he could be a really charming person. He was very neat and meticulous.
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I mean, he had some great qualities. He could be funny sometimes. And I think back on those moments and how
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I would hold on to those and think, oh, that's the dad I want, you know, the dad I want him to become.
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And it was just, you know, I describe it as, you know, he had more than one tiger by the tail, and those tigers just devoured everything he ever would have hoped for.
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This was not the man he wanted to become. So, you know, I'm heartbroken over the dad
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I didn't have, but also for this man. He died when he was 42 years old, and he died of complications from alcoholism.
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I'm much older than 42 now, and I think, oh, what a shame that life was just tossed away because the enemy of his soul really just bound him up way early and kept it going.
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And when he died, did you feel exuberant joy?
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Did you feel remorse? Was it a mixed feeling? I can't even imagine, since I can't even imagine being in a situation like that, my own experience is so foreign to that,
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I can't imagine what it would be like then, subsequently, how I would react after that person were to die.
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Right. Well, I did live in fear that my dad was going to come and get me. As long as he was alive,
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I was terrified. After I graduated from high school, my paternal grandmother came from Michigan to Georgia, the
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Atlanta area, and came for my graduation and then took me with her to live in Michigan.
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And I remember being relieved that there was that distance between me and my dad. Then when he passed away, he was buried in Michigan.
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And, wow, that really brought a lot of the terrible memories back, and I was not a believer.
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I just didn't have the resources at that point to handle it at all.
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So my recurring nightmare, even after he died, was that everyone had told me he died so that I wouldn't worry anymore.
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But I would, you know, I'd round a corner and there he would be, this monster who could, you know, enslave me again, and I could never become free of.
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So it took a while to really believe that he was gone, and I didn't have to be afraid that he was going to, you know, get me.
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Well, we're going to take our first station break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is
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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
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I think it would be very wise of you if you could call anyone that you know during the station break who may have gone through similar experiences to this, or someone that you know that needs to hear this program, somebody that you know that you are extremely convinced would benefit greatly from hearing this show.
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God willing, we are going to be right back after these messages with more of Michelle Rickett and her victory over child abuse through the power of Jesus Christ.
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And we are back now with our guest, a really moving story,
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Michelle Rickett, who is president and founder of She is Safe. And she is also co -author with Kay Marshall Strom of Forgotten Girls, a story of hope and courage.
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We are discussing today her own personal testimony. A Victim's Victory Over Child Abuse Through the
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Power of Jesus Christ. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Before we go to any of our listener questions,
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I do have to ask you, Michelle, your explanation of not only the lack of venom and vengeance and burning hate toward your father is impressive enough, but even that you would rejoice to see your mother who abandoned you with your pedophile father for 15 years, and that not only would you agree to meet with her, that you would rejoice over doing so and receive her with open arms and extend forgiveness to her.
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It is absolutely breathtakingly remarkable to me. How did you draw upon the ability to do that?
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From what did you or from who did you draw upon to have your ability to do that? Or did it seemingly come naturally?
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Did you not even have to put thought into it? Well, my real thanks goes to a wonderful mentor that I had.
37:34
So I had received Christ and shortly after that was married to a wonderful Christian man.
37:44
And in our new life together, we began attending a church, and there was a woman there who just noticed that I was new and alone, and she befriended me and began to speak into my life the amazing truth from the
38:05
Word of God. I knew just enough to be born again, but I didn't know anything about my
38:12
Heavenly Father really, or the Bible was a big book of mystery to me.
38:17
I thought it was 66 books of commandments, you know. And she introduced me to the heart of a
38:25
Heavenly Father. And I think on the one hand, because my father was such a frightening monster to me, that God could not be anything like that.
38:37
He had to be a total opposite. And so in a way, it was easy for me to receive that God was good and that He would be the
38:47
Father to me that I needed. That was my friend, you know, my mentor. Her name was
38:52
Anna. Anna was also a little tough with me. I wanted to just curl up on her lap and have a new mom, but she said, you know,
39:03
I may not be with you, but for a short time we're not promised more than today.
39:09
So whenever we get together, and we did that for every single week,
39:15
I would go to sit at her kitchen table, and she'd take out the Bible, and as I would reveal a little more about my life, she'd say, you know, you have some very hard questions that I didn't have.
39:26
She said I had wonderful parents and have never been through much trauma, but she said,
39:33
I know this, that God preserved your life and your sanity to this day, that He was with you all of the time.
39:42
And you didn't see Him, but He was with you. And so she kind of opened up my imagination to go back to those dark days and remember when
39:52
I thought I was hiding and I was alone. I can remember many times when I would just, as an ignorant child, say, oh,
39:59
God, please help me. My parents are going insane, and I don't know what to do.
40:06
And it was an ignorant prayer, but it was real. And then she would say these remarkable things like, did you realize that you can minister to people that I could never reach because you have insight.
40:21
You really have been under the direct and specialized training of God to be at work in His venue.
40:28
I didn't know what any of those words meant, but in them you can hear this person, this mature
40:36
Christian woman, speaking sort of a prophetic word into me that only came true many, many years later when
40:44
I was a missionary in Africa. So she would take my hard questions and teach me how to search the
40:52
Scriptures to get them answered. That would be my homework week to week, to use a concordance, to begin to understand how to handle the
41:01
Bible properly. So I was holding it in context and really trying to understand what the original meaning was before I leaped to applying it to myself.
41:12
And we got to a certain juncture in this discipling relationship where she said, you know,
41:18
I just feel like you're probably not going to grow much more in your faith until you can come to the point where you can forgive your parents.
