In My House, We Did Things Bishop Larry Style, Everyone In The Bathtub!

There is nothing in the world I hate more than pedophiles and child exploitation and children being sexually abused. NOTHING. Well, except rape. Rape is up there too. But all of this public outrage over Chicago’s Bishop Larry Trotter is so over the top and creepy. Bishop Trotter took a bath with his 4-year-old granddaughter and posted the photo to Instagram, or someone posted it, and everyone is all freaked out and saying it is terribly inappropriate and awful and accusing him of all sorts of nastiness, even though Bishop Trotter says the child’s own mother was in the room and snapped the photograph.

From Madame Noir.com:

Bishop Larry Trotter, high profiled senior pastor of the Sweet Holy Spirit Church, an 8,000-member, mega-church located in the south side of Chicago, had to do some testifying this morning after a picture has surfaced on the Internet of him having what some are suggesting is inappropriate interactions with a minor.

In the picture, which appears to have been uploaded from the pastor’s own Instagram account, a smiling Trotter can be seen seated in a bubble bath with young girl, who looks between the ages of three to five years old. While there is no evidence of anything felonious happening, both Trotter and the unidentified girl are seen topless in the photo. According to the blog Obnoxious TV, the child in the picture is Trotter’s own granddaughter.

Appearing on the John Hannah Morning Show, Bishop Trotter defended himself from charges of inappropriateness and said that the last couple of days has been a very dark and hurtful times for his family. He also offered explaining for how his granddaughter appeared in the tub with him. According to Trotter, his four-year-old granddaughter, along with her parents, were visiting for the weekend. While taking a bubble bath, the girl came in the bathroom and asked Trotter if she could get in the tub. He then says that both he and his granddaughter had on swim trunks and the mother of the child, who took the picture, was present for five minutes that the child was actually in the tub with him. He then attributes another family member, with access to his Instagram account, with uploading it to the Internet.

I don’t think the photo needed to be shared with the world, and it could have happily resided in a personal family photo album, but I have a very hard time believing anything inappropriate was going on. I bathed with all of my kids. My husband bathed with all of our kids. Now they are all too old and big and tall to bathe with, and I personally don’t feel like sharing my bath with an 8-year-old and the 20 Barbie dolls she lugs into the bath with her, but if we were in a rush and we needed to take a speed shower I would totally drag her in there with me. And when we have grandchildren if they ask to join us in the bath and our own kids don’t care then I won’t have a problem with that either. When my kids were babies I almost always bathed with them, if I didn’t just put them in the kitchen sink, because I hated those bath chairs and they always seemed vaguely moldy and unsafe, and I liked bathing with them!

I just don’t see all the feigned moral outrage over this. I don’t see anything inappropriate, I see an adorable little girl who is smiling in the bath with her grandfather. I think the only person allowed to be furious about this is the girl’s mother.

(photo: Instagram)