Jimmy Hinton is a full-time minister and safeguarding specialist with Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), who researches deception techniques of child molesters and specializes in abuse in plain sight.

In 2011, Jimmy’s sister confided in him that she had been sexually abused when she was a young child by their father, a former Minister of 27 years. Jimmy and his mother reported his father to authorities, which resulted in his confession of 23 victims, and a conviction of 30-60 years for sex crimes against children.

In this episode, Jimmy shares the story of how his sister confided in him that she was sexually abused their father, why he immediately went to the authorities, the fallout from that experience, three things that that can help you identify concerning behavior and potential abusers, how parents and organizations can be more proactive about protecting their kids, and so much more.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jimmy Hinton’s Website
• Jimmy Hinton’s Podcast | The Speaking Out on Sex Abuse Podcast
• The Speaking Out on Sex Abuse Podcast Patreon
• Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE)
• PorchSwing Ministries

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

Transcript

Hey, there!  So, today’s episode is incredibly important for people who have kids, who work with kids, or who just care about kids.  Today, I am interviewing Jimmy Hinton.  And in 2011, Jimmy’s sister confided in him that she had been sexually abused when she was a young child by their father, a former minister of twenty-seven years.  So, Jimmy reported his father to authorities, which resulted in his confession of twenty-three victims and a conviction of 30 to 60 years in Pennsylvania State Corrections Facility.

Jimmy researches deception techniques of child molesters and specializes in abuse in plain sight.  Jimmy is a full-time minister and safeguarding specialist with GRACE – that’s Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.  We talk about and I invite him to share more about that story of how his sister confided in him and he went to the authorities.  And kind of the fallout from that; the emotional fallout, his personal experience with that with people who were helpful to him in that process as well.

He also shares three things that he believes would help anyone to be able to better spot concerning behavior and potential abusers.  So, he looks at everything through the eyes of the abuser.  He has spent a lot of time talking to his dad who has shared with him a lot of information about what it’s like through his eyes as an abuser himself, and so he is looking at all of this through [a] very savvy, kind of well-informed perspective.

And then he also talks about three things that organizations and kind of even parents really can do to be more proactive in protecting kids beyond just background checks, which can be helpful but don’t catch everything.  So, please take in this information and consider what it would look like for you to be a “Voice of Influence” for the vulnerable, for kids.

Here’s my interview with Jimmy Hinton:

Andrea:  All right, so Jimmy Hinton, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Jimmy Hinton:  Thank you.  Thank you for having me.

Andrea:  Let’s start with your story because we know it’s a big reason for why you’re doing what you’re doing now.  So, can you tell us a little bit about what you do now and how you got to where you are right now?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  So, I am a full-time pastor.  I’ve been since 2009, and I also do trainings across the country, mostly with churches.  But I’ve trained police departments, the military, and schools so I’m kind of all over the place.  That all started in 2011 whenever my youngest sister disclosed to me at the age of twenty-one that when she was very young, she was sexually abused by my father.  That was the first time ever that we have heard any kind of an allegation of abuse.

We grew up in, by all means of the definition, a normal home, you know, a normal Christian home.  We loved and adored my father.  He preached at the church that I’m preaching at now for twenty-seven years, and I went in a ministry because of his example.  So, you know, needless to say, we were incredibly shocked whenever my sister disclosed.  My mom and I reported that to the police immediately, not having any idea how many victims there might be out there.  And he subsequently confessed to twenty-three victims – all prepubescent – over the course of about 40 years of his life.

Andrea:  Wow!

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  So, then the following year in 2012, he was given, essentially, what amounts to a life sentence.  So, he was given 30 to 60 years in Pennsylvania State Prison.  So, you know, what started my path on this journey is just being haunted by the fact that he had abused so many victims, hundreds of times each, and we didn’t have a clue.  We had no idea that this abuse was going on right under our noses by the very man who we looked up to and loved and respected.

