Clergy sexual misconduct: one survivor's voice

“If Our Secrets Define Us”

July 3, 2016

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

August 6, 2015

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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“Affair”? “Adultery”? No! When Pastors Do It, It’s ABUSE.

May 3, 2015

Is clergy sexual misconduct primarily about sex? No — it’s primarily about power. CSM happens when a pastor exploits his or her power over a congregant. But most Christian leaders focus on sex, and assign equal or greater blame to the victim. Take the parachurch ministry Focus on the Family. FOTF recently re-aired an interview between their president, Jim Daly, and “affair recovery and prevention expert” Dave Carder. (You can listen here and here.)

Dave begins with a lurid story of his respected senior pastor “running off” with a woman from his congregation. Shaken to the core by this betrayal, Carder ended up charting a new career. For the past 30 years he has tried to understand what causes marital infidelity.

Unfortunately, he makes no distinction between a genuine affair (marital infidelity involving two people of equal power) and the exploitation of a vulnerable congregant by a pastor. When Carder surveyed 4000 ministers, he found that 21% had been “sexually indiscreet.” What a euphemism! The words make a dangerous abuse of power seem like a parlor game.

Thankfully, FOTF has sharp listeners like Professor Geraldine Stowman of Minnesota State University Moorhead. After hearing these programs, Stowman composed an Open Letter to FOTF President Jim Daly. She has allowed me to share her letter here. She says, “I think he needs to hear from survivors,” and I agree. If you feel moved to contact President Daly, you can reach him at Ofcpres@fotf.org.

Here is Geraldine Stowman’s letter.

 An open letter to Jim Daly, President, Focus on the Family

If Focus on the Family were serious about helping clergy “guard against inappropriate intimacy,” you and your broadcast experts would stop putting pastors who make sexual contact with congregants in the same category as Christians who commit adultery with peers (FOTF broadcasts on April 14 and 15, 2015,  “Friendship or Flirtation? Danger Signs for Couples.”)

While Dr. Dave Carder’s advice about “Friendship or Flirtation” could be helpful in peer friendships, it is harmful and misleading to characterize pastoral sexual contact with congregants as “affairs,” as Dr. Carder did in his lead anecdote about his former senior pastor “who ran off with another woman in my church.” The same characterization occurred when you, Dr. Daly, linked the discussion of “affairs” to the 21 percent of clergy surveyed that admitted being “sexually indiscreet.”

In at least 13 states and the District of Columbia, it is a felony for clergy to have sexual contact with anyone to whom they are offering “comfort, aid or spiritual advice in private.” In some states, this does not have to be a “formal” counseling relationship, and consent is not a defense. Clergy who meet regularly with congregants — perhaps before church or after choir practice — to privately discuss emotional or personal concerns are bound by the same laws as psychotherapists.

Why are states moving to criminalize clergy sexual contact with adult congregants? Because churches (and mega-ministries) are not holding pastors responsible for the damage they inflict on people under their care. Clergy are “helping professionals” similar to doctors and therapists.  When they step out of their helping role to enter a sexual relationship with a congregant, they inflict psychological and spiritual harm, committing what Dr. Mark Laaser, a former clergy-offender, calls “authority rape.”

The harm to congregants can occur regardless of whether the pastor is a serial predator or a first-time offender who was “blindsided” by his attraction to someone under his care. Properly trained clergy know that emotions — positive and negative — often emerge in counseling relationships, and they have procedures in place to help them debrief. If they have not been trained to deal with those emotions, they should not be offering “comfort, aid or spiritual advice in private.” And if they’re one of the 37 percent of clergy surveyed by “Christianity Today” who describe Internet pornography as a “current struggle,” they should not offer private counsel to anyone.

