Every sexual abuse crisis impacts the Church
Forum : Child Sexual Abuse Prevention + Insurance
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND INSURANCE COVERAGE
Every sexual abuse crisis impacts the Church
By Gregory Love & Kimberlee Norris
Every year , it seems a particular organization or entity is embroiled in a sexual abuse crisis : the Catholic Church , USA Swimming , Penn State University , USA Gymnastics / Michigan State University , Hillsong Church , Ravi Zacharias Ministries , Boy Scouts of America … and the list goes on .
This year , headlines are swirling around the Southern Baptist Convention and its past response to sexual abuse allegations . Next year , it will be some other organization , but the pattern will continue .
For many , another organization ’ s crisis does not directly inspire change … until it ’ s your crisis .
Very few religious organizations , for example , chose to learn from the sexual abuse crisis experienced by the Catholic Church , beginning in 1994 , until they repeated the same behaviors — yielding the same crises . USA Gymnastics ignored the lessons to be learned from USA Swimming ... until they repeated them . Sadly , organizational leaders rarely watch and learn from the crises of others . And so the pattern replicates . By contrast , the insurance industry has been watching and learning from all crises . Many of these lessons have been incredibly costly — both in terms of human suffering and financial loss . Insurance professionals understand this important truth : the landscape has changed for all child-serving organizations — and this is particularly true for churches . The accumulated knowledge and experience in the insurance industry has given rise to significant change for all organizations , regardless of the source of the crisis : where child sexual abuse is concerned , your neighbor ’ s difficulty is experienced at some level by everyone .
Questions : What does the insurance industry see , and how does that bring about change ?
WHAT THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY ‘ SEES ’ When a church experiences a sexual abuse crisis , church leaders understand and navigate the resulting issues through the narrow framework of that particular crisis or fact pattern . An insurance carrier , by contrast , navigates multiple crises at any given time , seeing the failures and the costs . Clearly , the human suffering resulting from child sexual abuse is a church ’ s primary priority : the church must adopt a victim-centric response to any allegation of abuse . ( See our article , ADDRESSING SEXUAL ABUSE FROM THE PULPIT , in the July / August 2022 issue of Church Executive .) The damage to children and families stemming from sexual abuse cannot be overstated , and the Church must become and remain a place of empathetic response and healing . From a financial standpoint , the cost to child-serving organizations , including the Church , has been monumental . Since 2010 , the cost to resolve a child sexual abuse claim has skyrocketed . For the past 10 years , child sexual abuse claims constitute the No . 1 reason churches and Christian ministries end up in court . One recent industry report 1 calculated the average cost to resolve a sexual abuse claim , whether settled out of court or as a result of a verdict where the organization was found at fault , and found the following :
• Average payout for cases settled out of court : $ 2.5 million
• Average payout for cases with jury verdicts : $ 10.3 million
Insurance professionals ( and carriers in particular ) see these exorbitant amounts , ongoing year-by-year increases , and have no reason to believe it will slow .
INSURANCE INDUSTRY CHANGES Albert Einstein once purportedly quipped : Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result . Given the astronomical rise in the costs to resolve an ever-growing number of claims , simply increasing insurance premiums will not cover the cost of claims . Taking Einstein at his word , something has to change . Collectively , the last decade of sexual abuse failures is having a global impact — and every church will be strongly affected . The insurance industry is attempting to introduce sanity to the ‘ over and over ’ nature of sexual abuse failures . If a different result is expected , churches and child-serving organizations must change , and the insurance industry is uniquely positioned to introduce and require these changes .
Ongoing failures impact all Sexual abuse failures offend the public conscience , driving up jury verdicts and settlement amounts , which increase insurance premiums for all child-serving organizations , regardless of where the crisis originated . Further , sexual abuse failures — particularly over the last 10 years — have influenced insurance carrier practices and decision-making in ways now experienced by all churches . More specifically , sexual abuse crises have driven the following :
• Changes in the application or renewal process — requiring more preventative protocols
• Refinements in policy terms — eliminating broad coverages
• Changes in available limits — conditioning access to higher limits and umbrellas
• Exclusions for certain programming — focusing on third-party use and sex offender programs
Currently , insurance industry leaders understand sexual abuse risk better than any other professional group . Because insurers have a better understanding of the risk and how it manifests — how we got into the ditch — insurance professionals are creating pathways and guardrails to help clients avoid future ditches . For this to occur , change is necessary . churchexecutive . com STOP CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE • CHURCH EXECUTIVE 59