So, you know, I started really digging into every book that I could find on child sexual abuse and just trying to understand how abusers operate, you know, what’s going on in their mind, what are they thinking of, and more specifically, how do they view us.  How do they get away?  Because all the research that’s out there – 90% of the research at least – it’s all about how we find the abusers or how do we spot the abusers.  And it’s really ineffective.  And even people who write this stuff will tell you it’s very ineffective when push comes to shove for actually identifying abusers who are among us.  And I wasn’t okay with that.  That really bothered me that that’s the acceptable standard for training people how to detect abusers.

Andrea:  So, you’re saying like detecting them after they’ve already abused?

Jimmy Hinton:  Or just spotting them in general – when they’re sitting in our pews, when they’re teaching in our schools.  You know, it’s incredibly difficult.  This is one of the most sophisticated crimes that exists, and the training just isn’t adequate.  So, you know, I really wanted to flip that perspective and say, “Instead of looking for the abusers, why don’t I train people to look for us, you know?  To look through the eyes of an abuser and what is it about us that makes them know that they can not only do this but get away with it right in front of us?”

So, I started really focusing on deception techniques and you know, very specific techniques that abusers use.  So, I focused less on behavior and more on actual techniques.  So, basically, you know, I liken this to what magicians do.  And it’s basically pulling people up on stage with the magician and standing beside them and showing them “the tricks of the trade.”  You know, how do they actually rehearse these techniques, because abusers are very rehearsed.  They’re methodical in the way that they carry out their techniques in order to abuse their victims.  It’s not accidental that they get caught very rarely.  I mean, very rarely do they get caught.  So that’s a little bit about my background and how I got to where I’m at.

Andrea:  Wow!  So, now you’re doing these trainings, and you also have a connection with another nonprofit, right?

Jimmy Hinton:  I am a trainer for GRACE – Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).  And then I also serve on the board for Porch Swing Ministries – it was a nonprofit started by one of my friends and she focuses on really providing support for people who’ve experienced church abuse.

Andrea:  Okay.  All right.  So, I’ve got a number of questions for you.

Jimmy Hinton:  Sure.

Andrea:  First of all, with your story and how your sister came to you and told you that this had happened to her, you said that you and your mom reported your dad immediately, even though he was somebody that you had always looked up to and all of this.  And I know that abuse victims or survivors often feel like they’re not believed right away, and yet it sounds like you believed your sister right away in the face of somebody that, you know, was so well regarded in your life and in your family.  How did that happen?  I mean, how did you actually believe your sister instead of your dad or whatever?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  I didn’t realize until I started doing this how rare it is for people – especially, in the religious communities – to believe survivors of abuse.

For me, it wasn’t this big aha moment.  I just have always respected facts.  Even though I’m kind of an emotional person, I try not to let emotions sway logic, okay?  So, when my sister was sitting before me, clearly she was in distress, clearly something had happened.  She didn’t give me a lot of details.  You know, it’s not like I had a whole lot to go on.  The details that she gave were very sketchy, very generic.  I knew that some form of sexual abuse had taken place, but that was it.  But the fact was she had zero, absolutely zero reason to make that up.

You know, like me, she had loved and respected my dad; like the rest of my siblings, she loved and respected him.  She had absolutely zero to gain by making that up, absolutely nothing.  So, I did, I believed her immediately.  And I didn’t want to, you know.  That’s not something that you’re like, “Oh, okay, this happened and now I’m gonna march into the police station.”  You know, it was a grueling discovery to find out that she had been abused by him and that potentially there were many more victims out there.  It was an awful, awful process.

And I’ll say this, you know… I’m a mandated reporter in Pennsylvania and believe it or not, I didn’t know that whenever I reported.  This was all pre-Jerry Sandusky, pre-Bill Cosby, you know, where we’ve shined a lot of attention on this notion that we’re mandated reporters, all clergy are mandated reporters.  I didn’t know that at the time.  So, I think it’s important for people to realize I didn’t report because I knew that I had to by law.  I reported because I didn’t see any other option for getting a fair investigation into these kinds of allegations.  It was the only option that I saw on the table.

