Clergy sexual misconduct: one survivor's voice

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Final reflections

I’m walking away from this work. It’s not that the work is finished; the church is still unsafe for vulnerable people. Whether the church knows it or not, they need the voices of survivors more than ever. Thankfully many survivors are now speaking their truth. When one of us needs to stop, another survivor steps in to run the next leg of the race. I’ve worked alongside some of today’s most effective victims and survivors. I no longer have any hope in church (I don’t belong to any church and likely never will again), but I have hope in the leaders I’ve met. If there’s any hope for the church at all, it’s because of these good people.

With love and thanks to all who have supported me in five years of writing.

 

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Church Response, Impact of CSA, Surviving & Healing

The Role of Forgiveness & Reconciliation

What is the role of forgiveness in the church’s response to clergy sexual abuse? Why do some victims feel pressured to “forgive” and “move on” before they are ready? What does the church stand to gain — and what do they stand to lose – by putting forgiveness first?

For any faith community, these questions are important. For Christians, the questions can feel like a matter of spiritual life or death. Many Christians see forgiveness as the foundation of their religious faith. When Christians hear the words of Jesus – “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” and “If you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins” – they wonder whether failure to forgive will exclude them from God’s grace.

Forgiveness is never easy after a serious violation; it can take years of struggle and prayer. Yet in the case of clergy sexual abuse, the church often translates Jesus’ challenging ideal into a kind of cheap grace, for reasons that have nothing to do with the real grace of God. Offenders may seek forgiveness so they can avoid the consequences of their behavior. Bishops and other leaders may wish to forgive so they won’t have to punish a colleague who may have also become a friend. Congregants may try to forgive so they don’t have to think ill of a beloved minister. If a victim feels an urge to forgive, it may be out of misplaced loyalty to her offender, or she may hold the desperate hope that quick forgiveness will lead to quick healing. If the church causes further harm while responding to her complaint, she may try to forgive them out of the same sense of loyalty and desire for healing.

These “gains” – offenders escaping justice, church leaders and congregants ducking hard questions – can inflict a devastating toll on the church. The push for quick forgiveness puts the victim at further risk and may put other vulnerable people at risk as well. When congregational or denominational leaders attempt to suppress an uncomfortable truth, they deny the wounded congregation a chance to heal. Secrecy and innuendo can lead to widespread distrust among the congregation: distrust of clergy, lay leaders, fellow congregants, and especially the victim. As a result, the congregation may shrink in attendance, giving, and community influence. The next pastor to serve this damaged community will likely fail and may become collateral damage as well, sickened by the stress of serving a congregation whose wounds were never tended.

After an instance of clergy sexual abuse, a rush to forgiveness causes vastly more harm than good. This is why many victims of clergy sexual abuse think of “forgiveness” as the real “F word.”

If not in forgiveness, then how should the church respond to clergy sexual abuse? First by seeking truth, administering justice, and seeking healing for all parties. Only then are questions of forgiveness and reconciliation appropriate.

Seek the Truth

The church, through the bishop and/or investigative body, must begin by seeking truth. In response to the alleged victim’s complaint, the alleged offender has a duty to provide a truthful response. But what offender would willingly admit, even to themselves, a truth that could end their careers? In Trauma and Recovery, Dr. Judith Herman writes,

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.”

To victims of clergy sexual abuse, these words describe a painfully familiar phenomenon. The church cannot simply take the accused minister at his or her word. They must vigorously and impartially investigate all reports of harmful behavior by clergy.

The congregation also needs the truth. In all circumstances, they need to know as soon as a complaint has been lodged against their minister, and as soon as the matter has been resolved. While the complaint is being investigated, the bishop should place the accused minister on administrative leave to prevent him from using the “same predictable apologies” to create an environment hostile to the complainant. It is rarely necessary to advise complainants to lie low; by this point, most are too traumatized to participate in congregational life.

Administer Justice

For the alleged offender, justice is straightforward, albeit rarely easy. The governing documents for most denominations (for example, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church) spell out a detailed process and an equally detailed range of consequences for offenders. If an investigation confirms the facts of the complaint, consequences may include temporary leave, loss of position, lost of ordination credentials, or even – depending on the laws where the offence took place – criminal proceedings.