 As Christians, we have a biblical mandate to honor our elders, especially those who are preaching and teaching (1 Timothy 5:17). That mandate also heightens the influence preachers have over their congregations. Clergy must recognize that the honor bestowed on their role can push congregants to do things they would not otherwise do. Sadly, pastors who abandon their roles as spiritual leaders to have sexual contact with congregants are not just abusing the congregant. They are abusing Jesus Christ, his church, and every individual who has looked to him or her as a spiritual leader.

Scripture charges us to hold our teachers more accountable (James 3:1) and to publicly reprove them as a warning to others (1 Timothy 5:20). If a pastor sexually abuses a minor, does the church reprove him by saying he had “an affair”? If an elder rapes his daughter, does the church ask him to step down for “adultery”?

If Focus on the Family, Dr. Carder, and you are serious about wanting to save clergy from being “blindsided” by moral failure, you need to stop labeling these betrayals as “affairs.” Clergy have instant, intimate access to people in their congregations, particularly those going through crises, and they have a sacred duty to protect that trust—always!

After Dr. Diana Garland, Dean of Social Work at Baylor University, finished her national survey on clergy sexual misconduct in 2009, an interviewer from National Public Radio asked her, “What would stop this?”

Garland answered, “Education is the way, and I think this begins with (all) of us, to start using language that describes what’s happened. When a religious leader has a sexual relationship with a congregant, it’s not an affair. It’s abuse of power, power that we have all given a leader as a community. So changing our language would be an important way for us to begin to have these conversations, then, about how we can protect both our leaders and our congregants.”

Sincerely,
Geraldine Stowman, Adjunct Faculty
School of Communication and Journalism
Minnesota State University Moorhead
Moorhead, MN

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What Is CSA?

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Reporting Your Abuser? How to Survive the Process

March 9, 2015

I thought the nightmares were behind me, but I had another one last week. I dreamed that a counselor had violated my sexual boundaries in a way that he could deny and I could never prove. I moved through that dream in a state of frozen fear. I knew I should file a complaint, but I also knew what would happen: I’d be called liar, seductress, madwoman, or all three. In despair I asked, “Again?”

Of all the stages in the process of clergy sexual abuse, this one may be the most grueling. Even if the abuse has ended, we still live with a terrible secret. Often, the people we count on for support (our families, our friends at church) are threatened by our story. Instead of comforting us, they blame us, or they tell us to hush up, move on, and “forgive.”

It’s a wonder any of us finds the courage to speak the truth.

For my readers who are about to take this step, I offer my prayers, my gratitude and admiration, and a few lessons from my experience. I learned some of these lessons the hard way; perhaps you won’t have to.

1. When you meet with your church’s intake officer, bring a friend or spouse for support. Their presence will give you strength, and they’ll remember details that you miss. Ask them for a ride: you may be too emotionally charged to drive safely before or after the meeting.

2. Remember that the abuse was NOT YOUR FAULT, even if you believe you gave consent. My bishop said these words almost as soon as I walked into his office. I hope you hear the same words from your church. Even if you don’t, know that these words are true. The abuse was absolutely, positively not your fault.

3. Prepare a written statement, but don’t bring it to the meeting. Writing the statement will help you tell your story more clearly. During the meeting, you may get a better understanding of what information the church needs. By waiting until after the meeting, you’ll have a chance to expand and clarify your statement before submitting it.

4. Ask your church officer for a copy of the policy and procedures they’ll be following. Ask how long the process will take. Ask what will happen next, and when. Ask about the range of possible outcomes. Ask how the church will keep you informed. Ask whom you should contact if you have questions.

5. You will need support while the church investigates your complaint. Ask the church to refer you to a counselor right away. Even during a brief investigation, the stress can take a toll on your health. My church’s investigation took only two months, but it was enough time for a borderline eating disorder to flare out of control, requiring months of expensive treatment. Getting support now could protect you from a life-threatening crisis.

6. Debrief with your support person as soon as the meeting is over. Ask them to stay with you, calm you, and help you understand what was said in the meeting. Ask them if you can call them in a few days (or sooner) to talk about it again. Let them know how grateful you are for their support, now and in the months ahead.

