#5: The CAC Chaplain, Spiritual Wounds, and Moral Injury (with Rev. Carrie Nettles)

Season 1Multidisciplinary Team
Written By Coursing Justice

Content note: This episode includes discussion of child sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, religious trauma, child fatality cases, pregnancy loss, and moral injury. Subscribe on Spotify | View full transcript

What happens to a child's faith after abuse, and who on the MDT is equipped to help them carry those questions? In this episode of Season One: The Multidisciplinary Team, Robert sits down with Reverend Carrie Nettles, chaplain at the Julie Valentine Center in Greenville, South Carolina, and the first staff chaplain at a Children's Advocacy Center in the United States, to make the case for a role most MDTs still don't have.

Carrie came to chaplaincy through children's ministry and front-line work at a CAC in Charleston, where she kept asking who was tending to the spiritual needs of the children coming through the doors. That question led her to Victor Vieth's writing on theologians and the MDT, a clinical pastoral education residency focused on pediatric patients, and nearly a decade spent building the CAC chaplain role from scratch.

The conversation covers how chaplains work ethically in secular settings, why "Why did God let this happen?" deserves to be honored rather than answered, and how cliches and rushed calls to forgive can add spiritual injury to the original harm. Carrie explains why she never raises forgiveness until a client does, and why she reframes it as forgiving, a process that is no more linear than healing. She also walks through the three parts of her role: direct care for children and families, spiritual support for staff and MDT partners, and serving as a liaison and prevention educator for local faith communities.

In the second half, Carrie and Robert turn to the moral injury the child protection field is carrying right now. They talk about the funding cuts that gutted services for children, the field's largely silent response, and why Carrie sees chaplains as natural ethics consultants for CACs. They close with practical first steps for CACs and state chapters that want to offer spiritual care, Carrie's upcoming case study And She Baptized Her, and the five spiritual needs she uses to check in on her own resilience.

Whether you lead a CAC, serve on an MDT that encounters faith communities in its cases, or work alongside survivors whose spiritual questions too often go unaddressed, this episode makes a thoughtful, practical case for bringing spiritual care into the child protection response.

About our guest

Carrie Walker Nettles earned a BA in Sociology from Clemson University and an MDiv from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Carrie has over twenty years of experience working with the children's ministries of multiples churches and as a child advocate with the Dee Norton Child Advocacy Center in Charleston, SC. 

Carrie traveled to General Theological Seminary to study with Jerome Berryman, developer of Godly Play, specifically working on a theology of the child and the spirituality of the child. Carrie completed her residency with the Spiritual Care department at Greenville Memorial Hospital. She worked across all units encountering various stages of trauma and recovery, specifically assigned to the children's hospital and pediatric psychiatric facility. She is a board-certified chaplain with the Association of Professional Chaplains and the Pediatric Chaplains Network.

She has traveled the country teaching child protection professionals about the spiritual needs of the child and teaching faith leaders about the spiritual impact of abuse, the M.O. of religious sex offenders, excellent congregational prevention and response policies, and trauma-sensitive spiritual care. In December of 2016, The Julie Valentine Center hired Carrie to become the first staff chaplain serving a Child Advocacy Center. She and her partner, Mason, are raising a young adult and a middle schooler.

Key moments

  • 1:45 — From children's ministry to CAC chaplain: "Who is tending to the spiritual needs of these children?"

  • 5:00 — Why every person, of any faith or none, asks "Why me?"

  • 6:30 — Separation of church and state, and how chaplains work in secular spaces

  • 10:15 — "Why did God let this happen?" and the harm of spiritual bypassing

  • 13:30 — Honoring the question instead of answering it

  • 19:00 — The faith leader who went rogue, and forgiveness as "the F-bomb"

  • 21:15 — From forgiveness to forgiving: why it isn't linear either

  • 26:00 — A day in the life: the three-part role of a CAC chaplain

  • 29:00 — Faith community liaison: policy reviews and religious predators

  • 32:30 — A heavy silence in an MDT staffing, and the value of naming shared lament

  • 35:45 — How CACs and state chapters can start offering spiritual care

  • 41:15 — Moral injury writ large: "We're in a moment of spiritual suffering"

  • 47:00 — Funding cuts, the field's response, and why "silence is a choice"

  • 49:30 — Chaplains as ethics consults and a call for moral renewal

  • 52:30 — And She Baptized Her: spiritual injury at every stage of a case

  • 54:00 — How a chaplain can help investigators approach faith communities

  • 55:45 — Faith, hope, love, virtue, and beauty: a spiritual self-care check-in

Mentioned in this episode

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Episode Transcript

*** Please note that this transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] sometimes we find our moral courage just by being reminded that we can tap into it.

 if we're talking people with money, people with money and power, just the gross double standard that we see in terms of what accountability looks like silence is a choice. Even when we feel- It's the only choice. It's still a choice.

 I think it was very clear how deeply held some of our values were and how quickly they were abandoned We're in a moment of spiritual suffering societally because we are suffering a lack of virtue.

The course of action that most people took to the gutting of infrastructure that serves children in this nation was silence.

[00:01:00] Welcome to Coursing Justice, the podcast. I'm your host, Robert Peters, nonprofit executive, former prosecutor, and founder of Coursing Justice. We're a consortium of passionate current and former law enforcement, prosecutors, and CAC MDT members, bringing our skills to serve the field through innovative training and practical content for justice and child protection professionals.