For the victim, justice is less clearly defined. Church laws governing response to clergy sexual abuse typically focus on outcomes for the accused minister; the church seems to forget that holding the offender accountable is only half the job. Yet the victim needs justice too. In Is Nothing Sacred: The Story of a Pastor, the Women He Sexually Abused, and the Congregation He Nearly Destroyed, the Rev. Dr. Marie Fortune describes the process of justice-making from the victim’s perspective:

  1. Truth-telling: Church leaders must seek truth and share it in a timely manner with the congregation and any other stakeholders, in a way that protects the victim’s identity and privacy.
  2. Acknowledging the violation. If the investigation confirms that the minister has harmed someone in his or her care, the church must name it abuse and condemn it as wrong.
  3. Compassion. The church must listen empathetically to the victim. Since institutions can’t truly “listen” (only people can), the church should appoint a supportive individual to this role.
  4. Protecting the vulnerable. The church must take steps to prevent further harm to the victim and to protect other individuals who may be at risk of harm.
  5. Accountability. The church must confront the offender and impose sanctions impartially, regardless of the offender’s status in the church or community.
  6. Restitution. The church can share the burden of responsibility for what has happened by offering tangible restitution, such as payment for therapy. The church can affirm the victim’s importance in the congregation – which is one of her most critical needs – through acts of symbolic restitution, such as liturgies of healing or of congregational penitence.
  7. Vindication. The victim needs to be openly cleared from any sense of blame or shame for what was done to her. Since blaming and shaming of victims often originate in the congregation, vindication should also happen in this context.

Few church communities achieve perfect justice in the face of injustice. But if the victim can see a genuine effort on the part of the church, “approximate justice” may be enough to allow healing to begin.

Heal All Parties

To support victims as they heal, the church should make a conscientious effort to enact all of the elements of the justice-making process. Unfortunately, “paying for therapy” is often the beginning and end of the church’s offer of resources. While money is important, it falls far short of what the victim needs for healing. Among her greatest losses is the support of friends in her church community. The church must make efforts to reconcile these broken relationships.

The congregation will need support to process their pastor’s betrayal of trust. Whether the pastor stays or leaves, the congregation has sustained a wound. As reluctant as churchgoers may be to talk about what happened, these conversations are essential for restoring the congregation’s health. The church should identify – and pay for – the resources to help the congregation through this challenging process.

The offender and their family may need healing, but their needs should never take precedence over those of the primary and secondary victims, including the congregation.

Forgiveness: The Choice Belongs to the Victim

It can take years for a victim of clergy sexual abuse to come to terms with what was done to her, and even longer to understand what forgiveness would mean in the context of her experience. Each victim has a unique experience of violation as well as a unique life history, personality, set of relationships, and resources for healing. Each victim will have a unique path to recovery from the trauma of clergy sexual abuse. Whether, when, and how to forgive are decisions that belong entirely to the victim. Church leaders and congregants do not need to know whether the victim has forgiven her offender, and they have no right to suggest that she should.

A better question for the church to ask would be, “Can you forgive us?” Victims consistently report that the church’s response causes a great deal more damage than the original abuse. This includes institutional abuse (denial of harm, suppression of truth, etc.) as well as individual acts of unwelcome or unkindness. Although it is entirely the victim’s choice whether to forgive the church or not, church leaders nonetheless have a role to play in the process: to acknowledge harm done, offer amends, and express a hope for forgiveness.

Individual congregants, or the congregation as a whole, may attempt to forgive the offender and restore him to leadership. A robust congregational healing process can help them distinguish between forgiveness, which can coexist with justice, and denial, which stops justice in its tracks. Whether forgiven or not, offenders should never again have access to their target population. They should never be invited, in any capacity, back into the community in which they caused harm.

The Church Should Focus on Reconciliation

Instead of focusing on forgiveness, the church should put its efforts into reconciliation – not between victim and offender, but between the victim and her church community. Clergy sexual abuse throws victims into a crisis that many describe as the most painful and frightening experience of their lives. Yet in their hour of greatest need, victims almost universally suffer a violent loss of support from their church communities. Isolation and ostracism are the rule, not the exception. Most victims leave their congregations in the aftermath of reporting. Many leave church entirely; some lose their faith altogether. Yet years later, they still grieve the friendships they lost. Healing can never be complete for these victims; likewise, their departure leaves congregations incomplete.