7. Prepare for a time of painful and unsettled emotions. The church will respond imperfectly, your offender may try to discredit you, cherished friends may turn against you. I wish I could offer words that could ease this pain. All I have is this: speaking the truth will eventually bring healing and growth beyond what you can imagine today. But meanwhile you need to survive this painful experience. Build good habits of self-care: eat well, attend to health concerns, and be gentle and patient with yourself. Now is the time to reach out to friends whom you trust. Don’t isolate — connect. It may save your life.

…

To readers who have already survived this process: I hope you’ll share your wisdom in the comments.

To all readers: please lift a prayer for those who are about to embark on this journey.

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Church Response, Surviving & Healing

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A Great Victory for One Survivor

June 24, 2014

“Ocian in view! O! The joy!”
— journal of William Clark, on reaching the mouth of the Columbia River.

On a cold November day in 1805, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark rejoiced to see the Pacific “Ocian.” After eighteen months and nearly four thousand miles of hard travel through uncharted territory, this was a great victory. The Corps of Discovery had failed in their primary goal — discovering a shipping passage across the continent — and they still had a cold wet winter and year’s return journey ahead of them. Even so, there’s no doubt that their expedition’s greatest day was November 7, 1805. The U.S. Mint even created a nickel to commemorate the moment.

Every long journey has these buoyant moments. No matter how discouraged and fatigued we are, journeyers get new courage from the miracles and victories along the way. Even with all the new stories of clergy abuse and institutional silencing, I’m constantly encouraged by the small triumphs in the lives of my fellow survivors, and by the support of our allies.

And last week, one survivor accomplished something so great that I feel like Captain Clark. “O! The joy!”

***

Last summer, “Anonymous Girl” filed a complaint against the United Methodist minister who led a service trip for youth groups in his region. A week later, her bishop sent her an email: “Over the weekend, Rev. ____ submitted his clergy orders to my office. This means that he has resigned as a clergy person.”

“Just like that,” reflected Anonymous Girl, “in a week’s time the process was over. It happened quickly and I got what I wanted: this person will not work in a ministerial role in the United Methodist Church with vulnerable populations.”

But it wasn’t over. The hard work of healing had only begun.  Anonymous Girl spent months struggling with emotional pain and with questions about her own role in the abuse. The abuse had not been her fault, but like most survivors she felt she must have done something to cause it. Severely traumatized, she spent most of the winter actively planning to end her life. What was it that gave her the strength to stay? Was it when she found out that a local Methodist pastor had invited her defrocked abuser to lead a Bible study in his church? Did she decide to stay so she could finish what she had set out to do — to keep vulnerable people safe from the man who had exploited and abused her?

Whatever the reason, the world is a safer place because Anonymous Girl is here. A few weeks ago, she was stunned to learn that her abuser would lead the same service project again. Even worse, she learned that several churches had already signed up. Did she feel angry and betrayed? You bet. And did she fight back? Yes, she did. She began by emailing the UMC’s General Commission on the Status and Role of Women. The previous head of the GCSRW had helped Anonymous Girl with her original complaint, but she had never met the new leader. So she had to summon up the courage to tell her story one more time.

After a week, she hadn’t heard back, but she didn’t give up. She sent a stronger letter. This time, the GCSRW reached out to Anonymous Girl’s bishop. The bishop was also slow to respond — and again, Anonymous Girl didn’t give up. She sent the bishop an articulate, respectful email to let him know that at the end of June, she would send a letter to every youth minister in the Conference. She would attach not only the evidence of her own abuse, but the letter the bishop had sent to her, sharing the fact her abuser was no longer a UMC minister.

Finally, the bishop broke his official silence. He sent a letter to every UMC pastor whose church had signed up for the service project. He told them that the leader of the project “admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with a young person” who participated in the project. While I don’t like the language — the bishop should have said, “he admitted to sexually abusing a young person” — I like the results. After the bishop sent his letter, Anonymous Girl’s abuser withdrew his offer to lead the service project. By insisting on justice, and speaking up with courage and resolve, Anonymous Girl has made all the youth in her Conference safer.