41:29
And believe me, that was a struggle. I thought that, of course, they had to come forward and apologize first.
41:36
And she said, oh, no, this isn't for them. This is really for you. So you can be released from the things you were mentioning,
41:43
Chris, the anger and the bitterness that she heard in my voice. And so I took a long time and prayed about it and then wrote down a list of things that I knew needed to be forgiven from my dad and from my mom.
41:59
And then by faith I said, Lord, best I can, I am going to write forgiven in the way that you've forgiven me.
42:09
I'm going to forgive them. And then I burned those pieces of paper up. And then, you know, as a
42:14
Christian you hope you did what you meant to do, forgave, but it was not until that day when
42:22
I picked my mother up at the bus station, and there she is standing in front of me. I remember thinking, wow, this is not the time to decide whether or not you can forgive someone.
42:34
I'm so glad that I had done that long before. And that's why it was easy for me.
42:41
Well, not easy. Nothing's easy about this story. But it was what I wanted to do.
42:47
I didn't really tell you that the way that I came to faith, the boyfriend that I was dating now, my husband of 45 years, introduced me to his mother, who was a godly, lovely
43:02
Christian woman. And she accepted me like a long -lost daughter, opened the door of her home and her heart to me and the door to the gospel.
43:11
That's what I wanted for my mom, is for her to have a place where the door would be open and she could see and experience acceptance and forgiveness.
43:23
And that's what I have permanently now, you know, by faith in Christ over these years.
43:30
Well, praise God. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, sorry for joining the conversation late, but I was wondering if your father had molested other children in your family, if there were any.
43:49
And I was wondering if your mother knew about the molestation that was occurring with you.
43:58
I don't know that my dad molested my half -sister.
44:05
I don't think so. She has a very strong personality, and pedophiles really do choose their victims well.
44:12
And he was not attracted to boys, so my younger brother was not assaulted as far as I know.
44:21
And I do not believe that my mother knew until I told her.
44:28
Because he was a very smart man. Even though she knew before they were married he was a pedophile.
44:35
That's right, yes. Was it that she just couldn't dream he would do it to their own biological children?
44:41
Well, and it was never obvious. He would never do anything when anyone else was around.
44:50
And then, of course, when she left, it was just free for all. Thank you,
44:59
C .J. and Lyndon Hurst of Long Island. Keep spreading the word about Iron Trump and Zion Radio there on Long Island and beyond.
45:05
We have Mel in Shelby, North Carolina. And Mel says,
45:12
I work a lot with inner -city children in ministry.
45:18
I suspect that the home life of many of them is similar to what you experienced. What kind of questions are appropriate to ask in order to know how to pray for them and even to find out if urgent help is needed in some cases?
45:33
Thank you for being willing to talk about these experiences in your life. Praise God for His grace and salvation.
45:40
That's an excellent question because, as you probably know, Michelle, unfortunately, there have been innocent people who have been arrested and have gone to trial for child molestation.
46:00
And it turned out later in some of these cases that it was proven that the accused was innocent and that the child or children were manipulated by psychologists or others who were planting thoughts in these children's minds and putting words in their mouth that they never would have had there to begin with if it were not for the manipulation of the interviewer of the children.
46:26
And I'm sure you've heard of that, I'm assuming. Right. So Mel's question,
46:32
I think, is very valuable about what kind of questions are appropriate to ask in order to know how to pray for these children that he works with in ministry and in order to find out if they need urgent help.
46:48
Obviously, you don't want to be putting a thought in a child's mind that they never even thought of before.
46:54
Right. Well, I do like, for that reason, to work with groups of children because you know in the mix of a group of, say, 20 children, you can talk about the fact that their body is a sacred gift, that no one has the right to hurt them, that if anyone is hurting them, here are the steps that you can take to get the help that you need.
47:19
So when it's in a blanket like that, the kids, it really applies to, you know, at least they have the offer that this is an issue that's on the table and if I'm in trouble,
47:35
I know now that I could go and talk to my teacher or my counselor, in this case the ministry worker, you know, who works with inner city kids.
47:43
So I like the group presentations on stranger danger and kind of broaching the subject in an age -appropriate way that there are people who do hurt children and we have to look out for each other.
47:59
One of the things that we do, and she is safe, is we are able to get in public schools in developing countries and offer the children 10 tips to safety and a hotline for help.
48:15
So, and I think any child who asks for help, it has to be investigated. You know, you don't assume that, of course, the person they're talking about is guilty, but it does have to be investigated.
48:30
Well, thank you very much, Mel in Shelby, North Carolina. Keep listening to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio and spreading the word about the program in North Carolina and beyond.
48:43
This kind of issue, one has to wonder, and I know it's going to be affecting people in all sorts of negative ways because people are people, people are individuals, we are not cookie cutters of one another.
48:59
And having been molested yourself, are there reoccurring nightmares and difficulties living a normal life, even, dare
49:11
I ask, sexually in a marriage and so on? What kind of horrible repercussions has this kind of thing had?
49:20
Because I know that with other people, it would be a different story, and maybe you know of other specific cases that you can tell us about anonymously if need be, not bringing up the name of the individual you're talking about.
49:32
But tell us about that in your own experience and what you know of others. Well, in my experience, because I had such a radical faith experience and I really did have the opportunity with a discipler, a mentor in my life,
49:55
I think that worked wonders for me, the introduction of the word to renew what
50:02
I thought about a Heavenly Father and myself as a young woman in the world and relating with my husband.
50:10
For me, I think the recurring issue has been that penchant for hiding.