Andrea:  What was it like?  Did you confront your dad, or did your sister talk to your dad, or did you guys have conversation with him before he was arrested?

 

Jimmy Hinton:  None of us confronted him and that was really strategic because in my mind, I didn’t want to tip him off and give him all kinds of wiggle room to, you know, back out or to know which one of his victims had rolled on him.  You know, I didn’t want to give him any room to be able to back out of any confession that he would potentially give.  So, in the meantime, you know, when the police actually questioned him, they brought him in for questioning, he had no idea that it was I who reported him.  And so as soon as he left the police station, I was the first person that he called to confide in.

And so, you know, I had to sit there and listen to him pouring his guts out about how he was in big trouble, and he had messed up, and he was probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and he doesn’t know which one of his victims told.  And you know, he was really distraught when I talked to him, and I just had to sit there and listen to it and pretend like I didn’t know anything about it.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Do you mind if I… I am asking you all these personal questions before we get to the kind of the strategic things that you teach about.

Jimmy Hinton:  Oh, it’s okay.

Andrea:  But what was it like to realize that somebody that you loved and respected… because I’ve heard you talk about it on your podcast about how much you thought he was like a hero.  And what was it like for you to go from feeling like somebody is a hero in your world to realizing what he really was?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, it’s instantaneous identity crisis.  So, within seconds, I mean, your entire world changes.  And I knew that the second my mom and I stepped over the threshold at the police station, our lives, our family’s lives would never be the same again.  Regardless of the outcome, nothing in our lives would ever be the same again.  And we had to be willing to do that, which we were, but all the unknowns just come flooding in.

And you know, for me personally, there was an instant identity crisis where everything that I thought I knew about my dad was now in question.  Every memory that I had growing up with my dad was a positive memory.  I literally didn’t have bad memories because I didn’t have a bad upbringing.  I mean, my dad, he was always kind.  He was compassionate.  He was giving.  He was supportive.  I have letters that he wrote me when I went off to college, just encouraging me and saying how proud he is of me.  You know, that was my experience with my dad.  And now there was this other side where the person who I admired, who was a hero of mine was an abuser of the worst kind and he did it to my own family members, to his own flesh and blood, his own children.

So, it just really messed with me on so many levels.  And then there was a spiritual crisis as well, because, you know, I was two years into my ministry, and I went into ministry because of him.  And now everything that I thought that I knew about God, everything that my dad taught me about God was now in question.  And it just really messed with me on so many different levels.

Andrea:  Sure.  How long do you think… or maybe you’re still struggling in some ways for some of these things, but how long was it before you kind of regained some sort of sense of equilibrium, if you can call it that?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, it probably was at least three or four years.  And it’s just, you know, so many ripple effects because in the process of this, we’re still dealing with so many family crises, you know, and he left so much carnage behind.  He had victims in my church that he was abusing up to the time of his arrest.  So, it’s not just within my family, it was within my church.  And I mean, just so many layers and components to this.  You know, he would write me letters from prison and be like, you know, just kind of matter of fact, “Just so you know what you’re dealing with whenever I go away for good, here are the names of some of the victims.”  And he would just rattle them off like it was just, you know, “Here are their names, good luck.”

You know, so there are no words to express the vast amount of carnage that he left behind.  And so trying to wade through that while you’re still trying to figure out your own identity, you’re trying to figure out who God is, where God was…  You know, I was trying to figure all that stuff out while I’m leading a church and while we have victims in the church.  I mean, there’s so many layers to this that it’s so hard to put into words.

Andrea:  Through that process, were there people around you that… I’m sure that there were plenty of such situations – I would imagine, I have never heard you say this – so, I would imagine that there are times that there were difficult conversations that were not very helpful for you.  But were there ways that people supported you that was actually really helpful and nourishing for you through that time?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, there were.  And I had a core group of probably three friends from my church.  And these guys are guys who never ever… they never judged, they never probed and asked me inappropriate questions.  They never told me… even though I could tell some of the things that I was telling them, you know, because my heart was bleeding out, and you know, there was stuff that I heard that there was no way to process it and the only way to process is just to talk about it.  And I didn’t want to go into therapy.  That just wasn’t an option that I really wanted to explore at the time and so my therapy was just to talk about it.

