When a teacher at Pawleys Island Christian Academy in South Carolina raised concerns that a registered sex offender was working around students, she was told that holding it against him “was not a Christian thing to do.” She was later forced out of her job.
The sex offender in question, Warren Spence Perry, had been convicted in 2023 for sexual exploitation of a minor. Despite that conviction, he spent years working as a custodian at the school — which serves approximately 300 students and is operated by Pawleys Island Community Church — with what investigators allege was unrestricted access to children. Church pastor Don Williams had even provided character witness statements to Perry’s probation officer to help secure approval for his volunteer role. Students regularly gave Perry drawings and gifts. There was reportedly an auction prize that allowed a child to spend a workday assisting the school’s custodians, one of whom was Perry.
On July 14, Perry was arrested for violating his probation. He had allegedly told his probation officer repeatedly that he had no contact with minors. Pastor Williams and the school’s director both resigned days later. Investigations by the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office, the South Carolina Department of Social Services and state probation authorities are ongoing. A proposed class-action lawsuit seeking more than $25 million has been filed on behalf of parents whose children attended the school or church activities during the six years Perry was allegedly present.
It is a shocking story; it’s not a surprising one.
Across the country, churches cycle through versions of this scandal with disquieting regularity — a predator in a position of trust, leadership that closes ranks, the people who raise concerns pushed out, and a congregation left asking how it happened. It’s tempting to treat each incident as the failure of a particular pastor or elder board. But Rachael Denhollander, the attorney and activist who was the first woman to publicly accuse USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, has spent years making the case that these aren’t isolated failures. They’re symptoms of something systemic — and she places significant blame on the church’s own theology.
“Abusers actually do target faith communities,” Denhollander has said. “They target faith communities because our misuse and misunderstanding of our own theologies — very commonly the forgiveness of justice, our ideas of what it means to not gossip or to be unified, and our idea and understanding of authority — those are often theologies found in scripture that are twisted and weaponized.”
Predators Know Where to Look
Denhollander points to research showing that around 90% of abusers self-identify as religious or very religious, meaning they blend into faith communities easily. But beyond camouflage, those communities offer something more useful to a predator: theological levers that, when pulled correctly, suppress a victim’s ability to speak and a congregation’s willingness to listen.
At Pawleys Island Community Church, those levers were pulled in plain sight. A teacher who sounded the alarm was told her concern was un-Christian. A pastor framed his defense of keeping Perry on staff in explicitly theological terms, telling congregation members at a meeting held after Perry’s arrest: “As Christians, here are two things that we believe to be true at the same time. We believe that children must be protected. I also believe that every person, even someone who has committed a serious crime, is made in the image of God and should be treated with dignity.”
Denhollander has heard versions of this framing before, and she’s clear about what it does.
“Justice and forgiveness are really taught as if they’re dichotomous, opposed to each other,” she said. “If you truly forgive, you will not talk about this. In reality, justice and forgiveness are found both in the character of God and are dependent upon each other. When victims come forward and they are desiring to speak up, they’re immediately pitted as bitter, angry, vengeful people.”
The same distortion applies to the concept of unity. “The church’s current understanding of what it means to be unified,” Denhollander said, “often becomes a plot against survivors to say, ‘Don’t speak up about what happened to you. That’s not seeking unity.’ But we’re told in scripture to shine a light in the darkness; bring it out and expose it.”
The teacher who raised concerns about Perry and was subsequently forced out learned that lesson the hard way.
Victims Are Watching. So Are Predators.
One of Denhollander’s most clarifying observations is that how a church handles — or mishandles — accusations sends signals in both directions at once.
“Victims and perpetrators are both always watching,” she said. “Perpetrators are highly skilled predators. They look for dynamics that are going to ensure that if anybody ever speaks up, they won’t be believed.” But victims read the same signals. “They watch how we talk about issues of abuse, and they know — that’s what they would think about me.”
Every person in the Pawleys Island congregation who saw a concerned teacher pushed out received that signal. Every parent who might have had a question learned what asking cost. And if there are other victims — something investigators have not yet ruled out — they now know, with painful precision, what would have happened had they said something sooner.
The statistics around disclosure make this even more sobering. The average age at which survivors of childhood sexual abuse first disclose, according to Denhollander, is anywhere from the late 30s to early 40s. For men, it can be even later. “Delayed disclosures are the norm, not the exception,” she said. When survivors do speak up, they’re routinely met with suspicion — why now? why so long? Denhollander’s answer is direct: “These people are demonstrating right now why it took so long. Because I knew you were going to do this to me.”
The Church Is Often the Last Line of Accountability
What makes failures like Pawleys Island so catastrophic is that the legal system provides almost no backstop. Denhollander cites Department of Justice figures showing that out of every 300 rapes reported to police, only about six result in criminal charges — and only five in any conviction or jail time. “You can literally have weed on you and spend more time in jail than you will spend if you rape a child,” she said.
The Pawleys Island case illustrates this gap in real time. Despite everything that is now known, the 15th Circuit solicitor told local reporters that a pastor cannot be criminally charged simply for hiring a registered sex offender or for failing to tell the congregation someone is on the registry. The legal system offers no remedy for what happened to that teacher. It may offer limited remedy for the families whose children interacted with Perry for years.
Which means the church — the very institution that enabled this — remains one of the only places where real accountability could have happened, and didn’t.
Denhollander measures progress in the church not by statements or hashtags but by a harder standard: whether communities respond differently when the accused is one of their own.
“Really, we have to get to the point of seeing a shift in how the community responds when the abuse is in its own community,” she said. “When it’s in your own community, when it would cost to care, are you able to see clearly? Are you able to push for the right things? That’s really the measuring stick for how far we’ve come.”
At Pawleys Island Community Church, it cost a teacher her job to try. That’s the answer.