50:17
So when things get tough, I tend to withdraw, and it's a spiritual battle for me to be courageous and bold.
50:29
That's why it's a constant prayer of mine, Lord, don't let me slip back into what I learned as a child.
50:36
It's not hard to do that and dress it up and make it look very Christian. I was able to hide behind my husband's very kind and comfortable shadow and let him take all the risks until that moment when
50:50
God tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, what are you going to do about this? So I would say for myself it's that hiding issue, and it took me many years with my very patient husband to believe him.
51:07
I kept waiting for the other shooter to drop, that he was going to get angry with me and hit me or have an affair or any number of terrible things that I could think in my mind, and he was so consistent.
51:21
He was so loving and normal, and so he was an easy man to trust.
51:27
Not every person who's been abused as a child has these advantages that I've had, and so they struggle much more than I have had to.
51:38
But I do believe, you know, I love 2 Corinthians 1, 3 through 4, that the
51:44
God of all comfort is the one who comforts us in our affliction so that we'll be able to comfort others who are afflicted with the very comfort that he's given us.
51:57
So if we see, if we look back on our abuses and try and understand,
52:02
Lord, out of the ashes of this abuse, will you redeem it, then we have a different project than just holding on by a thread as a survivor.
52:14
Rather, we can have a redemptive cause. Lord, this is yours now, and I want you to take what's left of my life and honor yourself, and I'm not going to hide.
52:26
I'm not going to hold back. That's when, for me, the real transformation began, when
52:33
I began to live out those words of my mentor, Anna, that I had been under a very specialized kind of training.
52:41
Once I began to minister to others out of the comfort I had received, I began to understand myself better.
52:50
I always thought I was a melancholy, shy person, and I came to realize, oh, my goodness,
52:57
I love people. I love to laugh. I have leadership skills.
53:03
I have a lot of passion here to work with. All of that was tucked away as long as I curled up as a survivor.
53:10
Now I'm more than a conqueror through Christ, and I would say to anyone who wonders, you know, can
53:17
I ever have a full and abundant life in Christ, given all that I've gone through, a resounding yes.
53:25
God is a redeemer, and he loves to take that which seems impossible and make it not just possible to hold on but to actually thrive.
53:38
Amen. And we have to go to our midway break. It's a longer break than normal because of Grace Life Radio, 90 .1
53:44
FM in Lake City, Florida, who has a requirement of a 12 -minute break between our two hours.
53:50
If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.
53:57
Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Michelle Rickett and more of her testimony on how a victim of child abuse had victory through Jesus Christ.
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Iron Sharpens Iron One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.
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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every
59:36
Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio.
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www .wlie540am .com
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We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions.
59:55
Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon
01:00:00
Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am
01:00:09
I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,
01:00:16
I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a
01:00:22
Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.
01:00:29
We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
01:00:37
That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.
01:00:44
We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
01:00:57
If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.
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You can call us at 508 -528 -5750 that's 508 -528 -5750 or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our
01:01:14
TV program entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org
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that's ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor
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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patty Jennings at CBBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.
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Todd and Patty specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.
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That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.
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Their website is CBBBS .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patty work in service to you, the
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That's CBBBS .com. Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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And you can call CBBBS .com at their toll -free number, 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.
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And if no one answers, call the next day between 10 a .m. and 4 .30 p .m.
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And once again, I want to remind you that everything in the store, in their inventory, is 10 % off, not only their regular prices, but 10 % off even those things that are already discounted.
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And on top of that, as I mentioned earlier, if you purchased $50 or more worth of merchandise, you will get for free the book
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That's a $14 value, absolutely free, by purchasing a minimum of $50 worth of merchandise from CBBBS .com.
01:03:45
And before I return to our conversation with Michelle Rickett on our theme,
01:03:55
A Victim's Victory Over Child Abuse Through the Power of Jesus Christ, I have some important announcements to make, including the upcoming
01:04:05
G3 conference that's being held in Atlanta, Georgia, January 17th through the 20th.
01:04:13
And this is being held at the International Convention Center there in Atlanta.
01:04:20
And the 17th begins with a Spanish -speaking edition of the conference in the daytime.
01:04:27
And then, in the evening, there is a debate, which will be in English, between Dr.
01:04:34
James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and a Muslim apologist, and I will get you details, more details on that as soon as possible, as far as the
01:04:43
Muslim apologist's name and the topic they are debating. And then, from the 18th through the 20th, the
01:04:50
G3 conference will remain in English. And the theme this
01:04:55
January is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. The speakers this
01:05:02
January include Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.
01:05:07
Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, Justin Peters, and Stephen Nichols.
01:05:21
The G3, if you're wondering, stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. And if you would like to register, go to G3conference .com,
01:05:29
G3conference .com, and please, I urge you, I beg of you, please let them know if you register or if you're merely contacting them for more information, please let them know that you heard about the conference from Chris Arnsen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
01:05:45
Also, now is the least comfortable or the most uncomfortable, depending upon how you want to look at it, part of the program for me today.
01:05:55
That is the part of the program where I have to beg you for money because we are in a very serious and desperate situation financially.
01:06:03
We are truly, realistically, on the very brink of going off the air because of our financial problems.
01:06:11
If you love this program and you don't want it to go away, if you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpenzironradio .com,
01:06:22
ironsharpenzironradio .com. Click on Support, and you'll be given an address, a mailing address, where you can mail a check made payable to Iron Trip and Zion Radio for any amount that you care to mail.
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You can also make the checks payable to Cruciform Media, but Iron Trip and Zion Radio is obviously a lot easier to remember.