And I could tell there were times where things that I told them really were too heavy for them.  I could just see it on their faces.  And they never told me to stop and they never said, “That was just too much,” or “We’d rather you not talk about this,” never once.  And so those three guys really became an anchor for me and just helped me to process that grief and that trauma.  And I probably traumatized them a little bit in the process, but you know, we remain very good friends.  I mean, these guys, I can lean on them for anything, and that’s been a godsend for sure.

Andrea:  That just makes me think of how important it is for us to share in one another’s burdens.  I mean, it’s going to be a burden for somebody who’s going to hear the things that you had to say.  Of course, it’s going to be a burden, but it’s almost like you were able to spread it out a little bit.

Jimmy Hinton:  Oh, yeah.  And I think that’s because, you know, the ripple effects come in waves.  So, the thing that kept going through my mind is just when you think things can’t get any worse, things will calm down for about a week or so then the next big surprise comes, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, of course, they can get worse, you know, and this shouldn’t be a surprise anymore.”  So, those ripple effects kept coming.  But it was in those moments where the waters had kind of calmed a little bit, where you can kind of come up for air and just take a breath and you just prepare and you brace for the next wave that’s going to come and hit you.  And you know, that’s been a process for years.

And I’m at the point now where I’m so conditioned and calloused that nothing shocks me anymore, nothing surprises me.  And I don’t think that’s a bad thing because I’m able to really think through and process and use my brain and use logic.  And you know, it’s really what doctors who deal with the crises do, you know.  Like, trauma doctors, they don’t panic when they’re in the operating room.  They might panic after, but they’re trained to be really calloused to what they’re seeing because the human brain can’t comprehend that level of trauma.  But they have to because it’s their job.

Andrea:  Okay, thank you for sharing all of that.  I want to get into some of your expertise on this now.   So, you’re talking about basically abusers hiding in plain sight, you know, the deception techniques that they use.  Could you share with us at least a few of those deception techniques that are really common that could help us to better understand?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  So, I always try to think what’s the most practical thing that I can tell churches or police departments or the military or whoever it is that I’m training; you know, what’s the most important takeaway that I can give people that they can put into practice right now today?  So, I’ve basically boiled it down to these three things.  And this is a way oversimplification, but it sticks with the people, they really get it.

You know, I tell people when you walk into a room – and people can see this with me – like I just go into this hypervigilance mode.  I’m not paranoid whatsoever, but I observe.  And I think observation is really important because that’s what abusers do.  The minute they walk into a room, they go into a hypervigilance mode because they’re hunters, and they’re looking for their prey, and they’re looking for vulnerabilities, which all of us have.  So, I go into that mode as well.  So, when I walk into a room, I’m looking for people in the same way that they’re looking, which helps me identify the abusers a lot faster.

So, I tell people, you know, watch the eyes, watch the hands, and listen to the words.  So, for all people who are in the room, watch the eyes.  Well, why watch the eyes?  Because abusers are scanning and they’re looking and they’re gawking, and if they’re a sexual predator, they’re eyeing up their victims and they’re having sexual fantasies about those victims.  And the reason we don’t see sexual predators – child sexual predators – when we walk into a room is because we’re not expecting it and the abusers know that.  And my dad has talked a lot about this to me since he’s been in prison.

And I always say every female that I ever present to when I ask this question, “Do you know what it feels like to be sexually undressed by a pervert?”  Every single woman can identify with that.  They know what it’s like to go to the shopping mall, or to go wherever and have somebody sexually undress them with their eyes.  There’s no misinterpreting that look.  They know what it looks like.  They know what it feels like.  They can tell when somebody’s stalking them at the shopping mall and walking behind them, and they know what that feels like.  And most people can identify a pervert in a shopping mall who’s checking out teenage girls or, you know, into adulthood or whatever.

