I have to answer anonymously and you’ll understand why in a moment.

I volunteered at a faith-based after school program for at-risk children in a very rural area where poverty and drugs were absolutely running rampant. This program could have literally saved lives if it worked.

I was very young, 26 and I was pregnant with my first child. I had such good intentions. I wanted to raise my son in a household that helped others at every opportunity so I went to the one place in town I thought could use help the most. I was immediately put on the board of directors. This should have been my first red flag but I let my ego get in the way and didn’t ask myself why they would be asking someone with so little experience to help steer an organization.

Then, at the ripe age of 28, the youngest person on the board of directors, I was asked to be the President of the board of directors! Again, I was just so flattered that someone thought I was capable of such a thing that I barely questioned why.

That’s when everything hit the fan. While I was very young for the position, I know a lot about business and had a decent sense of intuition. I smelled trouble with the employees. I didn’t know what was wrong but I knew something was very, very off. I started setting meetings with all of the employees just to get to know them better and find out if there was anything we as the board of directors could do to support them better. After all, they were the real heroes.

During my meeting with arguably the most valuable employee in the building, the video and tech person, I somehow won his trust. He didn’t tell me anything at the time but I apparently said some things that let him know I was safe to confide in. He called me a week later and met with me in my home and there, the bomb exploded.

The director who was also a minister, had installed something sort of like spyware throughout the organization where he and the tech guy could remotely log in to anyone’s computer and see what they were doing at the time. When he came to visit me, the tech guy brought a DVD that contained footage of the director of the program downloading and watching what I still call child pornography - sometimes of a very violent nature in his office. The director knew the spyware was there, he installed it. The tech guy had already confronted the director directly about his problems and the director still didn’t stop. It’s almost like he wanted to be caught.

I contacted every board member but one and explained what was going on. I left one out because he and the director were best friends and I didn’t want the director to know what we were doing until we got legal counsel. He was looped in immediately before the director was. We spoke to attorneys all over the state. We found out that if a child was harmed after we knew about the director’s addiction, we would all be held accountable (and rightly so I felt). We contacted the state police and then eventually the FBI. We even contacted the organization that ordained the director as a minister (they defrocked him). All of this happened in a matter of maybe a day or two. We moved absolutely as fast as we could.

No more than two days passed when three board members, including myself and a state trooper went to the program to tell the director he was suspended pending an investigation. We locked the doors and confiscated his computer to turn over to the state police.

The state police apparently have such a backlog of child pornography and pedophile cases that we didn’t hear back from them. After a month passed, we started contacting the FBI, which I speculate caused the state police to finally look everything over. They finally said because the subjects in the pornography didn’t look under 12, there was nothing anyone could do!! 12!!! We were all shocked and appalled. All of the children were clearly underage but rather teens and pre-teens instead of babies and they were predominantly black, which is the highest-risk demographic where we lived for drugs and poverty. I’ve also been told that they’re very vulnerable to predators like the director because they’re too embarrassed or ashamed to say anything.

In the meantime, the director/minister started another church down the street. He had no children of his own but at the time, a young black boy of about 13 was living with him (no foster, guardianship, adoption, just living there). About 6 young black men had lived with the director in the past. There were no door knobs on the bathroom and bedroom doors, so there were gaping holes to watch through.

The director/minister was so good with words and very persuasive (as are a lot of ministers) he could convince almost anyone of anything. He held a town meeting where he explained his “problem” calling it “material” and “men” where I would use the words “pornography,” “violent” and “boys.” He said he had that compulsion that he could not control because he was abused in a similar fashion as a child. He even admitted publicly that he and his wife had only had sex one time in 15 years. He painted himself as the victim and us as the evil beast that fired him so eloquently that people were horrified with US for doing what we were legally and morally obligated to do! He literally admitted everything but did it in such a way that people felt sorry for him.

This was the day that I decided that my brain functions more with logic and rationality than emotion and most people aren’t the same. His arguments further solidified to me that we had done the right thing but even the mayor of the town wailed out loud in disbelief when he said we refused to give him his job back.

I received more phone calls than I care to imagine, both supportive and not. I had things thrown at me, was sworn at regularly and hated with such passion I couldn’t believe it. People even threaten to kill me. My favorite was when a 40 year old man threatened to “beat me to a bloody pulp.”

I lived in fear and did the best I could for 2 years after that. I ran the center the best I could while trying to find a candidate to replace the minister. After two years, I literally couldn’t take any more. While I knew many people in the community supported me, they aren’t the loud voices I heard. I developed an autoimmune disorder and lost a ton of weight overnight. I wasn’t sleeping and I was literally scared to be alone in public. I convinced my husband to move to a city and we’ve never looked back. It took me 7 years before I could even return to that little town without a panic attack but I can finally do it.

The minister/director eventually left town too. I’m not sure what he went through. He left saying he needed to be closer to a major hospital because his wife had developed breast cancer. Maybe he was as tormented as I was but it sure didn’t feel like it at the time.

Now, I protect myself and my family ferociously but I no longer volunteer for things. I am no longer generous with my time and money. I don’t attend church and instinctively don’t trust ministers and will never live in a small town again. People have to earn my trust.