01:06:42
Now, as I try to always remember to remind you, never ever siphon money out of your regular giving to your local church in order to support
01:06:51
Iron Trip and Zion Radio. And never take food off of your family's dinner table if you're struggling to make ends meet because providing for your family and providing for your church are two very clear commands of God in the
01:07:04
Holy Scriptures. Providing for Iron Trip and Zion Radio is obviously not a command of God.
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But if you are blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands and provide for your church and home, and don't siphon any money out of your provision for your church, then please consider donating to Iron Trip and Zion Radio as much as you can and as often as you can.
01:07:28
And if indeed you love this program, you look forward to it every day, either live or on a podcast, or if you just love to go to the archive and type in subjects, and you have really benefited greatly from the topics and guests that we have addressed on this program, then please donate to us.
01:07:48
Please don't let us go off the air if indeed that is your wish for us to remain in broadcasting.
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If you want to advertise with us, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:08:04
and put advertising in the subject line, whether it is your church that you want to advertise, your business, your professional practice, such as a law firm, a medical practice, a chiropractic firm, a dental practice, whatever it is that you want to advertise, a special event.
01:08:23
As long as whatever it is you're advertising is compatible with the theology expressed on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, we would love to help you launch an ad campaign with us because we truly could use your advertising dollars.
01:08:39
And that email address, once again, is chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:08:45
and put advertising in the subject line. Now we are back to our guest,
01:08:51
Michelle Rickett, president and founder of She is Safe and co -author with K.
01:08:56
Marshall Strom of Forgotten Girls Stories of Courage, Stories of Hope and Courage, and she is discussing a victim's victory over child abuse through the power of Jesus Christ.
01:09:07
If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:09:14
and as always, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
01:09:21
USA. And only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. And we do have an anonymous listener, once again,
01:09:28
Michelle, who says, I don't know how much of an expert you've become on the subject of pedophilia.
01:09:36
Just because you are a victim, I know that it is not absolutely certain that you would do the necessary study and research to become an expert on the field in general.
01:09:47
But I was wondering if you knew what the percentage was of victims of child abuse who actually become pedophiles themselves.
01:09:57
Is this more common with male victims who become predators themselves later in life?
01:10:06
And did you ever have that fear in your own life of that happening? Well, you're right.
01:10:13
I'm not an expert on pedophilia and I don't know the statistics.
01:10:19
I can tell you I'm fairly certain that something happened to my dad when he was a boy.
01:10:26
Certain things that he said that awakened some kind of perversion when he was quite young.
01:10:36
And it's always difficult to walk a perversion back, you know. What's normal doesn't seem so exciting.
01:10:43
So I really can't speak to the stats. I can tell you that there is a very strong connection between being sexually victimized and becoming a victim as an adult of human trafficking or sex slavery.
01:11:03
Most of the prostitutes, there was a survey that was done of prostitutes and something like 98 % of them said, you know, yeah,
01:11:14
I guess I chose this path. If they're an adult, they may not see themselves as victims but they said, yeah,
01:11:21
I did this but it really all started when I was a little kid. So something happened to the soul of a little child and as they go on into becoming a teenager and an adult where they feel like, well,
01:11:37
I'm already ruined. So I guess I'll just do what this person wants and you tell me
01:11:43
I can make money that way. So that's the tragedy to me is that not only do you suffer as a child but we know the most vulnerable victims of trafficking in the
01:11:56
United States are runaway teens and foreign nationals. Others can be victimized as well but the vast majority are those in that demographic and they say the runaway teen is generally, not always, but generally fleeing an abusive situation at home or in a bad foster situation and then within 48 hours of their being on the street, they will be contacted by a recruiter or a trafficker.
01:12:26
Wow. Well, thank you Anonymous and we have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania and Susan Margaret wants to know, let's see here.
01:12:41
Oh, she says, isn't it important to distinguish between pedophilia and pederasty when we are talking about other people who may have been guilty of pederasty especially because there may have been more easily a mistaken identity situation where you have a male thinking that a teenage girl is actually an adult later to find out that she is under legal age, which is absolutely foreign to the pedophilia situation which is an unnatural craving for prepubescent children.
01:13:25
Aren't there differences? And this also goes into the factor of teenagers themselves that may be involved in sinful activity including sexting on their cell phones and then may have to pay an enormously high price as being forever labeled a pedophile even though that one of the participants, if not both, were teenagers themselves.
01:13:53
So I guess the question is, is it important to kind of parse that out as I understand the question?
01:14:03
For instance, an 18 -year -old boy who has a 16 -year -old girlfriend and he's sexting her and he gets discovered that he's doing that and he gets arrested or something and he has this sign hanging around his neck for the rest of his life that he's a pedophile when he was just within not many difference of years in age and it seems like a horrible consequence.
01:14:30
Now, obviously, I don't think our listener, nor am I, trying to condone teenagers or anybody else doing that, but it seems like an overreaction in that kind of a circumstance.
01:14:41
Yes, definitely. You know, there are degrees of, we're not talking about degrees of sin here, but just there are degrees of offense, let's say.
01:14:56
If someone doesn't use good judgment and they're 18 or 19 years old and they start going out with a 15 -year -old and, you know, they get busted on a technicality.
01:15:09
Actual pederasty, though, is the sexual activity involving a man and a boy. So, that's kind of the textbook.
01:15:17
Oh, that's never with a man and a teenage girl? It's always a boy? Well, as far as the, you know, textbook definition of pederasty.