The church has an opportunity to stop this tide of loss. By seeking truth, doing justice, allowing victims to forgive (or not) on their own terms, and repairing broken relationships between victims and congregations, the church can bring about healing. It won’t happen quickly, and it won’t be easy, but real grace is never quick or easy. Instead of cheap grace, the church must strive for a grace that is worthy of the God they claim to serve.

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Church Response

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Confidentiality vs Secrecy

In the task force, we were talking about the difference between confidentiality and secrecy. Here’s how I understand it:

Confidentiality protects the complainant. It gives her* the power to decide when, where, and to whom her story is told.
Secrecy protects the institution. It gives the church the power to silence the complainant, or to discredit her if she insists on speaking.

How can a church protect the complainant without keeping secrets from the congregation? With transparency. Share the basic facts (we received a complaint, we’re investigating, we’ve put the pastor on leave, here’s what we learned, here’s what we’re doing about it) as soon as they are known. Don’t share the complainant’s identity or the details of her complaint. Do respect her right to share those things herself.

* or him. Men and boys can be victims too.

 

 

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Church Response

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Never sign an NDA

Harvey Weinstein is in the news, as are dozens of his victims. Today, the Washington Post shines a light on one of Weinstein’s self-protective tactics: the NDA, or Non-Disclosure Agreement.  This week, actress Zelda Perkins broke hers. “I wanted to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement,” she said. “Unless somebody does this, there won’t be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under.”

Thank you, Zelda Perkins! Non-Disclosure Agreements reveal the institution’s true goals: not to heal the victim, but to protect the offender. I’ve always known this truth. I knew I couldn’t heal without telling my story. When I settled with the Episcopal diocese, I agreed not to disparage my offender, and to keep the terms of the settlement confidential — but I steadfastly maintained the right to talk about my experience. 

It seems NDAs are so ubiquitious, in the church just as in Hollywood, that everyone assumed I must have signed one. When I started talking openly about why I’d left St Paul’s, my new pastor asked me, “Are you allowed to say these things?” Even worse: the bishop who co-created and signed my settlement apparently assumed it contained an NDA. When he learned about my blog, he had his attorney send a threatening letter to my attorney. If I didn’t “bring this whole episode to a close,” the letter warned, the bishop would make a public statement denying my experience.

I stood my ground then, and I stand it now. It’s my story, and I have a right to tell it. In fact, survivors need to tell our stories  to seek justice, protect others, and heal our souls. When we were negotiating my settlement, I told my attorney that I would never agree to keep silent about my experience. I had no problem agreeing to keep the terms of the settlement confidential, and to refrain from disparaging (legally, “making a false and injurious statement about”) my offender, but I insisted on my right to tell my story. I have kept my word; I’ve spoken and written nothing but the truth, and I even protected Scott’s identity on this blog until after my bishop had told St Paul’s the truth about him. 

Don’t allow the church to silence you. Don’t sign an NDA. Hold fast to your right to tell your own story. 

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Church Response, Legal Issues, Surviving & Healing

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Justice. At Long Last, Justice.

Last summer, I posted a story about “Lisa.” As a teen and young adult, Lisa endured years of vicious sexual abuse from then-Rev. Darryl Duer, who led a weeklong summer service camp for UMC youth in New Jersey. When Lisa finally filed a complaint, Duer lost his ministerial credentials, but he kept his fan club. A handful of his colleagues secretly kept bringing their youth to Duer’s camp. No matter how many times Lisa raised the red flag, nothing seemed to change, but she persisted. She was relentless. Just days before the 2016 camp, Lisa learned that the same three ministers were bringing their youth groups yet again. I ran this story just before camp began, and this open letter to Bishop Schol just after the youth groups came home. 