But once we get to prepubescent children, we lose the ability to be able to spot those perverts, even though the look that they give to those little children is the same exact look that the pervert at the shopping mall is giving as he’s gawking at women and teenage kids walking by, you know.  So that was a big eye opener for me when my dad really unpacked that and he was like, “You know, I’m able to spot other perverts because I am one.  That’s how I think.”  He was like, “The problem is you people don’t think that way so you’re not able to see it, or you’re not willing to see it.”

So, watch the eyes.  If there’s somebody who’s on my radar because of how they’re looking at people, the next logical thing is you watch their hands because abusers always are testing their victims by touching.  That’s one of the most important techniques.  And they’re benign touches at first, you know, a touch on the shoulder, a hug, a sideways hug or whatever.  They’re constantly touching their victims to see how they physically respond to that touch.

And you know, most of us have these automated responses where we don’t realize when we shrug off a hug, but the abuser does.  They can feel it, they can sense it, and they can feel your shoulder tenses up, or they can feel if you kind of lean into it a little bit.  Those are automated responses that our body has – those physiological responses.  So, I’m watching the people. Where do their hands and fingers, where do they go?  Do they glide across somebody’s shoulder?  Do they massage them as they’re hugging them?  You know, are they touching all over?  Do they touch around the waist?  Did they let their finger slide across the butt whenever they hug adults and kids?  You know, where are their hands?

And then next one, listen to the words.  Abusers are always information mining.  They’re constantly asking questions or better yet, framing in a way where they’re telling us to tell them something about ourselves.  So, a question like that would be this, “Tell me about yourself?”  That’s seems really benign, but it’s such a manipulative statement and it’s very tactical.  That’s not a question.  That’s a statement.  They’re telling you, “Tell me something about yourself.”  And usually we feel flattered by that.

So, we’ll start to talk about what?  What’s the very first thing that we start to talk about when we’re making a small talk with people besides for the weather?  Our kids, right?  How proud we are of them that, you know, “I have a ten-year-old daughter and she’s at the top of her class,” and on and on and on.  We talk about our kids, and what are they getting?  All kinds of information about your belief system, about what information you’re willing to divulge, about what your kids interests are, what their ages are, what they wear, you know, on and on and on.  And we got so wrapped up in talking about ourselves that we forgot to ask that person anything about themselves.

And I look for people who don’t reciprocate because normal conversations – if we’re genuinely interested in meeting somebody and getting to know visitors or whatever – would reciprocate.  You know, we’ll ask them about where they’re from or what they do or whatever.  You know, we’ll ask them, not demand that they tell us, but then we’ll reciprocate.  We’ll talk about ourselves.  That’s a normal conversation.

So, I just look for some of these indicators that shows people are being manipulated.  And if they meet all three of those criteria – you know, if their eyes are wandering and they’re undressing people with their eyes, if they’re touching all over people and can’t keep their fingers and hands to themselves, and if they’re manipulative in the way that they converse with people – they are so high on my radar.  It doesn’t mean that I’m saying they’re an abuser, but they’re very high on my radar.  And I’ll let other people know about it and why they’re on my radar.

Andrea:  Okay.  I have some more questions about how do you let people know about it?  What does that look like without, you know… I don’t know.  Is it possible to go too far in warning others?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  Yeah, I think it’s definitely possible to go too far.  And an example of that is, you know, first of all, saying that somebody is an abuser when you have absolutely no evidence that shows that.  You know, I think we need to be very careful.  We also need to be careful not to become paranoid and start pointing at people and saying, “Oh, they could be an abuser.”  You know, I think that’s why it’s really important to have very specific pieces of evidence that substantiate somebody who crosses boundaries.

And if somebody’s crossing boundaries, I think it’s more than fair to tell other people, “Hey, I’ve noticed that this person is just touching all over this person and you know, when they give hugs, they’re rubbing their shoulders.”  And maybe there’s nothing there, but you know, it’s my duty to tell people that, “Just be cautious, be aware.”