01:15:28
So, as I was saying, there is a, and which is pedophilia, right?
01:15:36
If it's involving a boy, anybody under the age of 18 cannot consent.
01:15:43
So, if an 18 -year -old is dating a 15 -year -old, it still is in that range of, well, you know, it's inappropriate.
01:15:52
And if she's trafficked, even if she consents to being used by other people so that he can have some money, it's human trafficking.
01:16:02
So, there, you know, we just have to be, I guess, descriptive and clear in every case.
01:16:10
You hate for somebody's life to be ruined because they made a terrible choice as a teen.
01:16:17
On the other hand, you know, as a society, we want to come out really strongly against all these ranges of offenses.
01:16:29
Well, thank you, Susan Margaret. Keep listening to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio and keep spreading the word in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania and beyond.
01:16:37
We have, let's see here, we have
01:16:43
Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, what are major signs that we should look out for not only in our congregations, but in our families and normal everyday life when we encounter children that they may indeed be victims of child abuse, especially sexual abuse, and how do we go about responding to this, not wanting to falsely accuse and bear false witness against our neighbor, which could have really horrendous consequences, legally and otherwise, to the person who is accused?
01:17:24
Yes, well, as I mentioned in my own story, I had some behaviors that if people were paying attention, and obviously some were paying attention, that were indicators that something was very wrong.
01:17:38
Because I was hiding, because I was not eating, I was failing to thrive. There were bruises.
01:17:46
I had lots of bruising from being held against my will.
01:17:53
I was very timid, and it's difficult.
01:18:01
I mean, we all want to have our eyes wide open to protect children everywhere. And so that's really important.
01:18:08
If you see something unusual, I mean, we have to ask the question, you know, what's going on with this girl or boy?
01:18:18
And then, as I mentioned earlier, I think we should make it our mission to make sure that every kid in the
01:18:26
United States understands that no one has the right to hurt them or hold them against their will, and that they can cry out for help, that people will listen to them.
01:18:37
I think we need a real concerted effort when it comes to child abuse, which is it's a very hidden crime, and the victims, like myself, are silenced, we're intimidated, we're told we're going to be shot, or if we tell someone, they will be shot, their family will be destroyed.
01:19:00
So I'm all about protecting the victims and getting things into the light of day to talk about, let's investigate.
01:19:07
If a child is showing these signs, you know, somebody has to have the courage just to ask the questions, without being accusing, but just saying, you know,
01:19:16
I'm just worried here, something does not look right, I wish someone would look into it.
01:19:22
That's very different than, you know, barging in and saying, I've got to rescue this kid, I know something's going on.
01:19:29
Yeah, and I'm assuming that you're talking about, if you're in a church, going to an elder, pastor, deacon, and not,
01:19:38
I'm assuming that it would be a very wrong thing to say, well, like, for instance,
01:19:44
I believe that there would be a huge difference between saying, I think that you should talk to John or Susie's parents, because there's something troubling that child, and I think that we have to really do some more digging, because there may be something wrong with this child, and then immediately saying, without any knowledge, you know,
01:20:12
I think that little Johnny or Susie is being molested by somebody in their family or something.
01:20:18
That would be an inappropriate thing, the latter, wouldn't it? Because you're automatically, you're really bearing false witness if you go to that extreme, aren't you?
01:20:27
That's right, because we really don't know. What we can say is, I'm seeing bruising, this child has radically changed their behavior, they're not eating well, something's going on, let's get at the root causes.
01:20:40
So you kind of get the conversation rolling without making any, because it may not be somebody in the household.
01:20:46
It could be a neighbor. It can be an uncle or a grandfather, you know, or a family friend.
01:20:52
So you don't want to lay blame at anyone's doorstep, but you do want to get this kid some help and get it into the light of day.
01:21:00
And I'm assuming that when it comes to a neighbor, if you're witnessing something,
01:21:05
I mean, it depends on what you're witnessing, but if you're hearing screaming that's beyond what you would normally hear, because you typically hear, in the best of homes, screaming going on with children in the house.
01:21:18
Right. But if you were to call the police, what would you suggest?
01:21:24
I mean, obviously, these circumstances are different, they're not all the same, but how would you begin speaking to the police when you call them if you are really worried about the safety of somebody and you're in the house next door or down the block or whatever without unnecessarily accusing someone falsely?
01:21:47
Right. Well, for one, you know, you're looking for serious signs. So, all kids get bruises from time to time and they're usually happy -go -lucky and they, you know, move on.
01:22:00
That's very different behavior from a child being routinely abused. And, yes, if you are going to call the authorities,
01:22:09
I mean, you better be fairly certain that this is really a weird situation and somebody needs to look into it.
01:22:18
I was very grateful that the mother, you know, I had told a child, basically a teen, what had happened to me.
01:22:27
She told her mom. Her mom contacted the counselor at school thinking that was the first line, which
01:22:34
I thought was really wise, because then the counselor could talk to me and see if that's what
01:22:41
I did say and if it was true. And then she warned me. She said, you know, we can confirm whether what you're saying is true or not and we'll have to have medical exams.
01:22:56
And, you know, but if it is true, I'm telling you, you're going home over my dead body.
01:23:03
So she was both kind of put the fear into me if I was lying, if I was making this up, they would find out.
01:23:10
If I wasn't, she was on my side all the way. And then she contacted the
01:23:15
Department of Family and Children Services and they have professionals, social workers who were able to confirm.
01:23:23
And then I did have medical exam and saw a professional psychologist all within just a couple of days.