Anonymous Girl has discovered another truth: her abuser may not have cared about the project after all. You see, he didn’t just step away from the project. He cancelled it altogether. He seems to have seen this service project only as a way to get access to vulnerable youth. If he cared about the project, she writes, “he would have stepped down and allowed it to continue without him. He could have helped someone else take the leadership role.” But she also knows: whatever the value of the project to the youth and the community, it carried too high a cost. She rejoices that the project was cancelled “not because I want to see the project fail, but… because I know the man who hurt me will not be given the option to hurt other youth in the same way.”

…

This kind of victory is rare. For every triumph of justice against clergy sexual abuse, we hear dozens of tales of abuse, silencing, and victim-blaming. With near-daily bad news, it’s easy to lose hope. But then this amazing thing happens. Against all odds, a solitary victim, still struggling with the trauma of abuse, speaks with so much power and clarity that the whole church hears. A bishop finds his voice. A predator loses access to victims. A whole group of young people will not be this man’s victims.

And every survivor who hears this news stands up a little taller. Anonymous Girl’s victory is a victory for all of us.

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Church Response, Surviving & Healing

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Why We Tell Our Stories

March 1, 2014

Recently, my former bishop had his lawyer send me a letter demanding I stop writing about my experience on this blog. The diocese had already settled with me, and the bishop thought I ought to “bring this whole episode to a close.” He wondered why I needed to keep telling my story. His office has already taken actions to make congregants safer. He made sure St. Paul’s had windows in the office doors; he beefed up the diocese’s online resources on sexual misconduct; and he now asks all parishes to post a quarterly “how to report” notice. And of course, he secured the resources I needed for medical treatment and therapy. I am grateful for these actions, and I wish I could say they had healed me. They have helped. I wanted the church to be safer, and it is. I needed medical treatment, and the church’s funds made that possible. I am healthier, stronger, and more whole than I have ever been, and I owe my healing at least partly to the bishop’s efforts.

And yet, that doesn’t change my need to tell my story. When we experience trauma, we heal in part by speaking our truth to people we trust. Many of us have to tell our stories again and again.

What happens when we tell our stories?

We free ourselves from traumatic memories. Writer Penelope Trunk was a block away from the World Trade Center when the towers fell. Stepping outside her building, she nearly suffocated in dust, debris, and the crush of the crowd. In the moment, she writes, “You have to turn off all your emotions to get yourself through it. After the fact, in order to stop having nightmares and panic attacks, you have to experience the emotions you missed.” She told her story again and again, so often that her family got sick of hearing it. But she knew she needed to keep telling it.

We reach an understanding we can live with. Over time, Trunk learned to reframe the experience. In the early weeks, she kicked herself for staying at the scene too long, for standing too close to the falling tower, for not trying to help others. But by telling her story again and again, she learned to focus on the good luck of surviving and the blessing of living through a moment “where I thought I was going to die and saw exactly what I cared about in my life.”

We shed the shame that was never ours to begin with.  In healing from clergy sexual misconduct, survivor “K” chronicles her journey from shame to strength. Last August, she wrote in remorse, “I feel terrible that I ended his career.” Five months and several thousand words later, she could write, “What happened was a conscious decision by a man who knew the rules and broke them anyway and used me for his own purposes when I was in a fragile state.”

We defend ourselves against harmful lies. We may never change a single mind by laying out the facts. Communal myths tend to inoculate people against the truth. But telling our stories truthfully is a way of pushing against the injustice we have endured.

We connect. At my former church, I kept people at a distance to protect my dangerous secret. After I left, I was too traumatized to trust even my family. At my new church, it was months before I felt safe talking to anyone. In isolation, my fears grew enormous and I slid into a dangerous mental illness. Only by telling my story — first to the women in my treatment group, then to a trusted soul at my new church — did I begin to heal. Humans are communal creatures. Force us into isolation, including the isolation of forced silence, and we will wither and die.

