Families of SOs Community Group
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My fiance is on the sex offenders registry for accessing WRITTEN stories of adults having sex with young people. No pictures whatsoever. He is due to come off the registry in may 2016. We have tried several churches to see if they fit with us, have explained the situation and some didn't sit well with us (I like up beat church), one church banned us from coming back which we moved on from.
So we go to the salvation army in January of this year, all looks good, explain the situation to a leader and all was sweet so we thought. My fiance volunteered in the red shield appeal and helped out and they were very appreciative. My fiance just recently espressed an interest in more volunteer work which required a police check, so we volunteered all the information freely to the captain and wait for it......... And here it comes.
The captain of the church calls us in for a meeting today with a contract for my fiance to sign.
He is only allowed to go to certain groups, Sunday worship and free community breakfast weekly
He is not allowed to sit in the vicinity of children only adults
He is only allowed to use the disabled bathroom and it must be checked by a salvation army officer before he enters
He must advise them if he intends to attend any other church of any denomination
He is not permitted to take his mobile phone onto the premises
He is not to use any electronics
They want the name of his parole officer - (he had one for the first 9 months of his sentence but not for 7 years now)
They want the names of 4 people in the church who will be available to see to it that he adheres to the conditions of the contract
And if he breaks any term of the contract he will be unwelcome
Note that we have both been attending this church for a whole year and NO incident has taken place
Needless to say we both left feeling dejected and feel like this is never going to end
I have advised my fiance not to sign it and feel we should just slip away
I mean just the other day when we explained the situation to the captain he said they would never stop us from worshipping with them
And one of the leaders of a group came up and said to my fiance that the people of the church see him the way God sees him even though society condems him
I thought we had found the right church for us
My fiance has never looked at pictures or even hurt a child
So we go to the salvation army in January of this year, all looks good, explain the situation to a leader and all was sweet so we thought. My fiance volunteered in the red shield appeal and helped out and they were very appreciative. My fiance just recently espressed an interest in more volunteer work which required a police check, so we volunteered all the information freely to the captain and wait for it......... And here it comes.
The captain of the church calls us in for a meeting today with a contract for my fiance to sign.
He is only allowed to go to certain groups, Sunday worship and free community breakfast weekly
He is not allowed to sit in the vicinity of children only adults
He is only allowed to use the disabled bathroom and it must be checked by a salvation army officer before he enters
He must advise them if he intends to attend any other church of any denomination
He is not permitted to take his mobile phone onto the premises
He is not to use any electronics
They want the name of his parole officer - (he had one for the first 9 months of his sentence but not for 7 years now)
They want the names of 4 people in the church who will be available to see to it that he adheres to the conditions of the contract
And if he breaks any term of the contract he will be unwelcome
Note that we have both been attending this church for a whole year and NO incident has taken place
Needless to say we both left feeling dejected and feel like this is never going to end
I have advised my fiance not to sign it and feel we should just slip away
I mean just the other day when we explained the situation to the captain he said they would never stop us from worshipping with them
And one of the leaders of a group came up and said to my fiance that the people of the church see him the way God sees him even though society condems him
I thought we had found the right church for us
My fiance has never looked at pictures or even hurt a child
They require background checks for volunteers with kids. I got mine and my son got his for free, but they don't have anything special that needs to be done just to go to the church