01:23:31
So I think there's a, you can see an appropriate chain where you're really trying to discover what's going on and it kind of escalates from one point to the next, to the point in my case that I was taken out of the home.
01:23:47
We have to go to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, now is the time to do it before we run out of time.
01:23:52
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01:24:00
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Safe and co -author with Kay Marshall Strom of Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage, and our discussion on a victim's victory over child abuse through the power of Jesus Christ.
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Now we are returning to our final 25 minutes of today's program with Michelle Rickett, President and Founder of She is
01:33:59
Safe and co -author with Kay Marshall Strom of Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage.
01:34:05
We are discussing Michelle's testimony today, a victim's victory over child abuse through the power of Jesus Christ.
01:34:14
And Michelle, I would like you, before we move on to any listener phone calls,
01:34:22
I'm sorry, listener emails, I should say. We used to take phone calls on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, but now we take listener emails.
01:34:28
If you could give us a summary of what you believe every person listening can do to help.
01:34:43
I mean, nobody's going to be infallible in this, nobody's going to work miracles with this, but what you think they should be most on the lookout for and what they can do the most to help reverse the tide of sexual molestation of children.
01:35:04
Of course, we would love to see it completely eliminated, but that, of course, is probably not going to happen until Jesus Christ returns.
01:35:11
Of course, it will definitely happen after that. But if you could, give us some of your thoughts before we move on to any more listener questions.
01:35:21
Yes, I appreciate the opportunity to help people, first of all, become more aware.
01:35:29
You know, if you have a normal background and there's no abuse in your background and all of your friends, you know, treat their children well, it's easy for us to get lulled into sleep and forget that there are many children who are suffering today.
01:35:47
So, raising awareness is extremely important and, of course, you've heard the saying, if you see something, say something.
01:35:57
We don't want to be alarmist. We don't want to assume that every kid is being hurt, but we do want to be certain that we're not ignoring some warning signs and not, you know, giving the opportunity at least for the discussion to begin.
01:36:13
I do think we also, these are very difficult times that we live in.
01:36:22
I think children are being exposed to more sexuality than ever before.
01:36:28
Once you give a kid a cell phone, a smartphone, the entire world can accost them.
01:36:35
And so we, because of the times, we need to be much more vigilant to protect our own children from being assaulted.
01:36:45
I was rather surprised. I spoke to a group, I have a speaking ministry in retreats and churches and missions conferences, and I was speaking to a group of teen girls, they're 13, in a middle school, or I'm sorry, a homeschool group, and I was talking to them about girls overseas who are being abused, and one of the girls said in front of all the others, you know,
01:37:15
I wish that the boys were here who are in our class at school, in our homeschool group, because they tell us that they are addicted to pornography.
01:37:28
These are kids from Christian families in a homeschool group who are saying they feel addicted to what they're seeing.
01:37:37
And when you kind of dig into that and ask, well, how did you get involved with this, they were doing homework, looking up things on their phone, and they were accosted by these images and then kind of drawn in, and then they felt like they had nobody to talk to.
01:37:56
So those kids are being abused. You know, we may not see it as a physical abuse, but once you accost the brain of a child with sexualized images, it does change the physical brain almost like a drug addiction, and kids just are not equipped to do anything about that.
01:38:19
And so much as we like to, you know, think that our kids are not involved in things like that and we want to protect them from even talking about it, we have to talk about it.
01:38:32
We have to let our kids know that things like this do kind of pop up on your computer or your phone, and the best thing you can do is come and talk to me about it.
01:38:44
You're not in trouble. If that happened to you, it's just, I want to talk to you about how to handle this.
01:38:51
So helping to get it on the table. You know, I've had several churches that have said, you know, oh, we don't know if we want you to come and talk about human trafficking or abuse because we don't want our children, you know, to have to think about such things.
01:39:07
And I'm sorry to tell you, in this day and age, they're already being assaulted.
01:39:12
There's in all likelihood they're seeing things that you don't know. And that's the most important thing
01:39:19
I think that we can do is begin to get the subject on the table in an age appropriate and not a frightening way with children, but to let them know these are realities and we want to help for them to deal with it.
01:39:35
And then, of course, I'd love to, as I mentioned, the group presentations in schools and Sunday school classes and homeschool groups, to go ahead and talk to kids about, you know, how sacred their body is and everyone else's and that there are people who would like to hurt that and defile it and they have no right to.
01:39:55
And we can give them recourse. So we do prevention and recourse.
01:40:00
This is what you can do, the steps that a kid could take to get the help that they need. John in Bangor, Maine wants to know, do you have an opinion on what stage or age in a child's life their computers should become off limits to the parents?
01:40:21
I'm not meaning by that that there would be never in an emergency situation a reason to start viewing the content that your child has been viewing and what kind of social media your child has been interacting on.
01:40:38
But what I mean is that the regular standard practice in the home would be that you wouldn't be snooping into your child's computer activity and give them more privacy and respect that more in their lives than you would if they were younger.
01:40:56
Is there a certain age or would you think that this is a child -to -child situation?
01:41:04
Well, my feeling is until, you know, this person is an adult, they're living in your home.
01:41:13
They are, you're probably paying for the internet service. It really is your internet service.
01:41:18
It's not theirs. They don't have a right to use it however they will. And I wouldn't slip in and sneak and look at anything.
01:41:27
I would let them know right up front, everything you're looking at, I can see. And there are,
01:41:34
I don't have them off the top of my head, but there are services that you can pay that basically give you a ping and tell you what's going on with any computer in your household.
01:41:47
So I'm a little more hard -nosed about it. I don't think that kids should be left to their own devices.