Andrea:  Who do you tell?

Jimmy Hinton:  When I do trainings at churches, I tell the leadership.  One of the things that I do is a facility walkthrough.  And I observe both facility and find vulnerable places within the facility that abusers would migrate to.  But I also observe people, and you know, 100% of the time, this has never failed.  If there’s somebody who sticks out or shows up on my radar, I will tell the leadership, I’ll say who it is and why they’re on my radar.  And 100% of the time, they said, “Oh, we’ve had a lot of problems with that person.”  You know, and then they’ll just list all these boundaries that this person has crossed.  But the problem is they’ve never been trained to know specifically what to look for and so it just feels gossipy to them.  And so nobody ever says anything, you know.  All these people have all these issues where this person has crossed so many boundaries, but nobody’s ever spoke up about it.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Yeah, because none of them are really huge that you can really point to.

Jimmy Hinton:  Right.  And abusers keep it that way, you know.  They keep things very ambiguous because, you know…  I could share with you so many letters that I got from prison where my dad talks about this.  He unpacks it and he’s like, “The more ambiguous you can be in your behavior, the more it works to your benefit because people don’t have anything specific to hang their hat on to actually accuse you of anything.”  That’s by design.

Andrea:  When you’re mentioning the testing, abusers testing by touching or whatever and they noticed the response, the physiological pull back, what is an abuser’s technique from there?  Like, do they continue to push that boundary or do they realize that, “This is a person who’s not going to want to, you know, like submit to whatever I am trying to accomplish”?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  Yeah, typically, you know, my understanding, my experience is that if somebody has a negative physiological response – you know, if they tense up, if they pull back – they’re usually not going to take it any farther than that.  You know, they’re looking for a path of least resistance when it comes to victimization.  And so, you know, we think of vulnerabilities as the kid who grew up in a foster home or who has negligent parents.  You know, when I read the research, I’m like, “That’s not really who they’re targeting.”  Like, all of us have vulnerabilities.  Every single one of us has vulnerabilities and an abuser can find those vulnerabilities really quickly.  And you know, what they’re doing, what it comes to is a matching game.

So, they could find a vulnerable child, but have a parent like me who’s incredibly observant and who’s going to let people know, “Hey, you’re violating boundaries. Get away.”  Not that my kids could never be abused because I think that’s really dangerous territory to say, “Well, you know, I’m trained and an abuser would never target my kids.”  They might, but the point is what abusers are doing is they’re playing this matching game.  So, they’ll find a vulnerable child, somebody who’s – in their mind – pretty easy to offend, to abuse and then they’ll match that kid to the proper parents.  And so they begin all these testing techniques on the adults too.

And that’s why watching the hands, watching the eyes, listening to the words, that’s all very important because they start touching all over the kids right in front of the parents and that’s very intentional.  They’re seeing not only how the kid responds, but they’re seeing whether the parent notices or not.  You know, do the parents eyes… can they maintain eye contact with the parent, or do the parents eyes keep going to where the abusers hands are?  And it’s anything from a touch on the shoulder to rubbing hair to patting them on the head and letting their finger slide down the victim’s hair, you know, on and on and on.  These are all fairly benign things, but they’re all 100% intentional.

Andrea:  So, it sounds like, as parents, we should be more defensive of our children in situations like this.

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, and have conversations with our kids about what their boundaries are and what they can do if somebody is violating those boundaries.  Because, you know, abuse doesn’t feel like abuse to a kid.  For one, they don’t have a sexual context to really understand that what’s happening to them is abuse.  You know, and I just think it’s really important to talk to our kids and say, “Okay, what are your boundaries?  What’s your no zone?  What makes you uncomfortable?  And what do you do if somebody gets into that no zone and starts making you feel uncomfortable, starts doing things that just make you feel uneasy?”  You know, what’s the process?  What’s the procedure and have those conversations with our kids.

