As reported in this article, another survivor has lived 20 years with the horrific effects of abuse and will continue to struggle with them well into the future. The plaintiff alleges that a popular youth leader used his position to groom her and then abused her “hundreds” of times on church property, in the church van, and apparently at the pastor’s home.

Based on the reported facts alone, we can see the playbook religious institutions use to defend these cases. The church blames the victim, arguing that she “[did] not sue the foster father who allegedly sexually abused her for years; her biological mother, who allegedly failed to protect her, relinquished custody of her and consented to her living with her alleged abuser and his wife; the Los Angeles County Dept. of Children and Family Services, which placed and supervised Doe in the home of her alleged abuser.”

It also points out that “the Salvation Army provided Doe and her family with food, shelter and friendship” during difficult times. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, so we don’t know whose account a jury would have believed.

Abusers with a sexual interest in children seek out volunteer and paid positions that give them access to children. Offenders without that interest will still often offend against children when given the chance. This is well established. There are secular standards of care for organizations responsible for serving children, and keeping those children safe is central to them. Too often, institutions of all kinds, and religious institutions in particular, fail to follow the known steps that keep children safe. When these standards are ignored, children get hurt. It’s that simple.

In many ways, religions in our country enjoy special treatment thanks to our incredible Constitution. But our founding principles and laws give churches no exemption when it comes to keeping children safe. Whether it’s a sports league, a school, or a church, organizations that follow known standards minimize harm to children. When an organization of any kind chooses, for whatever reason, not to follow those standards, children get hurt. My colleagues and I have more than half a century of combined experience, and it always comes down to this—when a church follows the rules, kids stay safe, and when it deviates from them, more children are harmed.

—Tim Kosnoff

I’ve recently gotten back into a case involving the Salvation Army. I’d worked with them before, years ago, but it had been some time—and going through the material again, it was like a switch flipped. Because here’s the thing most people don’t know, including me, the first time I encountered them: the Salvation Army is a church.

I thought it was a charity. Everybody thinks it’s a charity. You see the red kettles at Christmas, you see the thrift stores, you see the shelters—and you assume it’s just a nonprofit that helps homeless people. It’s not. It’s a Protestant Christian denomination, organized in London in the 1860s, with actual doctrine, actual clergy, and an actual hierarchy of religious authority.

And that’s the part that really gets people: they call themselves an army, and they’re not being cute about it. They’re structured like one. Ranks, uniforms, a chain of command—except every one of those ranks corresponds to a position of religious and pastoral authority. A “Major” isn’t a military officer. A “Major” is clergy. That structure is deliberate. It was built in the 1800s to project discipline and order, and it still shapes how the organization handles internal problems today—including abuse.

Part of why nobody clocks this is the money. In 2004, the Salvation Army received the largest single charitable gift in American history—over a billion and a half dollars—from Joan Kroc, the widow of Ray Kroc, the man who built McDonald’s into a global chain. That gift built community centers all over the country that bear the Kroc name. People walk into a Kroc Center for a swim class or a gym membership and have no idea they’re standing inside a facility owned and run by a church.

So you’ve got a religious institution operating with the public image of a secular charity, organized with military-style command structure, sitting on a Kroc-funded endowment—and running youth programs, shelters, and rehabilitation services that put staff and volunteers in direct, unsupervised contact with vulnerable people. That’s the setup.

And here’s what going back through this material reminded me of: these institutions—whether it’s the Salvation Army, whether it’s a church I’ve litigated against before—they don’t actually learn. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say they forget. There’s a pattern. At the start, they deny responsibility—”not our fault, not our problem.” Then a case lands, a verdict lands, a settlement lands—and suddenly they take accountability, because the number got big enough to get their attention. Then time passes. The people who wrote those checks move on. And the institution forgets why it was writing them in the first place. So it stops taking things seriously—until it gets hit again. Because apparently that’s what it takes to remind them.

That’s the story. Not just what happened, but why the same institutions keep needing to be reminded.

—Tim Kosnoff