01:41:54
And there are very few 18 -year -olds, you know, 17 -year -olds, 16 -year -olds, certainly not, who have full discretion and who don't need protection.
01:42:07
That's why, you know, in law enforcement, if you draw a child into a sexual experience, anyone who's under the age of 18, that's considered human trafficking.
01:42:22
That's how serious it is for a child to be unattended by a caring adult.
01:42:29
So I go all the way to 18. And I think that there is very little reason, unless somebody can come up with a situation, that would violate the rule.
01:42:45
But I don't even think that there's a legitimate reason why spouses should not have access to each other's email and so on.
01:42:54
And perhaps they should even share the same email address or whatever. But there's so many marriages that are in conflict and in divorce because of the private lives that people have on the
01:43:06
Internet. And they develop crushes and flirt with and fall in love with, quote, quote, total strangers that they encounter on the
01:43:15
Internet. And they don't even really know who this person is. They could even be getting duped by someone who is of the same gender as them and, you know, look nothing like the photograph they're seeing or whatever is going on.
01:43:28
But isn't the lackadaisical attitude towards privacy on the
01:43:35
Internet a dangerous thing? It really is. I mean, we were created to live in community.
01:43:43
And part of the reason for that, from God's eye view, is that we all need accountability.
01:43:50
The more transparent we are with each other as spouses, but even, you know, with our family members and friends, the better we behave because we have this positive expectation from people who love us that they want us to do what's right.
01:44:11
And what we have lost in our society, among other things, is, you know, kind of that small -town accountability where I'm looking out for your kids, you're looking out for mine.
01:44:22
We know what is acceptable behavior and what's not.
01:44:28
Well, now that's all kind of blown away. And here we are in trouble because we demand a right to privacy even from our own spouse, let alone from our church family, and then, you know, don't have the positive peer pressure that could help us.
01:44:51
We have an anonymous listener who says, Not long ago, our church notified the congregation that a man who had been convicted of pedophilia, who was released from prison on parole, was attending the church.
01:45:11
They were required, I believe, to do this by law. My question is, knowing that the blood of Christ cleanses all sin, no matter how gruesome or grotesque, that people can be rescued and redeemed from any wicked behavior.
01:45:31
The problem is, we are not omniscient, and we cannot read the hearts and minds of men.
01:45:38
How do you suggest we approach a situation when it is known that there is a pedophile or former pedophile visiting our church for worship services?
01:45:51
Do we extend warmth and kindness to them? Do we have certain rules in our household where our children are to go nowhere near these individuals?
01:46:01
What are your suggestions in regard to this very touchy and puzzling area?
01:46:10
Well, you know, if you think back of my dad, and imagine that he came to Christ, I wish he had, and begins going to a church, knowing what
01:46:25
I know about the tentacles of pedophilia, that it really is, in his case and others that I've heard of pedophiles, it is an irresistible urge, not unlike a drug addiction, that they may fight it for a while, and then it comes forward.
01:46:46
But what that means is, it comes forward on someone. So some person is going to be hurt.
01:46:55
So even Christians, you know, who become addicted to drugs, they can find victory through Christ and lapse, and when they lapse, you know, they fall back into using drugs or alcohol with a pedophile.
01:47:11
If they lapse, and they likely will from all studies, even though they're
01:47:17
Christians, that a child will be hurt. So I think job number one, in the case of my dad,
01:47:25
I can forgive him wholeheartedly, but I would never have him along with my children.
01:47:32
There are consequences of sins, and the greater the sins, the greater the consequences. Right, there's consequences, but also there is, you know, the predictor of future behavior is from the past.
01:47:46
It doesn't mean a person is not forgiven, it just means they are liable to stumble in those ways.
01:47:54
It's just it got a hold of them, and that's going to be their struggle, probably for the rest of their days.
01:48:00
I don't want their struggle to end up hurting one of my children. So are you saying that only adults in the church should have close contact with these individuals, and not even private sessions?
01:48:16
I don't know what the word I'm looking for. Any private time with someone like this and a child, but even public time where something could be done discreetly in the midst of a crowd?
01:48:31
I'm assuming that you would think that the close contact would be reserved only for adults in the church.
01:48:38
Right, and I'm sure the church let everyone know, because they are liable, that the church needs to demonstrate that they are protecting children.
01:48:48
I recently went to visit a compassion child along with a friend, and in order for me to go with her,
01:48:55
I'd have a background check. They would not have allowed me to go and visit that compassion child, even though it wasn't my compassion child, if I had anything in my past, any kind of conviction.
01:49:10
So, and if the church did allow close contact with a child, and this person and a child was hurt, the church would be in big, big trouble with the authorities.
01:49:24
So it makes all the sense in the world to, you can forgive people and hope and pray the best for them, but also take temptation out of their way, make sure that children are nowhere near this person.
01:49:40
Right, and it would be... The person can never, say, go on youth camp trips and things like that.
01:49:47
That's just not allowed. Right, that would be just insane to do something like that.
01:49:52
And it would be insane for even other types of sins, where you're putting somebody or allowing a person to wander in a specific area where their temptation is likely to be stronger and more unbearable to resist.
01:50:11
Right, right. Yeah, those are always touchy situations when you know that it is your duty as a
01:50:17
Christian to forgive someone that is demonstrating believable repentance.
01:50:26
And at the same time, as the listener said, we are not omniscient, we can't read people's hearts and minds, and we don't know that this person is truly a
01:50:38
Christian, we don't know that they're truly repentant, we don't know that they're regenerate. So, you know, you have to err on the side of caution.
