Alright, I'm just a little livid right now. I'm still at the girls' place, and Allison and I had a good, long talk this morning. Allison is a social worker, so we wer etalking about the kind of stuff she encounters, and then we got onto sexual offenders, which reminded me of something I just heard the other day, and made me mad afresh.

Those of you from the R will remember David Hilbun. And no, I'm not disguising his name- frankly, names should not be disguised for someone like him. I could even give you his phone number and address, but I suppose I prefer to give that to the police or Child and Family Services. He should be behind bars. For years already.

For those of you that don't know him, he was one of the top ministers in the R years ago. I mean top. Definitely in the high elite. He was the one that came to "establish" the congregation here in Steinbach back in 1991/92. That man had power. My sister, who was about 5 at the time, told me that he grossed her out. He held her one time, and she thought he smelled disgusting, and was just icky. Children really should be listened to!

In 1997, my parents uncovered that he had been sexually abusing one of the teenaged girls in our congregation. She had gone down to visit him, and was rather enamored with him. (keep in mind that he's a married man, with children older than me!) Anyhoo, something in her changed when she came back. My parents finally dragged it out of her, and reported the perv to the head ministry. Did he go to jail? noooooo. He was simply "sat down". None of us knew why- we just knew that he had sinned, and would never be a minister again. (I assumed it was a sexual thing, but had no idea what- it was terribly hushed up!) He just went on with his life, "repented", "got saved", and then "got sanctified." All was good. God had changed him, riiiight? Wrong. The scary thing is that nobody knew that he had abused a string of girls. (yes, there were a few!) I didn't find out till we left in 2000, and was revolted when I heard. Parents had no clue that they should be protecting their children against a disgusting sexual offender. Ugh.

His oldest daughter got married a few months after we left, and, like all the women there, started producing offspring rightaway. I guess that would make his oldest grandchild 5 or 6 now.

My parents just talked to someone who had recently left the R. (just before my wedding, actually!)

He told them some blood curdling stories- one being about this guy not being allowed near his grandchildren. If that is so... I wonder why? *sigh* This sickens me!

It appears he was never allowed to be a minister again, the group says a minister is the same as an elder, some exmembers however seem to think he was promoted to some sort of leadership position, and just recently, he was sat down from that. If so, anyone want to guess why?

If this guy is caught molesting and abusing children again, do you think this group will alert the police? Do you think the Restoration is going to tell what really happened? I'd really like to find out more details...

I told Allison how absolutely helpless I feel, and she said that there are things to do. I guess I can call the local chapter of CFS and see what they have to say. They may be able to take it up with the police down in the States- I dunno. There's got to be SOME way to put that perv behind bars- ugh! It just infuriates me, because the R will NOT properly protect their children, and we all know that sexual offenders repeat over and over and over again. Ugh. If I had kids, and that guy so much as looked at them, I'd scratch his eyes out, and maybe more! Manoman- how disgusting can you get?

And groups like the R just enable this behaviour by sugar coating it with: "Oh, God forgives" and "God has changed him". NOOOO! That's denial of the worst sort.....ohman.

It's in hearing stories like this that I cannot possibly thank God enough that I'm out of that group. Blech!!