At the same time, Lisa took actions of her own. During camp week, Lisa posted a blunt, direct comment in response to an article by Bishop Schol on the conference’s Facebook page. He was out of town, but he arranged for a telephone meeting with Lisa when he returned. In that meeting, Bishop Schol told Lisa that it hadn’t been his choice to let Duer walk away quietly. He’d wanted Duer to submit to the church’s judicial process, but Duer refused and turned in his UMC credentials. At that point, the bishop no longer had any power over him. This put Bishop Schol’s actions in an entirely new light. Lisa had spent three years believing that Schol had just looked for the easiest way out. She asked him, “Why didn’t you tell me that at the time?” My best guess is that church lawyers forced the bishop to keep the victim in the dark — an all-too-common church policy that ironically increases their risk of being sued.

The bishop promised Lisa that he would meet with the three ministers who had gone to Duer’s camp. Lisa gave him permission to share a series of text messages sent to her by Duer — messages full of graphic, obscene, exploitive sexual content. The day after that meeting, Bishop Schol reached out to Lisa. He told her that he’d had “very frank and forthright” conversations with the clergy, and that when those meetings were over, “it was clear… that the churches would not be advertising or participating in” Duer’s camp going forward. 

But Bishop Schol wasn’t done. He also promised to call all UMC clergy in Greater New Jersey to a mandatory meeting early in the new year to discuss clergy misconduct complaints, and Lisa’s complaint in particular. 

Last Wednesday, that meeting took place. On Thursday, Bishop Schol sent Lisa this extraordinary letter:
“Yesterday I met with 446 clergy from Greater New Jersey to talk about two clergy matters. One was [the summer service project] and your treatment by a former clergy person. I did not share your name but I shared your story. I also had the clergy read the text messages. It was a conversation that impacted our clergy. Clergy wanted to know how you were doing, how we were supporting you. Also several clergy came to me and other clergy have reported that since the meeting other clergy have talked with one another about how they have also been a survivor. We also prayed for you.”

A few weeks earlier, Bishop Schol had told Lisa, “The pain and sacrifice you have made will lead to a better United Methodist Church in New Jersey. You have certainly helped me to be a better bishop.”

THIS IS WHAT JUSTICE LOOKS LIKE! But in Lisa’s case, justice took far too long. Dozens of youth group participants were exposed to danger during the three summers the ex-Rev. ran his secret camp. The additional trauma to Lisa (beyond the original abuse, the isolation and shunning and character assassination by Duer’s fan club) nearly ended her life. Lisa’s long wait for justice was one of the final straws for me; it is one of the reasons I’m stepping away from church, but that’s a story for another post.

Even so — this is justice. Bishop Schol’s remarkable letter to Lisa is a textbook-perfect response to clergy sexual misconduct. He acknowledges the victim’s pain; he tells the whole truth to the whole church; he brings their love and concern back to her; he thanks her for making them a better church; and he promises that he’ll push the church to be better still: “I will be convening a group … to create a clergy and lay leadership ethics policy and program designed to educate leaders…, to build on the support system we have begun [for] survivors, and to do more preventative work.” 

Thankfully, the UMC is already on task. Bishop Schol can find excellent tools for this work on the UMC’s Sexual Ethics website, including a superb guide to helping the congregation heal. 

I’m feeling grateful today — for Bishop Schol’s long-awaited actions that will make the church safer, but more than that, for Lisa’s courage and persistence. Today, she is the survivor awakening the church.

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Church Response

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Healing the Congregation

“Lisa’s” saga* continues: she’ll be speaking with Bishop Schol next week. To prepare him for their meeting, Lisa sent him a resource that should already be close to his heart: a document that spells out the highest standard for responding to clergy misconduct in the United Methodist Church.

“After Clergy Sexual Misconduct: A Process for Congregational Healing” is that document. Based on guidelines drafted by Episcopal Bishop Chilton Knudsen, the process was developed in 2006 by the Rev. Dr. Bonnie Glass MacDonald, a UMC deacon. The document may be ten years old, but it was new to me, and in all my years of advocacy, I have never seen a better resource for helping congregations heal.