We give courage to other survivors. It was Jan Tuin’s story that helped me put a name to my experience. Reading her story helped me understand that I wasn’t alone, and that I wasn’t to blame for my pastor’s behavior. Now, when I tell my story, I help other survivors see that they aren’t alone. A few have contacted me through my blog, and now we give courage to each other.

We claim our voices. Last spring, I attended the Sexual Ethics training for clergy in my region — including a minister I knew from interfaith work. When I introduced myself, I gave my name and said, “I’m a survivor of a breach of sexual boundaries in a church setting, and I’m here because I feel called to work for safer churches.” This was the first time I had ever stood up publicly as a survivor. Two days later, I did the same in a training for church leaders from all over the country. Two days after that, I started this blog. I now have a voice, and that has helped me restore my sense of self.

We “bring to light the things now hidden in darkness” (1 Corinthians 4:5). When a minister crosses sexual boundaries, the church needs to know. This is true even if the offense wasn’t physical, and even if only one victim complains. Mark Laaser, founder of Faithful and True, told me, “The congregation absolutely needs to be told. That’s a moral imperative. Otherwise you’re screwing with their minds.” Marie Fortune made this truth the central point of her November 2012 lecture at Vanderbilt Divinity School, “Wolves in Shepherds’ Clothing.” When the church remains silent, the victim carries this moral burden forward. We tell our stories to bring the hidden things to light.

We answer the question, “Who am I now?” Trauma reshapes us irreversibly. Anyone who thinks we can “bring this whole episode to a close” just doesn’t get it: after trauma, there is no going back to normal. Because of my experience, I will never again be welcome in the congregation I once loved. I will never again be able to give full trust to a minister. I will never again belong to the church that baptized me. Even the trivial things are different: because the abuse triggered an eating disorder, I had to give up running, so I will never again be a runner. So, who am I now? Along with the losses, what have I gained? How is my life better today because of what I experienced? By telling my story, over and over, I uncover my new self.

…

In four years of telling my story, I’ve done a lot of healing. Recently, I had begun to wonder if I might be coming to an end of my need to talk about my experience. I’ve made sense of the most painful memories that involve my former pastor. I’ve finished grieving the shattered friendships. I understand the community dynamics that fueled my shunning at St. Paul’s. I’ve found my voice through writing. I thought the institutional silencing was behind me.

Now, hearing from my bishop, I feel the hand of silence stifling me again. I’m not afraid what the church might do; I am afraid that I’ll absorb their fears and begin to stifle my own voice. So I push against silence in the only way I know how: with TRUTH, OUT LOUD. If my new fear awakens settled memories, I’ll tell those stories again. If the hand of silence tightens, I’ll fight against it harder. I’ll speak the truth louder.

I understand my bishop’s fear. When I tell my story, there’s a chance my readers will figure out who I’m talking about. I do my best to prevent that by masking the names and details. After all, we all make mistakes, and we all deserve a chance to learn our lesson and start again. But we need to understand: even when we start again, we leave a trail behind us. If we’ve given someone a painful story to tell, we have to let them tell it.

Telling my story has blessed me beyond all imagination. And so, I wish for all who carry the burden of a painful secret, the freedom to tell their stories — and the gift of unconditional love and support from the communities into which they speak.

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Surviving & Healing

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The Institutional Crisis of Silencing and Cover-up

January 22, 2014

Yesterday, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago released several thousand documents on sexually abusive priests. The documents focus not on the abuse itself, but on the way bishops and cardinals systematically protected sexually abusive priests.