We are continuing a series on different members of the multidisciplinary team, and there is one member that is not nearly as prolific as it should be, and maybe we'll, uh, work on changing that a little bit today, or at least pitching why we should change that today. And that is the role of the CAC, the Child Advo- Advocacy Center chaplain.

And I'm pleased to have with us today Reverend Carrie Nettles, the nation's first CAC chaplain from the Julie Valentine Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Carrie, could you tell us a little bit just about your professional journey and what led you [00:02:00] to having that distinction professionally? When the Julie Valentine Center hired me there was not previously a chaplain at any CAC to our knowledge. And so, later this year will make 10 years since I've been here and been a part of this. That's a good run. Yeah, it's a pretty good run. I got here by way of children's ministry in general and thinking that, um, I would be on staff at a church, um, in capacity of Christian ed children's ministry in general.

When I found myself working at a child advocacy center in Charleston, South Carolina, kind of in an interim point in my life doing that work, noticing the cases, sitting with the children, working with the children, you know, I never was able to really truly turn off my children's minister eyes and ears.

And so increasingly, I found myself asking the question, who is tending to the spiritual needs of these children? And [00:03:00] for a variety of reasons, that may not be the clergy person in their life. They may not have a clergy person in the first place, like any kind of faith or spiritual leader. Sometimes the offender is the faith leader or spiritual leader.

Sometimes the faith leader is helping to minimize or cover up the crime that has happened. Sometimes families don't wanna share these things with their faith leader because the amount of shame that is generally associated, with these crimes for people who aren't working in the field.

So there's any number of reasons why- if there is a clergy person in a child and family's life, they might not wanna talk to them about what's going on. So the more I started asking that question, that got me to Victor Vieth's article from the National Child Protection Training Center on 12 potential roles for a theologian on the MDT.

And eventually found my way back to clinical pastoral [00:04:00] education The program that trains anyone from, seminary, rabbinical school who is graduating with a divinity degree, a theology degree, usually a unit of clinical pastoral education, or CPE, is required for that.

But anyone who wants to go further into credentialing themselves to become a professional chaplain will go on to complete a residency in CPE. Those are usually held in hospitals, so you learn a lot about hospital chaplaincy there. But while I was completing my residency the job wasn't lined up, but the vision was there.

And so, I asked for and was given the opportunity to hone in and specialize my skill set with child patients and children families who were... children and families who were navigating questions like why? Why does my kid get [00:05:00] cancer? What did we do to deserve this? Hmm. Those kinds of questions.

Those are those are questions that every person asks, regardless of their religious or spiritual framework or lack thereof, right? So there's even an atheist, for example, will have an existential question of, "Why this? Why now? Why me?" When these kinds of traumas happen in our lives. Hmm. Something universal about the human condition.

Indeed. Yeah. So that's something you see, that need for spiritual care, not being limited to any specific faith tradition? Indeed. In fact, a, a good professionally trained chaplain knows and is trained to provide spiritual care to the person in front of them. So if I'm in the hospital and someone's rolling in the trauma bay, I can't necessarily get a spiritual assessment out of them.

They [00:06:00] might may not even be awake. But the need is still there, right? And so, we can tailor and specify and individualize care to a person based on their beliefs and their religious background when we get the opportunity to. But 100% of human beings have spirits and spiritual needs. And so, I would say the, the kind of the core foundational, um, building block for any good professional chaplain is going to be the ability to offer equal access to spiritual care regardless of their background.

I know some of the pushback that we see, you know, has sort of the, the ethical concern attached to it, not to chaplaincy more broadly, but focusing on multidisciplinary teamwork for a second. So you, I'm sure, have seen, and I have seen and many in this field have seen, you know, a context like a forensic [00:07:00] interview where a child, you know, discloses that they, quote, "had an affair," had sex, and they're describing a sexual assault, but they don't have that framework, right?

And just based on, you know, a, a host of unfortunate unfortunate issues. And so you see sort of the guilt, the shame. You can even see it physically, just like in the way they're presenting, their posture, everything. It's tangible almost, like in the forensic interview in really, you know, heartbreaking ways.

And so you see the issues manifest, but some have said, "Oh, we need to draw a line here ethically. We shouldn't get involved into sort of the theological, spiritual issues. You know, we are sort of secular entities. We're either agents of the state for law enforcement or prosecutors, or we're, you know, providing, services."

And so there's this, separation of church and services, as it were, in terms of how these things are being addressed. What would you say to those who have that concern? How have you navigated that in your role? I would say I'm a huge fan [00:08:00] of the separation of church and state. I think a good, solid boundary between church and state helps both stay healthy.

And there are chaplains in our US Armed Forces. There are chaplains that are serving the military. There are chaplains that are serving in the Senate and Congress. Hmm. There are chaplains serving in federal prisons. The difference between a pastor or a rabbi or an imam and a chaplain would be, you know, those people are trained to provide specific religious education and leadership to that specific group of people within that specific religious framework.

Whereas chaplains are trained to go into secular spaces, so even a hospital. Not all hospitals are run by a church agency. I know historically they often were, but now they're corporations, basically. So we go [00:09:00] into secular places usually where big life changes and/or traumas are occurring to meet people in that need that is arising.