Why does the church need this resource? As MacDonald says, “In situations of crisis or misconduct, congregations often … want to put the crisis behind them as soon as possible. But experience has shown that ignoring the intense feelings that naturally occur after a violation will cause more trouble in the long run.” She reports that after an event of clergy misconduct, congregations often descend into fearful conflict. Factions form, pastors turn over quickly, and the church loses energy, focus, hope, and members. Without intentional healing, this cycle can last many years, and may repeat itself with new acts of misconduct. For the sake of every member of the church, both present and future, “each congregation must be helped to deal openly with the misconduct.”

Note that word: openly. Incidents of clergy misconduct cannot be swept under the carpet. The church’s response must be confidential enough “to protect fair process and avoid additional harm to victims,” but the basic facts must be shared with clergy, church staff, lay leaders, and congregants. Why? Because ultimately, there are no secrets in a congregation. If leaders try to whitewash an event of pastoral misconduct, the facts will morph into cancerous nodes of rumor, accusation, and innuendo, and those cancers will destroy the church. 

“The Process for Congregational Healing” helps leaders handle each step of their response, from the staff meeting to the congregational letter to (ultimately) the congregational meeting. The document spells out how to support the victim, what behaviors to expect from the accused minister, and how to speak with the youth and children of the church, who need to be included even if none of them was directly harmed. 

What happens when congregations don’t go through an intentional process of healing? They may become suspicious, angry, depressed, fractious, highly reactive, hopeless, and fixated on matters of human sexuality. Far from shining the light of the kingdom of God, these congregations become a toxic burden to the denomination.

I’m sharing this resource for clergy and churchgoers of all faith traditions. I recommend all my readers look at the UMC’s Sexual Ethics site. If only all faith traditions cared enough to develop resources this robust and thoughtful! More to the point: if only UMC leaders cared enough to consistently use the wisdom from their own denomination.

* See Lisa’s story here, my open letter to Bishop Schol here, and Bishop Schol’s excellent response here. 

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Church Response, Surviving & Healing

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Open Letter to Bishop John Schol

Dear Bishop Schol,

The UMC youth groups have returned from the JUNE Project led by disgraced former minister Darryl Duer. It’s too late to protect these kids, but it’s not too late to safeguard the future.

In 2013, you received “Lisa’s” complaint against Darryl Duer for clergy sexual misconduct. You judged rightly that Duer was unworthy to be a minister in the UMC, but you judged wrong when you let him go quietly. Secrecy may have been easier in the moment, but look at the danger you have brought on your congregations. At least three of your ministers continue to give Duer access to their youth groups. If any of those young people are harmed, their parents could claim that you knew of the danger and failed to warn them. 

In 2014, when Lisa learned that Darryl Duer was still running the JUNE Project, she contacted you to ask you to keep UMC youth from attending. You sent a note to three of your ministers, telling them that that a former camp participant had made a serious, substantiated complaint against Duer. In response, he canceled that summer’s camp, but he was back in business the very next summer. At least one of your ministers, Pastor Brian Neville of Hillsdale, brought his youth group in 2015. Here’s their slide show, including a big, clear photo of Darryl Duer. 

You claim that you continue to monitor and warn others about Duer. Really? Did you not know that your ministers are still working with him? If you look at Facebook you can see that Hillsdale UMC participated in the JUNE Project again last week, and that St Peter’s of Ocean City was there too. St Peter’s has re-labeled the project as “Hope Rescue Mission,” but it’s the same camp. One of the photos clearly shows Duer in a leadership role. Gibbsboro UMC may or may not be at the camp, but they are still big fans of Darryl Duer. Pastor Rob Lewis proudly lists “JUNE Project” in his staff bio as one of his leadership roles, and he invited “Pastor Daryl Duer” (sic) to speak at the church’s potluck breakfast worship on July 3.

In short: by failing to give clear warning, you have put countless young people in danger.

Since Mr. Duer no longer has credentials in the UMC, I understand that you can’t stop him from running his service project. But you can communicate the truth clearly to all of your ministers, all of their congregations, and the parents of all the young people who have ever participated in the JUNE Project. And the truth is that Darryl Duer sexually abused a former camp participant. He did so by exploiting his power as minister, his knowledge of her life history, and her trust in him as a minister. He does not deserve the trust of young people or their parents; he is a dangerous man.