The Catholic Church gets most of the media on this subject, but they hardly have a monopoly. Clergy sexual abuse happens in all faith traditions, and so does institutional cover-up. Just as some congregations are led by serial predators, some dioceses (conferences, synods, districts, etc) are led by serial silencers. The church with which I’m most familiar — the Episcopal Church — seems every bit as committed to silence as the Catholic Church. I’ve spoken with several survivors of Episcopal clergy misconduct in the past several months. All of our offenders are still in active ministry. In none of our cases did the church disclose the truth to the affected congregation(s). And I don’t for a minute think the Episcopal Church is the only bad apple in the non-Catholic barrel.

In November of 2012, the Rev. Dr. Marie Fortune delivered a lecture at the Vanderbilt Divinity School titled “Wolves in Shepherds’ Clothing: The Institutional Crisis of Clergy Sexual Abuse.” In this talk, Fortune focused on the re-victimization that happens when church leaders cover up the truth about cases of clergy sexual abuse. “The default position of many institutions is to enforce silence and secrecy… in an effort to protect abusers and minimize scandal,” she says. “Yet the real scandal is the profound contradiction between the institutional response and the values, teachings, and precepts of the faith community.” Of victims and survivors, she says, “All they are asking is that we be true to our own stated values and precepts.”

And finally: “[Victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse] don’t expect perfection from their faith leaders. They accept our humanity, our foibles, our mistakes and even our misconduct, even when they suffer from it. What they cannot accept and do not deserve is incompetence, cover-up, corruption, blame, and betrayal by the institution that supposedly holds individual leaders accountable.”

Please take the time to watch this important talk and share it with your church leaders. The lecture itself is about 35 minutes long, and worth every minute.

 

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Church Response

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The Survivor’s Bookshelf

August 22, 2013

It was a book that opened my eyes to what my pastor was doing. On a three-day spiritual retreat five years ago, I was too agitated to sleep. I wrapped myself in my robe, stepped into the monastery hallway, and looked on the shelves for something to read. And there it was: Sex in the Forbidden Zone. I stayed up all night reading it and took eight pages of notes. By morning, I knew — and it still took almost two years for me to file a complaint. During those two years, and in the years since, I’ve done a lot of reading. Here are the books that have helped.

Books about clergy/congregant relationships:

Sex in the Forbidden Zone: When Men in Power — Therapists, Doctors, Clergy, Teachers, and Others — Betray Women’s Trust by Peter Rutter. Extraordinarily clear and helpful. Helped me understand why a genuine relationship with my abuser was categorically impossible. This book is out-of-print (as are many on this list), but you can get it cheap used.

At Personal Risk: Boundary Violations in Professional-Client Relationships by Marilyn Peterson. Peterson thoughtfully explores boundary violations from small to large, and shows that even the small ones can create a harmful breach of trust.

Sex and the Spiritual Teacher: Why It Happens, When It’s a Problem, and What We All Can Do by Scott Edelstein. Lively, witty discussion of this serious issue. Edelstein focuses on the Buddhist teacher/student model, and at times he seems to discount “mere” clergy/congregant abuse as something lesser. But as most survivors know, most abuse begins in a pastoral counseling setting, where intimacy and vulnerability are essential. I found this book excellent and affirming.

When Pastors Prey: Overcoming Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women, edited by Valli Boobal Batchelor. Published in April 2013, this book gathers essays from familiar U.S. leaders like Jimmy Carter, Diana Garland, Marie Fortune, Martin Weber, Pamela Cooper-White, and Samantha Nelson, along with an astounding collection of voices of survivors and advocates from Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Australia. Clergy sexual abuse is a worldwide problem, and this book brings leaders together for a worldwide response.

Books about the experience of victims and survivors:

Is Nothing Sacred? The Story of a Pastor, the Women He Sexually Abused, and the Congregation He Nearly Destroyed by Marie Fortune. One of the earliest titles on this topic, this book is still the classic. Marie Fortune (through the FaithTrust Institute) is still working hard to make churches safer. Also recommended: Fortune’s Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman. The first two pages are worth the price of the book. “When traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict.” Thankfully, this online excerpt helps us understand why the perpetrator always wins, even if we can’t afford to buy the book.