But also, as parents, we need to be incredibly vigilant.  And we need to watch if somebody walking up and touching my kid on the shoulder, maybe they just wanted to tap my kid on the shoulder.  I’m not going to tackle somebody to the ground because they tapped my kid on the shoulder, you know.  But I also know what techniques abusers use.  And so if I see this pattern of somebody gawking at one of my kids, and then they walk up and they try to force a hug on my kid, at that point, I’m going to physically intervene.  I’m going to physically break them away from my kid and reprimand them and say, “You don’t touch my kid like that.  You know, I don’t want you hugging my kid.  I don’t want you stroking my kid’s face.  I don’t want you stroking their hair.  I don’t want you rubbing their shoulders.  That’s not okay.”

And I’ll probably say it loud enough so that other people hear it, which kind of embarrasses the person and it catches them off guard.  And again, maybe they’re an abuser, maybe they’re not, but they’re going to know good and well when they’re done with me that they violated physical boundaries and they’re not going to do it again to my kid.

Andrea:  So tiger mama or tiger daddy needs to come out.

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  I mean, again, we don’t need to belittle people and be rude and demeaning.  But yeah, absolutely and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Andrea:  Sure.  Yeah.  Oh, man.  Okay, so background checks are something that organizations, companies use to figure out who’s going to work with their kids and who’s okay to work with their kids or not.  Do you feel like those are sufficient then?

Jimmy Hinton:  Not alone.  They might catch people who have spent time in prison, who actually got caught which is the vast minority of abusers have ever been caught.  And even the ones who have been caught, rarely do they get charges that, you know… a lot of times they’ll find loopholes or they’ll find sweet plea deals, and so there’s no criminal record that follows that person.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, they need to also do what?  I mean, is that when an organization needs to have this additional training that you give and have an idea of what it looks like; the hands, the eyes, the words, that sort of thing?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, training.  And good training is a very good component that’s married well to background checks.  You’ve got to be properly trained.  And you know, I kind of harp on this whenever I go places, and some people don’t like it and I’m okay with that.  But I say teaching people to report people after they’ve spotted this red flag behavior stuff is not prevention, so stop packaging that as prevention.  Making a report… by the time you pick up the phone and you’re making a report, that means that somebody has crossed the threshold of reasonable suspicion and that means that most likely if that person is an abuser, you’re way too late.  That is not prevention.

You know, I relate it to airplanes, right?  Picking up the phone and calling 911 after you see a big mushroom cloud coming up from behind the trees is not preventing that plane from going down.  Look at all the measures that we do through the FAA to screen people, to do to do background checks, to ask questions of people as they go through the TSA checkpoints.  We have a rigorous system.  There’s a reason why it’s safe to fly.  It’s not by accident that it’s safe to fly, and we don’t do any of those things.

When we hire people, we allow the person to tell us which people we’re going to call if we even call their references at all.  We never call anybody else.  We’re like, “Oh, okay, they have two glowing recommendations by these people they hand-selected – they chose them.  They have two glowing recommendations; come on through!  Come on in!  In fact, we’re going to hire you and pay you money to be here.”  We have terrible screening processes. So, I think we need to start there, but we also have to have a really good ability to fire people.

Andrea:  Oh, tell me more about that.

Jimmy Hinton:  You know, we talked about screening, and I’ve seen abuse training where they talk about screening.  Screening, screening, screening, we’re going to screen people.  Okay, that’s great. That’s necessary.  I’m all for it.  I’m 100% behind that, but let’s talk about the ability to fire people too.  We should have clear written policies that spell out what the boundaries are; physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, communication boundaries, all these things.  We need to spell those out in written policy, and then spell out the consequences for people who violate those boundaries.