So for example, to your illustration of a child in a forensic interview that is really demonstrating a level of emotional injury and spiritual injury in the course of that forensic interviewer interview. The purview of that forensic interview is very specific so it wouldn't be appropriate for the forensic interviewer to shift into therapy mode at that moment.

But to a person, they almost always leave that interview and let the advocate know or somebody, and they refer to therapy afterwards, right? We see that the emotional distress is there. We see that the need is there. Refer to therapy. We can do the same thing with refer to spiritual care. Refer to the chaplain.

Obviously, that child and [00:10:00] family can choose to engage those services or not. We don't wanna force or coerce anybody to do anything, because they had enough of that when they were being victimized, but to be able to recognize the need just as much as the emotional need and the emotional wound, I think is important, and I think it's a justice issue for the children we serve I think in the hierarchy of questions and just acute, needs, sometimes maybe often this is the thing, right? Why did God let this happen? Some of the things you were saying in the medical setting. I think of my friend Amber Higgins, prolific speaker, survivor of abuse, but she describes, being eight years old and having those questions, and actually, crying out those questions during, sexual assaults, and yet God not being there in her perspective, and not answering.

And so the questions that flow from that, is God powerless? Does he want this to happen? Is he, quote-unquote, "using this" in a gross way, for some other [00:11:00] purposes? So when you have those types of really profound questions, it feels like a real gap with tragic, suffering.

I think suffering is the result to not intersect and meet those needs, or at least have services available to meet those needs. Absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes well-meaning friends and loved ones will attempt to respond to those questions, but will do so in a really unhelpful way and sometimes in ways that cause more injury, right?

If a loved one responds to a profound existential question such as one you, you just listed with a sort of a spiritually bypassing response, possibly because that's all they've been equipped with, it's all that has been modeled or taught for them that is a bit of adding insult to injury, right?

Because if the philosophical retort to, "Why is God letting this happen [00:12:00] to me?" Like, "Oh, because he's going to use this for his greater good." If that is somehow how an individual has made sense of their own tragedies and their own suffering, and that is working for them, that's wonderful.

That's what we want for all people. But to offer that to someone, especially in a context like child abuse as though that solves the problem or answers the question without recognizing that you... you're just implying that God is a child abuser. Right. Right. And that, that becomes really theologically tricky.

I don't know a lot of people who want to affirm that. Yeah. So I think, raising awareness about good spiritual care in general doesn't attempt to offer a neat and tidy answer to a profound question about suffering.

If you were to take a sabbatical, Robert, and you were to spend months reviewing what every [00:13:00] major world religion and every great philosopher from history has to say about suffering and the problem of evil, I would be willing to lay odds that you would not leave that sabbatical with a nice, tidy answer.

I find it unlikely. The sabbatical does sound nice, but- ... that does sound... I think you're correct. Even with that work, though. Let's not disrespect anybody by trying to offer an overly simplified answer to a profound question. I think one of the, the kindest and most trauma-informed ways we can respond to those questions is just by affirming it's a valid question.

Yeah. I don't know if you remember this, one of the pieces of feedback you gave to me years ago with my When The Child Abuser Carries a Bible presentation, which is probably the most sought after one that I've done in the field- Yeah ... which I think is interesting and [00:14:00] speaks to this broader issue of how these spiritual questions are so prolific and important.

But in any event, you made that statement of, not suggesting to the child that, oh, someone's going to answer those questions. But doing the, the, someone's gonna walk with them. Someone's gonna help, process those without offering something that is not, likely to occur in terms of a nice shiny bow.

There's value to honoring a question, right? Yes. In my experience both children and adults very much appreciate when the question is honored, not dismissed, not offered, a pithy response. But just like, "Wow, that's a really good question." Yeah. And truly, you know, within our context here you could probably poll all of my coworkers and find, I don't think any of them would tell you that I ever answer these [00:15:00] questions.

As much as I tend to the questions, I resource the person asking the questions. We can do work around and towards the question, but I dare say we never really answer the question because, again- No major world religion or philosophical framework has a real good answer to the problem of theodicy. And I think the justice issue here in the, the child protection field is that even though children aren't likely to have a word like theodicy in their vocabulary, it is no less part of their experience, especially if they're coming through the doors of a CAC.

Yeah. We could, and maybe we will in a little bit, delve more into the theology side of things. I think it's interesting, the rush to cliches and easy answers themselves is psychologically [00:16:00] interesting to me, and theologically interesting to me. And I don't see it, in my background in Christianity, I don't see it reflected in scripture really.

It seems like scripture at times, if I'm honest, feels frustratingly ambiguous about some things. And yet, there's something about this let's confront evil with cliches that feels like there's a discordance there perhaps. There is. And I would venture a guess that it has a lot to do with our discomfort.

Mm. Right? We're not comfortable with mystery. Yes. We're not comfortable with a problem unsolved. I think particularly when you consider, adult-child dynamics, there aren't a ton of adults, at least not historically in my experience, that are willing to respond to a child with, [00:17:00] "I don't know."

Mm. Like, even implicitly, it's almost like there's this internal compulsion to explain or offer a little educational lesson or moment at the point of a question when that's not necessarily what's called for in the moment. I don't know if that makes sense. It does. It does. I saw that, I'll resist the temptation to be a parent who talks about their own kids in a professional context.

But a child you know- Yeah ... recently was struggling with the passage, in Exodus, where, God sends the angel of death, slaughters all the firstborns, and so this child is looking at that and saying, "What gives?"

, In between sort of, you know, you're just God and then your slaughter of firstborns. And, there was an intersection, with that child and the faith leader, and to the faith leader's credit, I thought they did a great job [00:18:00] of creating space for, "Yeah, it's pretty tough."

That's pretty difficult versus trying to say, how dare you ask such questions rebellious spirit, et cetera. Or, attempting something that's cliched when it's actually really complex and difficult. Yeah. Yeah. I think that gets at the gist of honoring the question, right?

It kind of dishonors the question if I rush to offer a pithy response or a shallow answer. But to, you know, to respond whether you're a parent or a faith leader or an aunt or uncle, to be able to say, " I've wondered that, too." Or I really struggle. I'm not sure I really know how to reconcile those things, how to make sense of both of those things together.

That honors the question that the child has asked. Yeah. I think in a, another sort of, going down the [00:19:00] pathway of dissonance between the cliched approach and then theological belief I think of the insistence on timeframe of healing for survivors. I'll give you an example, and I'd love your reaction to it.

But we did, years ago, did a panel just addressing, issues of abuse and faith and so we had a, survivor panel, which went really well, and then we had a faith leader panel. Now, we did vet these faith leaders in advance. We had sort of defined areas of where the questions would go, and you already...

A listener can't see this, but Carrie is already visibly reacting with where this is going. And one went rogue, and it could've been much worse than it was, in hindsight. But one went rogue and immediately, decided that they need to dovetail into forgiveness and why forgiveness is so important and, et cetera.

There are a few problems with that, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on them. But one of many problems is there was no, relationship there, you know, [00:20:00] between the person giving sort of that, that insight and those on the panel. And the other thing is, I knew the background of those individuals.

They didn't. And these were obviously I don't wanna rank, you know, how, how horrific or un- horrific abuse is, but, these are individuals that had suffered, things that most can't imagine. These were just awful, awful cases, and that this person, would be shocked, the faith leader would be shocked to even know happened.

It would break their mind that these things could even happen. Yes. And so I think that that's one of many things that was interesting about that exchange. But your thoughts? My first thought is you said the F-bomb. It's, um- That's a big one ... years ago, that's one of my clients told me that for her, forgiveness is the F-bomb.

Hmm. And in practice as a chaplain, I don't know that I can think of a single [00:21:00] time, I deliberately do not mention that word or the concept until, the individual in front of me raises it. Hmm. Right? Because I don't want to even accidentally imply that, you should already be thinking about this or working on it, right, by simply bringing it up.

And the reality is sometimes the work of a good spiritual caregiver is offering a different framework, a different way of thinking about things. So sometimes with my older children and my adult clients, I'll even Reframe forgiveness to forgiving, right? Because the, the word forgiveness almost kind of connotes a one and done.

Right. Right? Like injury happened I did some healing, I forgive, I forgave, and then [00:22:00] we moved on. And the unintended consequence of that kind of framework for the concept can lead some people to believe they have somehow fallen off the wagon of- Mm ... forgiveness or forgiving if they ever feel a feeling again about that person or that situation.

But that- Mm ... is just so normal and predictable of- Yes ... human experiences and- Yes ... and relationships. So it, there's, just like we say, you know, healing isn't linear, I often suggest to clients that forgiving isn't linear either. And there are gonna be times when we feel like we have done all the work there is for me to do on forgiving a person or an issue and then as I grow and have more lived experience, I might find there's more work for me to do in that area.

And that's [00:23:00] not a bad thing. That makes me- Right ... a very normal human being. Yeah. By no means limited to trauma. You know, just professional slights. That's a, a series of decisions that have to be made. And yeah, you've ha- have some new experience or some new reminder, maybe of a professional opportunity that you missed or something like that, and you're like, "Oh, I still, uh, that's still fresh, isn't it?"

There's- Yeah ... there's more to be done there. Yeah. And you're, and that, you're learning that information in that moment. Like, "Oh, I thought that was resolved, and now I'm finding it's not." Well, I still feel some type of way about that, don't I? Well, I still feel some kind of way. But you know, I would say the average faith leader may not be as attuned to, all of the landmines around the, a topic like forgiving that even non-spiritual professionals in the MDT world, the child protection [00:24:00] world are because we've done a lot of interfacing and listening to crime victims, people who have been harmed by other people.

So in some ways we might be better attuned to knowing how this idea of forgiveness is gonna land for someone. I would encourage a General population discussion of how urging or coercing someone to hurry up and forgive is not only not helpful and not likely to expedite the forgiving process, but is likely to do more harm- Mm-hmm

Because now we've introduced a new spiritual injury or a new dynamic of religious abuse depending on who or what is doing the coercing, right? Yeah. Well, even in the example I gave, as soon as the words, you know, came out of the, the faith leader's mouth, you could see it. I'm not a clinician, but obvious disassociation, you know, just immediate, .

Yeah. So and then that's to say nothing of the [00:25:00] longer term, harm even outside of that, that immediate activation, so. As a person of faith or a faith leader, we can affirm that something like forgiving is helpful and important for people in general without trying to, get someone else to do that on our timetables.

Mm. Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting that, it continues even in communities where you'd hear things like God's timetable is not ours, and his ways are not our ways, et cetera. But I think there's a, a failure of imagination or maybe empathy, I don't know, maybe both, to think of, just as in a physical injury takes time, if your femur snaps, you're not gonna be running a marathon next week.