When Lisa filed her compaint, she did it for one reason: to save other young people from what happened to her. She has never asked anything of the church but to keep Duer away from its youth. In 2013, you wrote a letter to clergy about a former pastor implicated for misuse of funds. You could have — you should have — written a similar letter to clergy warning them about Darryl Duer. With his offense, it wasn’t mere dollars at stake, but human lives.

Please, Bishop Schol — it’s not too late to do the right thing. 

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Update, August 7: this newspaper account confirms that Gibbsboro UMC also brought a group to Duer’s camp.

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Update, January 2017: Bishop Schol’s excellent response.

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Church Response

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UMC Protecting a Predator

Dozens of young Methodists are in immediate danger.

This Sunday, July 31, unless leaders in the UMC take action, at least three youth groups from Greater New Jersey will arrive at Olivet Blue Mountain Camp in eastern Pennsylvania to spend a week under the leadership of a known sexual predator. 

Here are the facts.
* In 2013, “Lisa” (not her real name) filed a complaint of sexual misconduct against then-Rev. Darryl Duer. He wasn’t her minister, but he was the minister who led the summer service project that she had attended with her church youth group since she was in junior high. Duer had begun giving Lisa love notes and personal gifts when she was only 15. When she turned 18, he offered pastoral support, but very soon began demanding sex. He abused her for several years, telling her that his sexual abuse was God’s way of loving her. He knew of her history of abuse growing up, and he correctly assumed she wouldn’t know she was being abused. But eventually she figured it out.
* Bishop John Schol of the UMC’s Greater New Jersey jurisdiction received Lisa’s complaint. Rather than launching a formal investigation, Bishop Schol simply asked Duer to hand in his ministerial credentials. He later characterized Lisa’s complaint as “serious and substantiated,” but at the time he chose to cover it up. He hid the truth from Duer’s congregation, his fellow ministers, and the parents of the youth who had participated in those summer camps over the years.
* In 2014, Lisa learned that Duer was again offering the camp, and that three of Bishop Schol’s ministers were bringing their youth groups. After a great deal of effort on Lisa’s part, and with the involvement of the national church office, Bishop Schol agreed to inform those three ministers of Duer’s offense. In response, Duer canceled the camp.
* Lisa thought this was the end of the story. But in early 2015, Lisa saw online postings for Duer’s camp on one of the same three church websites. She wrote to the minister immediately. He assured her it was “old information,” and he promised to take down the posting. She believed him at the time, but later that summer she found evidence that this minister had brought his youth group after all, despite Bishop Schol’s warning in 2014. This youtube video shows the youth group’s presentation afterwards. Duer’s face is prominently shown in one of the slides.
* The horror continues. A few weeks ago, Lisa learned that Duer is still running the camp, and the same three churches are still bringing their youth. On July 5, Lisa sent a powerful email to Bishop Schol and a to key contact in the denomination’s national headquarters. She waited two weeks for a response, then wrote to a higher authority in the national church. She also reached out to the bishop in Eastern PA where Duer’s camp would take place. Although she’s heard from the national office, she has yet to receive a response from either bishop, and the national office seems to lack the power to take action.
* Lisa posted a comment about this situation on Bishop Schol’s facebook page. An administrator immediately took down her comment, but at least she had their attention. The bishop has finally agreed to speak with Lisa by phone about how he handled her case. He has also promised to “talk to” the three ministers when their youth groups return from Darryl Duer’s camp. But with a full week left before the train wreck, Bishop Schol said it was too late to stop his district’s youth from attending, or to inform their parents of the danger. 

Where is the leadership? Where are the shepherds who are supposed to protect the sheep from wolves like Darryl Duer? Does it really fall to an obscure blogger to get this word out? The odds that any of my readers know any of those parents is infinitessimally small. Still — if you do know someone involved, please share this warning. Young people have a right to expect a safe experience when they attend a church-organized camp, and parents have the right to know if their children are about to walk into a viper’s nest.

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Update, afternoon of July 28. I’ve now spoken with the bishop of Eastern PA. She had not received Lisa’s email; she is very concerned and has promised to do what she can to keep UMC youth safe.

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Update, January 2017: Bishop Schol’s excellent response.

