I am not saying it applies here but...
There was a woman and she was living in a women’s shelter here in the states with her three young boys. She was from Africa and had been married to a fairly wealthy German, she was fleeing an abusive husband in Germany. That’s how she ended up in the USA. So the story goes...
While in the women’s shelter, she met another woman who was staying at the women’s shelter who was also from Africa but had become a nurse and a citizen of the USA. When the abusive boyfriend was cleared from the citizen woman’s home, she left the shelter and returned home, taking the other woman and her 3 kids with her.
This African/German woman and her three kids made the other lady happy, as she has no children and she thought they could all be like a little family. She could help them as the African/German lady went to school and the children could be in a good school and stable environment.
This that and the other happened and the African/German lady started complaining to a church she had started attending. She said the other lady was cruel, crazy...you name it (it was quite a story). Of course the church was worried for this woman, so they helped her move out of that house and found a church member who was able to house the lady and her children.
Once at the church members house, she didn’t want to care for her children, became demanding about being taken here there and yonder, wanted to drive the vehicles even though she had no license. Wanted internet hooked up to the garage apartment, instead of using the library computers. Had a strange man come to the house late at night. You get the picture.
Turns out the school overlooked needed paperwork for the children, to ensure they could be in school and because they wanted to help, just like the church. A US man had paid this woman’s way and shipped her stuff here to the USA. She had done this before— it was France that she had run off to before. The German father was looking for his children. She had kidnapped them (parent abduction).
She had other stuff going on with the courts here, too. She had somehow married the man who paid her way here but she had said he was abusive, too and she was trying to get that annulled or he was...it was all just crazy. Oh, and it turns out that the stuff the church helped the lady move out of the home of the other woman, well some of it belonged to the other woman. So the church helped this lady with theft.
Were the men abusive to her? I don’t know. I do know that this was abusive to others that she came into contact with, that were just trying to be Christian and helpful. She took advantage of everyone and wanted more. She was neglectful to her children. She was a scam artist.
They endangered a older, single woman church member in doing this. The church changed their policy on how they help. Churches do need to be careful as well as helpful.
bump
Yup, I’ve been in two churches now where similar things have happened. We have to be wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. I used to run a Food Closet for our church for the neighborhood, and I got to know the clients. Some few would hang around church on Sundays looking for money/ handouts, telling ‘sad tales.’ People would ask me, ‘Should I help him?” And I’d say, “I can tell you, word for word, his story. I personally do not believe it.’
Sentimentality can get one in so much trouble.