Ministering to Sex Offenders

With a buffet table topped with potluck dishes and guests catching up and sharing stories, this holiday gathering at Fresno, California’s Mennonite Community Church looks like a traditional church social. Traditional, that is, until you learn that many of the guests here tonight, like Robert Wilson, are convicted rapists and child molesters, all out of prison and on parole.

ROBERT WILSON: I had a lewd and lascivious act with a minor. It was my child. And when we get together like this, yeah, it’s a good thing. Nobody else out there on the streets are going to accept us and let us come into their little private parties and stuff because of who we are.

GONZALEZ: This gathering is the work of a faith-based program called Circles of Support and Accountability or COSA. It wants to create a new model for how society deals with sex offenders by offering the offenders help and friendship.

(speaking to Rev. Clare Ann Ruth-Heffelbower): You are working with men who society thinks of as the worst of the worst of the worst.

REV. CLARE ANN RUTH-HEFFELBOWER: Yes, it’s true, and even the worst of the worst of the worst are human beings, and they can change.

GONZALEZ: Clare Ann Ruth-Heffelbower, an ordained Mennonite pastor, is the founder of Fresno’s COSA program.

HEFFELBOWER: We believe that it is possible for people to change. We’ve seen people change, and we believe coming from a faith perspective, that people created in God’s image have that good in them that can be there if they are given an opportunity to let that develop.

(at COSA meeting): “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change