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“If Our Secrets Define Us”

After three years of blogging, I’m taking a much-needed sabbatical, but I can’t ignore the opportunity to share a message I just learned about. Every year on the last night of the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, one minister is invited to deliver prophetic words at the Berry Street Conference. This year’s Berry Street Essay came from the Rev. Gail Seavey, whose work I wrote about last August.

Gail Seavey asks what happens “If Our Secrets Define Us.” She sets the stage with a scene from the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The Nazis have stolen the Ark and captured Indiana and Marion. As they begin to open the Ark, Indiana shouts, “Don’t look, Marion! Whatever you do, don’t look!” Marion doesn’t look, but the bad guys do, and we in the audience do, and we see the bad guys turn into corpses and dissolve into dust. Implying, of course, that some things should never be seen. 

“The movie was wrong,” says Seavey. “Some things SHOULD be seen.”

She tells the story of her first ministerial internship, under the supervision of the Rev. Frederica Leigh, in a struggling Southern California congregation haunted by stories of “screwing around” in the 60s and 70s. When a retired minister died, a line of elderly women came to Frederica’s office seeking pastoral care, needing to tell the secrets they’d carried for decades. A few years later another minister died, and another line of women came seeking care. Frederica Leigh provided care to legions of victim/survivors during those years. She “insisted on impeccable boundaries… and advocated that her colleagues practice clear ethical guidelines concerning clergy sexual abuse,” writes Seavey. As a result, some colleagues shunned Frederica Leigh, but others became champions for victims of misconduct who chose to report. Seavey says that “the lessons I learned from Frederica laid the foundation for my career.” 

Seavey took these lessons to her first settlement in a church in Minnesota. When church leaders refused to tell her why the previous minister left, she insisted that “I had to know church-wide secrets or I could not accept a call there.” The next day she learned that the minister had arrived single, married a long-term congregant, divorced her to marry a second congregant whom he’d been counseling, and been asked to leave quietly. Seavey asked the first wife what she most needed. “She asked only for one thing, that the previous minister never come into the building.” Seavey made it happen. For the next eight years the departed minister lobbied for a chance to guest-preach; Seavey faithfully and consistently said “no.”

Just as Frederica Leigh had, Seavey had to deal with massive distrust from her wounded congregation. Just as Leigh did, Seavey practiced impeccable boundaries with her new congregation and slowly regained their trust. 

In the late 1990s Seavey became active with national UUA. Working with the association of female ministers and with the UUA’s guidelines committee, she tried to address the issue of clergy sexual misconduct. She and her colleagues explored “the differences between confidentiality and secrets. Confidentiality requires protecting someone else’s story; keeping secrets involves hiding our own stories.” This work began to feel as if they were looking into Indiana Jones’ Ark. “Several women reported that [prominent New York UU minister] Forrest Church had had affairs with them when they were members,” “a wider circle of colleagues started to confide in me their painful secrets,” and even “alleged sexual misconduct by UUA staff members who were involved in an official response to clergy sexual misconduct.” The longer they worked, the more ugliness the task force uncovered.

As they pushed for transparency, the UUA began to push back. They disenfranchised the task force, blackballed its convener, Deborah Pope Lance, and told her “she would never again work for the UUA or any UU Group.” But survivors, impacted congregations, and after-pastors continued to seek support from Deborah and the task force.

In 2005, Seavey accepted a call from First UU of Nashville. “I was attracted to them because they were open about their history as a congregation that had suffered and healed from clergy misconduct” by past minister David Maynard. Anna Belle Leiserson, the only one of Maynard’s victims who dared to report her experience, was “harassed, bullied, and shunned by the minister’s supporters. That first year, her hair turned pure white. She says that the attempts to exile her from the congregation were even more painful than the original betrayal by the minister. Healing began in the following year when First UU held a ‘Listening Process’…”

Healing began, but it is far from complete. Seavey, Leiserson, and their colleagues discovered more and more layers of institutional secrecy and resistance to justice. Leiserson served as liaison for victim Amanda Tweed in 2005. To this day, Amanda Tweed has never been told the official results of her investigation.

And yet this same secret-keeping, justice-blocking UUA invited Gail Seavey to deliver the Berry Street Essay. 