Like, there's a timetable for these things, and it requires intentional treatment. And it's not immediate. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about just what, your role [00:26:00] looks like at the Julie Valentine Center. What is a day in the life of a CAC chaplain? I'm not sure any two days have ever looked the same.

We kind of wrote this description deliberately to have three main components. So if you think of a pie in thirds one-third of that is direct client service. If you hear something like this in the forensic interview, and you refer to the chaplain, and, the caregivers and the child are like, "Yes, we want to talk to the chaplain," we can schedule a time.

They come and meet with me, and we do the work. The second third would be the spiritual care and support of my colleagues and multidisciplinary team partners. We know about secondary traumatic impact. And even though these are [00:27:00] professionals, these are also people who are living lives and have their own experience.

And, you know, just like you might find in the hospital setting, every now and then you're gonna have a case that hits particularly close to home for you because this child is the same age as your child, or this is a injury just like a loved one of yours that you lost to the same kind of injury or chronic illness.

And because that happens for our staff and community partners sometimes they wanna talk to me instead of their faith leader because I know this world. I am not shocked by the stories of what our clients have gone through. If someone in this field does seek spiritual care from a faith leader outside of this field, they might sometimes feel the burden of having to do a lot of, front-end educating just to set the stage for how this affected me.

Does that make sense? Like, you almost have to build [00:28:00] the scaffolding of how traumatic it can get to understand why this hurt so much, or why now I'm having this existential question. I think some really good examples, and not special to the CAC because miscarriage is so common- Mm

There are gonna be times, when someone doing this work is meeting, with the umpteenth person who has harmed their child or had their child removing, removed from care, while at the same time wondering, "Why can't I get pregnant? Why can't I stay pregnant?" Mm. "Why have I lost multiple pregnancies to miscarriage?

Why did I have a stillbirth?" Those are really fair questions. And having access to a chaplain well, some people have absolutely made use of that, right? Yep. Let's say the third of the work is serving [00:29:00] as the faith community liaison. And that takes a number of different forms. One is just trying to connect with and make sure that area faith leaders know I'm here and have my phone number, so when something does happen, they can call me and say, "Carrie, something happened.

What do we do now?" Now, we try to offer training on the front end so they do know what to do, but in case they don't, they can call me and say, "Now what?" They will sometimes reach out to say, "We're updating our child protection policy. Will you look over it?" And the chaplain's role there is not to be, the insurance carrier or the lawyer.

It's the child advocate with a view to the spiritual needs of the child with a theological training. What is this document saying about us theologically? What is this document saying about us as, as it relates to our stewardship of the children [00:30:00] entrusted to our care? That's... That and my advocate hat, that's how I'm helping them.

But also, providing prevention training as much as possible, I have a handful of modules that are everything from your basic, recognizing and responding to physical or behavioral indicators of abuse and understanding my role as a mandated reporter to learning more about religious predators and how some offenders will deliberately target religious communities to gain access to children exploit that cover of religiosity and have that deniability.

"Such a good guy. He's here all the time." So helping faith leaders and houses of worship become a little more savvy around those kinds of tactics, and then also generally educating around the spiritual impact of trauma. Helping people to understand and hopefully [00:31:00] support within the structures of their faith community, not just as a faith leader, but also as, friends and family within a faith community.

"Why can't they just get over this?" Well, we can talk a little bit about the neurobiology of trauma. We can talk a little bit about what spiritual suffering looks like and how the presence of spiritual suffering does not indicate the absence of faithfulness, does not indicate- Mm ... that they are somehow stuck in a state of sin.

Spiritual suffering is something, even Christians would affirm Jesus experienced. Mm. Why else did he cry out?

Right So those are the three primary pieces. Chaplain for clients, chaplain for staff and MDT, and then faith community liaison and educator. I could see that being... Y- you gave the example around, the work triggering other trauma. I could see that being [00:32:00] really useful for MDTs in maybe processing collective trauma.

So I think of the MDTs when the child fatality cases, right? Or the child torture cases, Yeah, where certainly there's always some level of that, but some things are really sort of felt at scale. I think of, at, GRACE, the organization, the passing of our executive director in the past year and how important, spiritual care and things like that were relevant.

Where, you know, certainly there's therapeutic needs, and I think neither of us would suggest this is replacing, therapy. But there is, there's something different about the need here. And there's something, I think, there's an additive there. But what's your experience been of that?

I'll tell you about a time where I feel like in retrospect, I could have done more, and I feel like probably if I had to do it over again, I would. The the way that I show up in the world in general as a person of faith is almost the [00:33:00] antithesis of a proselytizer. So if anything, I probably err on the side of, maybe not doing something when I should have. And I can remember a moment, it was in MDT, this was sometime past lockdown, where we realized that having MDT on Zoom results in better attendance. So we've stayed on Zoom for MDT ever since we came back from lockdown.

But even on Zoom, there was a moment in a case where we all kind of collectively realized that every agency involved had done absolutely everything they could And the trajectory of this child's life

Didn't look very hopeful going down, [00:34:00] looking down the road And there was this very full silence

And I noticed it and there was a little urge in me to like, should I pray right now? And Robert, that is never an urge in me to offer public prayer. That's just not the kind of clergy person or chaplain that I am. Maybe in the context of the, the trauma bay or the ICU family waiting area, sometimes you can clearly see a need and offer it, or sometimes they'll explicitly say, "Will you pray for us, Chaplain?"