01:50:48
That's right. Well, before we run out of time, please give a summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.
01:50:59
You can have about five minutes of uninterrupted time where you could really lay out to our listeners what you want them most to remember when they leave this program today.
01:51:11
Well, uppermost on my heart are those who maybe have been abused and never told anyone in their whole life.
01:51:19
I've spoken at women's retreats, and women 70 years old will come to me and say, you know, that happened to me, and I never told anyone.
01:51:28
And they tear up, and they say, you know, I've always struggled with that. And so my message, first of all, would be to them.
01:51:37
And the message is that God is with you, that he held on to you all of these days, and these seem like ashes to you, but we know from the
01:51:51
Scriptures that Jesus himself said, I have come to preach good news to you, to bind up the brokenhearted.
01:52:02
I want to proclaim liberty to you, and out of these ashes I will bring the oil of gladness.
01:52:09
And instead of mourning, you're going to wear a garment of praise, and I'm going to build you into an oak, if you'll allow me to do that.
01:52:17
And he stands ready for anyone. You know, life throws injustices at us of all different kinds, and a terrible thing that may have happened to me may not have happened to you, but something similar or something worse.
01:52:35
They are all ashes from the enemy who really wants to destroy us by the things that we suffer in this life.
01:52:46
And God calls us to faith, faith to believe that he is tutoring us, whatever it was that brought us to where we are today, he wants to take us by the hand and build something brand new and beautiful.
01:53:02
I say to some of the girls that we rescue who have been through horrific situations, sold by their parents and forced to have sex with 20 men a day,
01:53:15
I look at them and say, you know what, you have gained not only freedom through the hand of Christ, but you have insight.
01:53:26
And as the ministry of She is Safe goes on in the years, we're going to need people just like you who have the insights and the compassion on others to make a difference for them.
01:53:38
Now, why don't you become an everyday hero? Think of what you can do with what you have learned rather than letting the things that have happened to you bury you.
01:53:50
That's what the enemy wants. God wants to turn this into something beautiful and empowering to bind up the broken hearts of others.
01:54:00
And then I would say, secondly, that all of us need to keep our eyes open for all the children in our circles and be willing to speak to them and let them know that you care about them.
01:54:14
You'd never want anything bad to happen to them. If they ever need somebody to talk to, they have someone they can talk to.
01:54:21
We just want to open that door and then certainly with our own children begin to forewarn them about the dangers in our hyper -sexualized world.
01:54:34
I believe that we are breeding more and more pedophiles because we are enticing young children and sexualizing them early and just the simplest things that they see on television and in advertisement and then, of course, with the
01:54:50
Internet and media. So we need to be vigilant for them. They're just children. It's their number one vulnerability is that they are young and they believe in the very best of everyone and are easily preyed upon.
01:55:07
Yeah, I always have felt very uncomfortable and disturbed by things that are a part of some of the regions of America and other parts of the world, but I know it's a part of,
01:55:22
I believe, the Southern and Midwestern culture in America to have beauty pageants involving young prepubescent girls and they are dressed up and had makeup on them and make themselves look like women and even dressed in such a way that it might be even inappropriate for an adult woman in church to be dressed like that.
01:55:47
I don't really think that this is kind of a behavior that especially
01:55:53
Christians should be participating in, but I know that it's a huge part of the culture in some areas of our country and, ironically,
01:56:00
I think it's most prevalent in the Bible Belt, isn't it? Well, I'm not sure where it's most prevalent, but I will tell you there's something very wrong when we put so much time, money, and effort into telling a child his or her only worth is in their physical appearance and there's no denying that message.
01:56:22
I mean, you could say, oh, no, no, that's not what I mean, but the fact is if you reinforce it with time and money and dress up and competition and reward, that's the message and it's going deeply into the soul of this person.
01:56:38
Yeah, I mean, these beauty pageants, sometimes they involve girls even singing popular music that is definitely intended to be seductive music that an adult woman is singing, and you have these little kids prancing around a stage singing these songs.
01:56:59
It's just mind -boggling to me that any sane and moral adult would ever in a million years want people to view their child in that way.
01:57:10
Well, it's a pretty messed up world, I'll tell you, and it's easy for Christians to justify things and get involved in things that they shouldn't.
01:57:21
We can justify anything the more we let ourselves do that. So, yeah, we all need to be in a community of believers that will really help us see ourselves.
01:57:33
We have time for one more quick answer. I don't know if you can quickly answer this, but an anonymous listener wants to know,
01:57:40
I know that we are commanded to honor the father and mother, but how do you honor a father that has molested you?
01:57:50
Well, you know, it's important to, in the case, say, of my mother,
01:57:59
I would not tell her part of this story until she granted me permission to do so.
01:58:06
That's how I honored her. And I honor the role of my father and the good things that he did try to do, but I'm not going to lie for him.
01:58:17
I'm not going to pretend that things that happened were that they didn't happen.
01:58:23
Or even make it easier in any way for him to continue that sin, which could also be harming others. Right, right, yeah.
01:58:29
So I do agree with you. It's very important to honor our mother and father, and we step with great care, you know, around somebody else's reputation.
01:58:42
So being careful not to overstep, you know, and just hurt somebody's image because you feel hurt by them.
01:58:55
Thank you, Michelle, for your willingness to share something so personal and painful so that others may benefit in some way from your experience.
01:59:03
To find out more about Michelle Ricketts' organization, She is Safe, go to SheIsSafe .org.
01:59:10
That's SheIsSafe .org. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater