Oh boy. So I\u2019ve<\/a> written<\/a> before<\/a> about<\/a> Doug Wilson\u2019s excuse-making for serial child molester Steven Sitler, but I haven\u2019t written much about the other child abuser in Doug Wilson\u2019s closet<\/a>\u2014Jamin Wight. Long story short, while Jamin was a\u00a0student at\u00a0Doug Wilson\u2019s seminary and boarding with a Christ Church family, he sexually (and psychologically) abused the family\u2019s daughter, Natalie, for years, beginning when she was 13 years old. Jamin was ten years the girl\u2019s senior.<\/p>\n When the abuse came to light, Wilson accused\u00a0Natalie\u2019s father\u00a0\u201cneglecting\u201d his daughter by not keeping her safe and then wrote to the judge explaining that \u201cI do not believe that this situation in any way paints Jamin as a sexual predator.\u201d If we didn\u2019t already know that\u00a0Wilson has utterly no understanding of what abuse is and how it works, we would now. In his letter to the judge, Wilson used phrases\u00a0like\u00a0\u201cthe sexual behavior occurring between Jamin and Natalie,\u201d\u00a0as though it were an affair between two lovers and not an adult man grooming and preying on a 13-year-old child.<\/p>\n Indeed, according to Natalie herself, Wilson\u2019s letter to the judge\u2014the letter in which he insisted that Jamin should not be seen as a sexual predator\u2014contained numerous inaccuracies and completely misconstrued the nature of what had happened.<\/p>\n Wilson wrote<\/a> that<\/a>:<\/p>\n One other thing regrettably needs to be noted. In the meeting, we took care to have Jamin acknowledge that no matter what circumstances actually set up the temptation, the crime, the sin, and the deception were his responsibility alone. Blame-shifting on his part would be utterly inappropriate, and we had Jamin acknowledge that he was in no position to absolve himself by pointing fingers at others. Having said this, I can observe what Jamin should not. In our meeting the Greenfields (who had no idea of the sexual behavior occurring between Jamin and Natalie) acknowledged their sin and folly in helping to set the situation up. They did this by inviting Jamin\u00a0to move in with them, encouraging and permitting a relationship between Jamin and Natalie, while keeping that relationship secret from the broader community. They thought (and were led to believe by Jamin) that the relationship was sexually pure, but they did<\/em> know it was a relationship between a man in his mid-twenties and their fourteen-year-old daughter, and they helped to create the climate of secrecy. At the same time, their folly (as Pat Greenfield has aptly pointed out) was not a felony. It is not a crime to be foolish, while it is<\/em> a crime to do what Jamin did. I agree with this completely, and in describing this aspect of the situation I do not believe it absolves Jamin of any<\/em> responsibility for his behavior. But it does help explain what kind<\/em> of criminal behavior it was. For example, I do not believe that this situation in any way paints Jamin as a sexual predator. In all my hears as a pastor, I don\u2019t believe that I have ever seen such a level of parental foolishness as what the Greenfields did in this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note that Wilson says that it would be inappropriate for Jamin to shift blame, but that it\u2019s perfectly appropriate for Wilson<\/em> to do so. Wilson then proceeds to assert that Natalie\u2019s parents bear some of the blame for her abuse for, among other things, allowing Jamin to board with them. What is conspicuously absent from his letter is the fact that Wilson encourages the families in his church to allow his seminary and college students to board with them. Neither New Saint Andrews College nor Greyfriars have their own housing.<\/p>\n What about Wilson\u2019s assertion that the Greenfields allowed Jamin to start a relationship with their young teenage daughter? Well first of all, Wilson promotes a belief system that encourages early marriage. You may remember from Steven Sitler\u2019s story that Katie Travis fancied herself an old maid at 23.\u00a0Further, girls are taught from a young age that their role in life is to keep a well-run home, make a husband happy, and raise and educate children. All of this would make having a twenty-four-year old man express interest in your fourteen-year-old daughter seem like a normal occurrence. But second of all, Wilson is not telling the truth when he claims Natalie\u2019s parents permitted a relationship between her and Jamin.<\/p>\n As Natalie explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n Jamin expressed an interest in me to my parents when I was 14 years old, months after he\u2019d begun grooming me and had already instigated a physical relationship with me. To say I had a crush on him would be an understatement \u2013 I was completely\u00a0infatuated with him, as is common for abuse victims, \u00a0and had been since shortly after I met him at a church event when I was 13 years old. (No one knew the depth of my affection for him, of course, I think told my parents I thought he was pretty cool.) My parents told Jamin he could wait for me if he wanted to and they\u2019d reassess the situation when I was 18 years old. It was made exceedingly clear that in the meantime there was to be no \u2018relationship\u2019 whatsoever. As far as my parents knew there was no relationship, and from what I can tell any \u201cconfession\u201d they made to Doug was taken out of context and\/or deliberately twisted.\u00a0There\u2019s not much more to be said about this, honestly. My parents were naive and foolish, yes. They trusted him to respect the house rules regarding their daughter, partly because he\u2019d been vetted by their own pastor as a seminary student. He didn\u2019t follow the rules.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sure, you could argue that it was a bad idea for Natalie\u2019s parents to allow Jamin to board with them knowing that he had expressed interest in their daughter, but given their belief system (as I outlined it above) this expression of interest would not have seemed all that out of place. It would not have tagged him as \u201cpredator\u201d or their eyes. Instead, it would have tagged him as an upstanding Christian young man who had his sights properly set on marrying a proper Christian girl and raising a proper Christian family. In this context\u2014and especially given that Jamin was a seminary student vetted by their past0r\u2014it\u2019s not all that surprising that the Greenfields assumed Jamin\u00a0would respect their wishes\u00a0to wait until Natalie was 18.<\/p>\n And as Natalie\u00a0explains further<\/a>:<\/p>\n What confuses me is how this information has any relevance to Jamin\u2019s long term physical, sexual, mental and emotional abuse of me (before, during and after the time he lived in our home) or how it constitutes Doug writing to the magistrate judge and requesting leniency for him, or how it justifies Doug blaming and shaming my\u00a0<\/span>father<\/a>\u00a0(and mother) the way he did. Doug painted a picture in which the blame is dangerously shifted to my parents and away from a criminal. Ultimately, he was rather successful at his part in this, as Jamin\u2019s charge and sentence were greatly reduced and he went on to criminally abuse more innocent victims after a very brief stint in jail.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In his letter to the judge, Wilson described Jamin as \u201cgenuinely repentant\u201d and \u201cmost cooperative.\u201d While he does affirm that Jamin committed a crime and should be punished for it, he also states that Jamin should not be seen as a \u201csexual predator.\u201d In Wilson\u2019s eyes, the Greenfields set Jamin up for temptation and then allowed\u00a0a sexual affair to take place in their own home between their teenage daughter and their young adult boarder. In Wilson\u2019s eyes, what took place between Jamin and Natalie was an illicit\u00a0love affair, not abuse<\/em>.<\/p>\n Notice this, from Wilson\u2019s letter:<\/p>\n Jamin\u2019s crime and sin in this was of a particularly egregious nature because he was studying for the ministry at the time, and his behavior involved a great deal of calculated deception\u2014actively deceiving the Greenfields, his elders and pastors, and so on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here, Jamin\u2019s crime is \u201cegregious\u201d because it involved deception of Natalie\u2019s parents, and by a man ostensibly studying for the ministry. One would think that the \u201cegregious\u201d nature of Jamin\u2019s crime would be his years-long grooming and sexual abuse of a very young teen girl (remember that this started when Natalie\u00a0was thirteen<\/em>), but no<\/em>.<\/p>\n And yes, it appears that his portrayal of the situation persuaded the judge.<\/p>\n