But this was an MDT meeting. We were in a particular case staffing and this very full, heavy silence descends. And I thought if there's ever a moment like that again, [00:35:00] I think even if I don't offer prayer, and you can offer prayer without mandating that everybody present join in even simply pausing to name, I'm noticing that we are all struck by the gravity of this situation.

I'm noticing that we're all feeling something. Even in our separate spaces, remember, we're on Zoom, so we're not even like physically in a room together, but there is this shared space, and there was a shared lament that was happening. And to your point, I think that's worth honoring Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, let's assume, some in our audience, have heard some of what's discussed and see a gap, in terms of their MDT, in terms of meeting spiritual care. What do you see as some of the first steps, you know, CAC could do [00:36:00] to start developing to meet this need? And I almost wonder, 'cause there aren't that many of you, sadly, um, yet, yet.

And I almost wonder if maybe this is something CAC state chapters should start thinking about. If we have, you know, more, your tiny little rural CACs, that they're not going to be affording a full-time CAC or even a part-time CAC chaplain any time in the next decade. Just throwing that out there.

Hopefully, some of you are listening. Just as sort of a broader, cohort type approach. But zooming back down to a local CAC level, where do you see some initial possibilities being? I think there are probably a few actions that CACs could take initially. One would be to reach out to your local children's hospital.

So if you are in a bigger city where there is a children's hospital, starting a conversation with their spiritual care department seems like a great place to start. And even if [00:37:00] ultimately that spiritual care department... So presumably, your CAC has a relationship already with that hospital for the purposes of the child abuse pediatricians and, say, nurses or whatever your program looks like.

So you may already have an existing MOU with that hospital. But you could talk to them about what does it look like to build a program here? Is it possible that, some of your staff could be available to come and offer staff support to our staff or MDT? Is there enough in the budget to come over and work with some of our clients if there's a need?

Because they, they would already have the training and the credentialing if they're hired by the hospital. Most hospitals will not hire someone to be a chaplain who doesn't have some sort of seminary degree and basic four units of clinical pastoral [00:38:00] education. I think also probably depending on what CACs wanna focus on, if a CAC were more interested in connecting with faith communities and offering some of the prevention education and good solid response education that person would not necessarily need the sort of clinical experience, that we would want in someone who is going to provide that direct patient or direct client spiritual care.

So that can be someone who already has, you know, relationships in the community and who can build on those. Or maybe that's someone who is themselves a member of a faith community, and they, start with their house of worship and then build from there. I think one of the gifts of being a chaplain who is doing that means that I have the ability to code switch which is part of what we're taught, you know?

Like, I need to know the difference between talking to, an evangelical Christian [00:39:00] versus a reformed Jew, right? Like, if I'm gonna go from one room to another, I need to be able to switch accordingly to what this person's value set is. So given that, I'm uniquely qualified to talk from what, to one house of worship or another about how I see the intersection of my work and their work being mutually beneficial, how I think it makes sense for their house of worship to have this kind of training.

But again, like I said, that's not required. The, the clinical training isn't required for that kind of work. If a CAC is interested in hiring a chaplain to do that clinical work I would say that they really need to have that level of clinical training because, again, even good intentions can add harm as we talked about with, you know, family and loved ones who think they're helping when they offer a spiritually [00:40:00] bypassing kind of response.

And that would be hard, I think, for more rural CACs. I don't see a problem with the state chapter having a chaplain employed at the state level who can resource multiple CACs. When I think about hospice chaplains, hospice chaplains are usually traveling within a certain geographical area to where the need is.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going all over the state, but they might be in a particular sub-region of the state. So I don't know, maybe that's a place to start. Do you have more questions about any of that? The only thing I would add is, you know, all, all roads lead back to Victor Victor Vieth, our friend and mentor who you mentioned earlier.

And I know Zero Abuse Project, had a grant with some funding for helping CACs get chaplaincies up and coming. Hopefully we will have a report and s- and a toolkit by the end of this year. [00:41:00] Amazing. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I infer from that, that you've been looped into that worthy endeavor.

Excellent. Yes. Very cool. Cool. One of the things that feels like it's making work more difficult these days, and maybe this is unique to me and not the broader multidisciplinary team, is this sort of broader soup it feels like we're swimming in, and this is not a political podcast by any means.

And I don't think this is a particularly partisan take. But we're just living in a time of moral injury writ large and that, I think, is affecting us. Do you sense that in the MDT world, and is that a topic you've digested? Yes. Yes. In fact, I've been doing some targeted research lately on supporting my MDT, in the moral injury that we are kind of all experiencing at the moment.

And we talk in the professional chaplaincy [00:42:00] world, these conversations are usually happening in the context of, Caring for the nurse after she has been forced to code 99-year-old great-grandma and forced to feel all of her ribs break under her hands, right? Mm. When the family says, "Yes, resuscitate, resuscitate," and the healthcare providers in the room know that it is to no good end that this person has reached the end of their natural life and the limits of, healthcare development and interventions.

Insisting that people provide that kind of care can injure the caregiver in the course of offering that, right? Because they have to do this, but it doesn't help anybody and it probably hurts everybody, even the family members who don't realize it, [00:43:00] right? Mm-hmm ... there's not a lot that speaks to our current climate of...

