COASTAL OBSERVER

Parents, grandparents and community members are searching for answers after the discovery that a sex offender was allowed to work at Pawleys Island Community Church and its Christian Academy as a volunteer custodian.

But the “why” of the scandal that led to the arrest of the church pastor, Don Williams; his wife, Ginny; and the school director, Niki Howard, along with the sex offender, Warren Perry, may never be known, a counselor told families last week.

“Acknowledging how frustrating and how not fair that is, is so important,” Kathy Redwine told a group of about 30 people at the Waccamaw Library last week. “We can’t change anything about what has happened but we get to define what the narrative looks like moving forward.”

The arrests last week have been followed by five civil suits against the church, the school and its leaders. In one, the parent of a boy claims he was sexually assaulted by Perry, 70, of Murrells Inlet, who was a volunteer custodian. The Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating. This week, it charged another church official, Mike Fields, the director of operations, with endangering a child.

Redwine, along with Jamie Brown, the executive director of Children’s Recovery Center and mental health professionals held a community support meeting in response to the events at the church.

Redwine, a certified play therapist for children, wanted to provide resources to anyone affected and help parents and grandparents guide age-appropriate conversations with their children.

It doesn’t make sense to the adults, she said, and it’s hard for the children to understand.

Redwine encouraged people to feel and express their emotions. Children can benefit from watching parents and guardians model how to handle emotions.

She has a large pillow in her office for her child clients.

“I encourage kids to punch it, scream into it, stomp on it,” Redwine said. “But in here, we get to use our words.”

It’s not common to talk to children about what happens when they feel emotions, especially anger, she said. Redwine said children show what 

happens in their world through the way they play with toys.

“The more that we help them understand how their body feels when they are experiencing emotion, I think easier it is for them to begin to understand how to express that emotion,” Redwine said.

Encouraging kids to use their words can be difficult, so she uses a basic formula to help them complete sentences: “I feel,” “when,” “because,” and “I need.”

Some people were concerned about how parents will tell their children about the uncertainty of returning to class at the academy.

“The honest, age-appropriate answer is ‘we don’t know,’” Redwine said. “The other thing is acknowledging this is not an easy conversation.”

Brown was glad to see the supportive response from the community.

“That’s honestly refreshing,” he said. “This is probably the end of the worst point and the beginning of that healing journey.”

“People are ready to not let this go and hold people accountable,” Redwine added.

She grew up with an alcoholic father and said children develop resiliency when they get the support that they need.

The events are not something to let “get brushed under the rug,” Redwine said. When that happens, “they deal with it much later on in life, and it’s not nearly as pretty or easy,” she said.

“I didn’t feel like I had a support group and nobody talked about those things,” Redwine said. “That’s the reason that this is what I do for a living because I never, ever wanted a child to feel what I felt when I was a kid.”

Josh Bullock, a 1998 Waccamaw High School graduate, survived a very similar situation at his church, he said.

He viewed his abuser as a father figure, he said. Bullock said he was glad social media didn’t exist then.

“It’s just like yesterday,” he said. “It was a weird infamy kind of thing where everybody knew. Not everybody knew who I was, but everybody knew what had happened.”

In many ways, situations like these bring people together, he said.

“Don’t let this ruin your sense of community because somebody made a really bad choice,” Bullock said.

A lot of the focus is on the children, one grandparent said, but reminded others to take care of themselves as well. 

“Be gentle and be kind to yourselves, please,” she said.

Supporting a child following a traumatic community event starts by listening to the child, according to the Children’s Recovery Center. Provide reassurance, validate emotions and maintain routines. It’s also crucial to look for signs of distress, such as changes in the child’s sleep, appetite, mood, behavior or school performance. 

Other signs of child abuse can include fear of a certain person or place, wetting or soiling accidents not related to toilet training, unexplained bruises, acting out sexually with toys or other children and unusual knowledge of body parts or sex.

For more information contact Redwine at redwinecounseling@gmail.com and the Children’s Recovery Center at 843-448-3400 or childrensrecoverycenter.org.