And if somebody’s violating those boundaries and doing it over and over and over again, we shouldn’t say, “Well, maybe we just misinterpreted what they were doing.”  That’s not acceptable.  Can you imagine TSA operating that way?  “Maybe we just misinterpreted, you know. Come on board,” right?  TSA is very serious about stopping people who they think are even potential threats, and we don’t do it.  We don’t do it in the workplace.  We don’t do it in our schools, especially.  We get these strong unions that back our teachers and make it nearly impossible.  I could point to teachers in my own school district, the school that my kids go to that have violated so many boundaries with students, and they’re still on staff.  That’s not acceptable.

Andrea:  Hmm.  No, absolutely not; or volunteers too, I’m sure.

Jimmy:  Sure, right.  So, yeah, we need to be willing to fire people, to get rid of them, and to have substantiated reasons.  You know, it’s not just like, “I have a bad feeling so we’re gonna fire this person.”  That’s not fair.  All of us would probably be fired at different points.  But we have to have very clear boundaries that are spelled out, and we have to understand deception techniques on how abusers operate and how they violate those boundaries and why they violate those boundaries and how they get away with it.

Andrea:  Jimmy, I’m going to ask you how people can get in touch with you, and then I’m going to ask you one more question about what it looks like to be a “Voice of Influence” in a situation like this.  So I’m giving you a little fair warning here.

Jimmy Hinton:  Sure, okay.

Andrea:  So first, can you tell us if somebody is wanting to have you come to a training with their group or they want to learn more about what you do or your podcast, can you tell us more about how people can get in touch with you?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yes, so the easiest way… and this is not because I’m a narcissist.  It’s because I am not a marketer, so my website is about as simple as it gets.  It’s my name, jimmyhinton.org.  That’s the easiest way.  All of my resources are tied to the website.  So, the podcast is on the homepage.  It’s a very simple layout.  That’s by design.  It’s easy.  I have a tab on the services that I offer.  There’s a page for speaking, and there’s a contact form directly on there if people want to contact me and inquire about speaking.

Andrea:  And you have patrons for your podcast.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, so we wanted to find a way to fund our podcast and to improve it.  And you know, we looked at sponsors and we didn’t really like that route.  And so we decided to go to the route of Patreon, so it’s patreon.com/SpeakingOut.  And we love it because we got people who already listened to the podcast, and they sign up at different tiers.  And then we offer different rewards for each of those tiers.  So, they’re actually getting something.  It’s not like a nonprofit where you give money, you know, you make a donation, and then who knows where that money winds up.  We tell people exactly how that money is being used.

They’ve gotten to see our studio be built, you know.  Our patrons have seen this process and they’ve been part of that process.  And then they give us all kinds of feedback.  They’re part of our community, and so a lot of our episodes are really shaped by our patrons.  They really help us with the content.  And at the top tier, we even bring patrons on as guests.  So, we’ve had multiple patrons beyond as guests to the podcast, and it’s just fun.  It’s really neat and we’ve gotten to know people and we feel like they’re part of the family, so it’s really cool.

Andrea:  Hmm, that’s the Speaking Out on Sex Abuse podcast and it’s with your mom, right?

Jimmy Hinton:  Correct.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  Okay, so in conclusion then, when somebody wants to be a “Voice of Influence” for those who might be survivors or for the vulnerable, really, what is your advice for somebody who wants to be a “Voice of Influence” in this sphere?

Jimmy Hinton:  Three words; start where you are.  Four words, I miscounted – start where you are.  I never dreamed that I would be doing what I’m doing nine years ago.  You know, nine years ago, I was in a little small town.  I reported to the police.  I just went on this quest to really understand how we all missed it, and I just started blogging about it.  I started speaking immediately about it and it kept progressing and you know, there is no silver bullet.  There’s no magic to it.  It’s just doing what’s right, starting where you are right in your own community, right within your own family, right within your own school district.  And you know, just following your heart and doing what’s right.  We know right from wrong; all of us do.  Whether you’re Christian or not, whether you’re male, female, young, or old, it doesn’t matter.  We know right from wrong, so just start where you’re at.

Andrea:  Great!  Thank you so much for being a “Voice of Influence” for our listeners today.

Jimmy Hinton:  Absolutely.  Thank you.  It’s an honor to be on the show.