I mean, none of us go into this field because because we don't care about justice. Mm. We care so much about justice that we've said this, this is the work, even though we know it's not gonna pay out millions of dollars, we're gonna... it's in line with our values, so that's what we're gonna do.

I would say even this

We're in a moment of spiritual suffering societally- Hmm ... because we are suffering a lack of virtue. Hmm. We are not seeing or experiencing, witnessing virtue writ large. And there's a lot of variables to that, right? The [00:44:00] if it bleeds it leads mentality of the media is not new. Right. But we do now have the ability to access news from all over the world at a moment's notice.

As soon as something happens, we can get a notification on our phone, even if it's the other side of the world. But you don't get those notifications when really good things happen. Right. Yeah. You get those notifications when really bad... Maybe, maybe you get a notification about winning a gold medal, and that's great.

But the vast majority of those headlines and those notifications are, are really bad news. So while the if it bleeds it leads, you know, form that news has taken isn't new, I think the combination of how much news that we can take in if we don't really deliberately care for ourselves around this and just how bad it [00:45:00] is and if it seems as though Evil is winning.

We're trying to hold people to account for their behaviors, but there seems like there's no accountability. Systems are failing left and right. The combination of all of that leaves us suffering spiritually because of the lack of virtue. Yeah. The antidote then is not simply to go to church or synagogue.

It would also be, seeking out news stories where someone does the right thing, not for fame or glory, but because it was the right thing to do. Or the antidote is going down to your local food bank and volunteering to put cans in a box. Yeah. Right? Like, and there's a scale issue there.

But when we [00:46:00] do take account of what is within our sphere of control- Deliberately honing in on how can I feed my need for virtue, to see it, to experience it to be reminded that it exists, is really,

Top of the list of needs right now Yeah. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, I was trying to Google really quick. I think the quote may be Dr. Henry Cloud, something to the effect of we accumulate fears while we sit, we overcome fears with action.

Yeah, I think, from my limited vantage point, as in not directly prosecuting these days, but more, more so in the trainer, realm I think everything you just said is nail on the head in terms of the accountability. You know, you devote your life to justice, accountability, equipping others to seek justice, accountability, and then you just see at scale, eh, it's all good.

It's [00:47:00] all good. Mm. Without delving too far into the headlines- if we're talking people with money, people with money and power, just the gross double standard that we see in terms of what accountability looks like is one piece of it.

I think, so there's that sort of broader soup that I think is challenging for our field right now. I think another element of it is, the funding cuts. The way that the field has been slashed and burned, from a funding cut perspective. Massive funding cuts to, victim services.

Massive funding cuts to CAC land. The fact that literally the most brilliant people in this field lost their jobs in 2025 and their jobs were literally equipping hundreds of CACs, you know, across the United States. And the fact that, you know, where was the outcry over all of that? And I think, not just where was the outcry from the public, to be clear, but, like, where was the outcry in the field, over these [00:48:00] things?

And there was, obviously many people, you know, worked very hard on these things, but you also saw this shift towards "Well, let's just keep our heads down and not address these things because, what if it happens to us?" Or, "What if this cut happens to us?" Or, you know, "We need to edit this content to please the powers that be."

And again, a lot of people had to make difficult decisions between, at what point do we take a values-based stand, and at what point do we need to make compromises that ensure kids keep getting services that keep them alive? I get that. No judgment. No aspersions for the really difficult choices people had to make.

But I think writ large, the fact that the course of action that most people took to the gutting of infrastructure that serves children in this nation was silence. That really doesn't sit well with me, and it won't, I think, until that's fixed, which will be a while. That's the same spiritual suffering that I was just naming, [00:49:00] right?

Even when that response was born out of a fear of retribution, if we speak up, we might get more funding cuts, or we might get closed, or we might get investigated, or... it doesn't change the, the injuries there because silence is a choice.

It's a choice. Yes. Even when we feel- It's the only choice. Pragmatically it's still a choice. Yes. If anything, I dare say this is a greater reason to involve more theologians and chaplains in the field because, back to my hospital setting example in the hospital, if there is an ethical concern, it goes to the ethics committee, a member of which is the chaplain.

Or oftentimes the chair is one of the chaplains [00:50:00] or the head of the spiritual care department. We've been trained extensively in these ethics conversations. So even if our ultimate role isn't to tell, the CAC director or director of the network for the statewide network what to do, we can still be an ethical consult of, "This is worth considering."

This is the implicit message of this choice. This is the non-verbal message of this choice. And I think that's so critical. I'm not separation of church and state. I'm not calling for, a revival per se in MDTs and CACs, but kind of. I'm calling for, I'm calling for how about a moral renewal?

We'll frame it that way. Because I think this is critical I think it was very clear how deeply held some of our values were and how quickly they were abandoned because [00:51:00] of quote unquote "necessity." I think that was very clear

You, that's a powerfully true statement. So I think roles like yours, roles like a CAC chaplain, I think there is something here about some of the efforts we need to take just as a movement to refind, relocate our morality. Yeah. And what are our values? What are our non-negotiables? Where do we go from here in what's admittedly a tricky landscape in living those out?

