All the major ministries and megachurches have a youth pastor problem which comes with the territory of having a youth ministry (that councils teens on their life problems).

Public school teachers and public school guidance counselors have to go through years of training to talk about personal issues and even sometimes share emotional intimacy without it turning into romantic or physical intimacy. And yet we still have the occasional incident in schools where faculty is caught banging a student. (To compare, a 1990s statistic suggested about 33% of psychotherapists are banging one of their clients, but I can’t source the stat.)

Contrast youth pastors who are untrained volunteers from the parish. Furthermore, most ministries presume their members, being church-going neighbors, don’t need vetting for moral character. According to Redditors who grew up in Southern Baptist youth ministries, the new pastor was the freak of the week since it had turnover like Defense Against Dark Arts.

Furthermore, their fidelity as a counselor to teen church members is already compromised since they are tasked not just with counseling kids on life stuff, but also to take opportunities to steer them toward devotion to the ministry that is, to find ways to sell them more Jesus. So even some of the well-intended youth ministers are going to find it too tempting to transition from manipulation towards the interests of the church to manipulation to further their own romantic interests.

But then, those with experience may also recognize it is a safer place for child predators to find new marks, since the ministry will be motivated to silence the victim in order to protect the reputation (now falsely so) of the ministry and the church. This compares to sex scandals in large commercial companies, especially if the aggressor is a high-ranking officer of the company. It becomes too attractive to either pay off the victim or threaten them with blackballing.