A Minnesota senator wants to strengthen state laws meant to hold adults entrusted with children’s safety accountable for failing to report suspected child abuse, after an investigation by the Minnesota Star Tribune and ProPublica found that the leadership of a church in Duluth for years protected a child sex predator.
Sen. Erin Maye Quade, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from suburban Minneapolis, said she’s focused on situations where such an adult has concrete knowledge that a specific person is abusing children and nonetheless stays silent, allowing the abuse to continue.
“If you know an adult who is committing child sexual abuse, you need to report that,” she said. “For that, the penalties could be a lot higher.”
The Star Tribune-ProPublica report found that preachers in Duluth’s Old Apostolic Lutheran Church knew for years about allegations that a member, Clint Massie, had been sexually abusing young girls in the congregation. Instead of reporting it to police, church leaders encouraged some of the victims to take part in sessions where they were pressured to forgive Massie. They were then told never to speak of the abuse.
In one case, preacher Daryl Bruckelmyer facilitated a meeting with Massie and a young girl, still in the first years of grade school, in his business office. The girl had recently told her parents that Massie groped under her shirt and touched her genitals, according to her account of the incident to investigators 15 years later. In front of the girl, her father and Bruckelmyer, Massie asked her for forgiveness, she told law enforcement. Then the girl’s dad and preacher allowed Massie, who had been sexually abusing her since kindergarten, to hug her.