Truly true. I dare say if you were to interview the leadership here at JVC, they would probably tell you that in the almost 10 years since adding a chaplain to the staff, they have seen an organizational shift- Hmm ... as the result. Now, I don't mean to say that, this role has fixed all of their [00:52:00] problems or anything like that.

But that, there have been times where leadership has made some hard choices, and they've been able to do it born out of their moral courage. Hmm. Hmm. And sometimes we find our moral courage just by being reminded that we can tap into it. Is a choice that can be made. Yes. Yes. Well, you, hit the training circuit a good bit and I believe you have a, a presentation that touches on some of the things we've discussed.

My CAC director and I will be traveling and we're gonna present a case study called And She Baptized Her.

And, the purpose of this particular case study is to use, adaptation of a case that we served on in [00:53:00] which there was a spiritual role religious community role, and spiritual injury at just about every point in from the initial outcry and disclosure and call for police to come out to victim impact statement at sentencing.

And, even later in the course of, of ongoing therapy, every MDT partner involved in this case was able to benefit from the fact that this case came through a CAC with a chaplain

Awesome. Well, I'm fascinated. Definitely check that out Those are some of the most fascinating cases, I think critical for MDTs certainly to understand when those dynamics are in play, how they're in play, just the impact on victims, and also the impact on broader cultures.

Even from a just meat and [00:54:00] potatoes investigative strategy perspective, it has such a tangible impact on third-party witnesses, evidence collection, all of the above. So critical to discuss. Absolutely. And, you know, to their credit, I've had investigators come to me at times to consult on, "Hey, there's this overlap with their faith leader, with their faith community.

I'm going to interview them. What do I need to know?" So, I'm not giving privileged information from a client about their faith leader or house of worship, but I'm dealing with a client that's usually much later after the fact. But generally speaking, I can say, "Well, you know, that religious tradition or that Christian denomination prioritizes these values.

So, if you really want to get a good interview, maybe lean into that connection point." Like, "I also share this [00:55:00] value. The sheriff's office shares this value of truth and justice." And yeah, so, that can also be a benefit. Yep. Yet another demonstration of the importance of a multidisciplinary team approach and having the theological literacy and spiritual care components represented on the MDT.

Yeah. Very, very important. Practically useful not just an additional thing to do for the heck of it. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I'll close, with just a question relating to resiliency strategies in general. Obviously, we've talked about a host of difficult issues. And we obviously navigate those types of dynamics, these new terrifying, terrible things either in our caseload or in emerging ways that, offenders are utilizing technology. What helps you bounce back from those types of things? What are some go-to strategies?

Ooh. Okay. Well, I would say one of my [00:56:00] foundational operating frameworks comes from the work of Mark Bartel's paper on spiritual suffering. And he breaks down human beings' spiritual needs into kind of five basic needs: faith, hope, love, virtue, and beauty. Mm. So when I am thinking about what, not just what is self-care, but what is, really spiritual self-care I'm doing an assessment on myself, so to speak, of, have I really nourished my need for community lately?

So that would fall under the love larger category. So it's not just community, but it is safe community. It is trustworthy community. It is spending time with them. Even if we're not necessarily in a worship service, if you are a person of faith and going to worship service is important to you, by all means, prioritize that.

And at the same time, simply spending time with your people can nourish your spirit no less, you know, [00:57:00] at around the fire pit in someone's backyard or at the pub grabbing some, hors d'oeuvres and a drink. Prioritizing something like that, I little, a little bit of self-disclosure.

I watch old episodes of West Wing to help nourish my need for virtue. Hmm. Because, one of the things I appreciate about those, those writers was that regardless of which character or which political party just about every episode they put a really great speech and assertion in somebody's mouth that really lifts up, "This is the right thing to do here."

And sometimes I need to be reminded that there are people somewhere in some rooms saying a version of this, even if it doesn't hit the headlines. Yes. Yes. Yeah, so a lot of self-assessment [00:58:00] of, you know, have I nourished my need for beauty lately? Sometimes that's creating in some sort of hobby form or maybe it's, going out into nature and just appreciating a beautiful sunset.

There's a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's, watching the way my kids interact with each other and support each other. They're not little anymore and not doing the cuddly tumbly thing that they did as littles. But at their more mature level now, their way of being siblings to each other is still strikingly beautiful to me, the way they love and support each other.

So those are just some examples, but I'm doing that five basic needs assessment of how am I nourishing my spirit lately. I love it. I don't know, where this originally comes from and I'll butcher the saying of it, but our friend, colleague, Laura Thien at Grace, says something to the effect of, burdens are meant to be shared, something to that effect.

Or loss being [00:59:00] experienced in community. There's a lot to be said for that. I think that's another point for the multidisciplinary team and why that's been such a transformative force for good in the CAC movement and beyond. Well, thank you, Carrie. Helpful and fascinating as always. , The time always goes by quickly.

Appreciate you lending your insight on these really important issues. And encourage you, if you're listening, whether you are a local CAC or a CAC chapter, what can be done to expand access to spiritual care, both for multidisciplinary teams themselves, but also for the children who unquestionably need, those services.

So, please reach out. I'm sure Carrie would love to speak with you. Obviously- Sure ... Victor Vieth would love to speak with you, if there's any ways, to further that important work and proliferate the, access to that needed care. Thank you for listening to Coursing Justice. Sign up for our newsletter at coursingjustice.com, and join us as we continue charting a way forward for justice in the cases that matter most. [01:00:00] 

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