…

What if our secrets define us, asked Seavey? “When we don’t tell the truth about a minister who betrayed our trust and yet another person becomes invisible to our community, who are we? How does keeping our UU institutional secrets about abuse and trauma define us? Are there actions or rituals … that would allow us to walk again on Holy Ground and see what we do not want to see?” 

“It can start by telling a secret — a secret that is your story to tell… So therefore I say, let us open our eyes and see. May we continue to weave sacred stories together until we form new rituals of re-membering… Maybe then the exiled will be safe to return. Maybe then we will discover what freedom, love, and justice really feel like. May it be so.”

You can read Rev. Seavey’s essay in full here. You can read the response by the Rev. David Pyle here.

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Church Response

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Unitarian Universalist Association: Awakened by One Bold Survivor

Plenty of churches get it wrong when it comes to clergy sexual misconduct. Who’s getting it right?

The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is blazing a trail that other churches would do well to follow. They just wrapped up their 54th annual General Assembly, “Building a New Way.” In a move that may be unprecedented in any faith tradition, the UUA GA program included not one but three workshops on clergy sexual misconduct, as well as a plenary address by UUA trustee Susan Weaver on the church’s new initiatives.

These were the workshops:
* In Sexually Safer Congregations: Building a New Commitment, the Rev. Debra Haffner, co-founder of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, shared the UUA’s new process, goals, and model policies, and urged UU congregations to renew their commitment to preventing misconduct and abuse. UU World senior editor Michelle Bates Deakin had written in 2013 about early steps in this effort.
* In Building Restorative Justice in Cases of Clergy Sexual Misconduct, the leaders of the UU Safety Net described the steps they are taking to improve the church’s process for dealing with clergy sexual misconduct. UU World senior editor Elaine McArdle summed up this workshop here.
* In Clergy Sexual Misconduct: Breaking the Silence, clergy and lay leaders shared the Sacred Listening Process that leaders in Nashville are developing along the lines of the StoryCorps model.

The UUA’s 2015 program reflects decades of dedicated hard work. The church in the 1970s “could feel like a carnival or a Roman Bacchanal” in the words of UU minister Deborah J. Pope-Lance. By the 1990s, things were beginning to change. Individual UU ministers were beginning to write about the need for appropriate boundaries and standards of sexual ethics, as Pope-Lance did here, and as the Rev. Sam Trumbore did here. At the 2000 General Assembly, then-Executive Vice President Kay Montgomery offered a public apology to victims and survivors of sexual misconduct by UU clergy. Over the next two decades the UUA moved forward in many areas.

But according to survivors, only in the past decade has the UUA made real progress. In this effort, no survivor has been more influential than Anna Belle Leiserson of Nashville. In 1993, disappointed with the UUA’s response to her complaint, she asked church leaders for changes in the process. She stayed with the church and became a leader, speaking at General Assemblies and serving on panels. Eventually, the quiet resistance of church leaders wore her down. In 2006, she writes, “I gave up. Or so I thought.” But a few months later, she suddenly realized that her congregation — First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, or FUUN — had “a powerhouse of potential activists.” In 2007, Leiserson led this team to create the UU Safety Net. After a slow start, which Leiserson writes about here, the Nashville effort has become a model for the national church.

One of Leiserson’s partners in this effort was FUUN’s minister, the Rev. Gail Seavey. She had served as an after-pastor in several settings early in her career, and had inexplicably thrived. She talks about her surprising success here, and about the lessons she learned from the challenging role of after-pastor. Another Safety Net leader, Dr. Doug Pasto-Crosby, has written about why the church tends to ignore and discredit the voices of survivors. He also writes about the traumatic impact on congregations after an instance of clergy sexual misconduct. Pasto-Crosby insists that the congregation can only heal when they help the survivor to heal. “Restoring the connection between survivors and their church community is the most important work a congregation needs to do after ministerial misconduct.”

…

When I named this blog “Survivors Awaken the Church,” I imagined it as a future event. Together, we survivors will awaken the church. But the awakening has already begun. Thanks to the brave and persistent Anna Belle Leiserson, the Unitarian Universalist Church has opened its eyes.

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Church Response, Impact of CSA

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