What About Her? A True Story of Clergy Abuse Survival by Beth van Dyke. Author Jan Tuin originally wrote under a pseudonym, but later felt called to work openly under her real name. Jan founded Tamar’s Voice, named for King Solomon’s daughter Tamar who was raped by a half-brother (2 Samuel 13) and then silenced (verse 20) by her family. Jan gave me invaluable support as I came to terms with my experience and pondered whether to report my pastor.

Forgiveness and Abuse: Jewish and Christian Reflections, by Marie Fortune and Joretta Marshall. Expensive even on Kindle ($40!), this book is worth going without Starbucks for a month. Of all the issues surrounding clergy sexual abuse, forgiveness is one of the most complicated and painful. This book explores Christian and Jewish understandings of forgiveness, and offers several paths toward greater peace.

The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships by Patrick Carnes. The author explains why clergy sexual abuse victims bond so intensely with our abusers.

Fighting the Good Fight: Healing and Advocacy after Clergy Sexual Assault by Carolyn Waterstradt. This book introduces terminology (“virgin, laborer, midwife”) that sheds new light on the process of healing. As spiritual virgins, our naiveté made us vulnerable to abuse. Afterward, we labor and give birth to our new selves. Some (the midwives) find healing by supporting other victims along the same path.

Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction by Susan Cheever. A frank look at the author’s own sexual addiction. This book helped me understand what might have motivated my pastor.

Hiding Behind the Collar by Catherine Britton Fairbanks. A raw, candid memoir of the author’s experience of emotional and spiritual abuse by an Episcopal priest, and the betrayal by the church hierarchy afterward. See a full review here.

Books about the church’s response (silencing, ostracism, denial)

Responding to Clergy Misconduct: A Handbook by the Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune et al, published by the FaithTrust Institute. An effective response to clergy sexual abuse will help the victim heal, help the congregation deal with the pastor’s betrayal, prevent abuse by holding offenders accountable, and protect the church’s resources. This book is an invaluable resource for judicatory leaders and church leaders, and it’s also great for survivors. It helped me understand exactly how my church added to my trauma in their response to my complaint. Clarity can be painful, but it ultimately moves us toward greater healing.

How Little We Knew: Collusion and Confusion with Sexual Misconduct by Dee Ann Miller. Miller focuses on the actions of her church when she reported an abusive missionary pastor. Her church took extraordinary measures to avoid dealing with the sexual predator in their midst. Miller and her husband were silenced and ostracized, an experience at least as traumatic as the abuse itself. Unfortunately, this pattern seems to be the norm. Most victims are silenced by our churches. As survivors, we find our voices.

Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power by C. Fred Alford. Remember all the movies about whistleblowers acclaimed as heroes? Erin Brockovich, Norma Rae, Silkwood… well, maybe not Silkwood. She died in a mysterious car crash while trying to expose inadequate safety measures at a nuclear plant. Silkwood illustrates Fred Alford’s point: most whistleblowers pay for truth with ruined lives. It’s not a cheerful book, but it helped me understand I wasn’t crazy, or alone.

The Watercooler Effect: A Psychologist Explores the Extraordinary Power of Rumors by Nicholas DiFonzo. Understanding the mechanism of shunning didn’t make it any less painful, but it made it easier to forgive, and to reach peace.

Understanding Clergy Misconduct in Religious Systems: Scapegoating, Family Secrets, and the Abuse of Power by Candace Benyei. I found this book challenging, but I confess I’m mostly ignorant about “family systems.” My bishop had used those words to justify ordering me not to contact leaders at my church, while allowing my abusive pastor to stay on the job and in the pulpit, so I thought I ought to do my homework. Now I think someone else should have done his.

Books to help the congregation:

Restoring the Soul of a Church: Healing Congregations Wounded by Clergy Sexual Misconduct edited by Nancy Hopkins and Mark Laaser. I found this book too painful to read at first; I had bought it thinking I could help my former church heal, and it turned out they didn’t want my help, or even want to heal. By the time I opened it a year later, I was ready to learn what clergy sexual misconduct does to a congregation, and how to make it whole again.

Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling by Pamela Cooper-White. This book helped me distinguish between pastoral care (the minister’s normal response to emergencies in congregants’ lives) and pastoral counseling (ongoing therapeutic support). It is never a good idea for a pastor to offer counseling to his or her congregants. In fact, it’s a big red flag.

Resources on sexual harassment in the religious workplace:

Sexual Misconduct in the Church: Understanding how often it happens, why it happens, and what to do when it does. This 2008 collection is of limited value to survivors of pastoral sexual misconduct: the articles are brief, dated, and somewhat superficial. But it is a good resource for survivors of sexual harassment in a religious workplace. Female clergy who have experienced sexual harassment may also want to download the article Silent Sufferers, published by the Baylor University School of Social Work.

Thanks to blog readers for these great additions:

Understanding Misconduct Among Spiritual Leaders by The Hope of Survivors. This booklet provides an overview of pastoral sexual misconduct for victims and their spouses, youth, pastors and their spouses, church leaders, and congregants. This great resource is available in printed or PDF format.

When a Congregation is Betrayed: Responding to Clergy Misconduct, edited by Beth Ann Gaede. Thirty well-organized essays by contributors including Candace Benyei (author of Understanding Clergy Misconduct in Religious Systems) and Nancy Myer Hopkins (co-editor of Restoring the Soul of a Church.)

Betrayal of Trust: Confronting and Preventing Clergy Sexual Misconduct by Stanley J. Grenz and Roy D. Bell. This book helps churches respond sensitively to victims, and helps to prevent abuse through intelligent policies and procedures. At-risk clergy will find guidlines for establishing appropriate boundaries. The second edition includes a risk-determination questionnaire for pastors who may become abusers.

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Church Response, Surviving & Healing, What Is CSA?

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Erik’s Story

August 16, 2013

Thank God for survivors like Erik Campano, who had the foresight to organize hundreds of pieces of evidence supporting his complaint against a priest and her bishop. After talking with Erik and reviewing his account, I shared his story this afternoon with a few respected journalists. Here’s what I told them:

…

At the American Church in Paris, new Episcopalian Erik Campano survived a classic case of clergy sexual misconduct. He joined the church, caught the attention of an Episcopal priest-in-training, initially resisted her advances, gradually succumbed, and eventually agreed to a sexual relationship that he had to conceal from his friends at the church. Although he was flattered, Erik was also confused and fearful about being sexually involved with his minister.

Ginger Strickland’s bishop, Pierre Whalon, clearly considered her a protégée. As a candidate for bishop, he had asked Strickland to give his nomination speech. Unfortunately, Whalon placed the newly minted Yale M.Div. in a non-denominational church that had no sexual misconduct policy. When Strickland asked her supervising pastor (not an Episcopalian) if she could date a congregant, she got a green light. Against Episcopal Church protocols and against her seminary training, she went ahead.

And yet it was never a real relationship. Even before she was ordained, Mother Strickland’s power as Erik’s minister made it hard for him to say no, and therefore impossible for him to give meaningful consent. The stress led to serious health problems. Finally, Erik broke off the relationship and reported Strickland for misconduct, but to a bishop who was heavily invested in her success. Bishop Whalon took extraordinary measures to protect Strickland’s career. He misrepresented to Erik which office had jurisdiction to hear the case, he delayed forwarding Erik’s complaint to an Intake Officer for months, he ordained Strickland to the priesthood despite this serious unresolved disciplinary matter, he published in the New York Post his intention to discredit Erik’s story (and may have actually done so through attorney John Walsh), he failed to meet with Erik even once to hear his complaint, and he defamed Erik’s character in his October 2012 report to the Convocation of the Episcopal Churches in Europe.

It is this final action that I address in my letter to Bishop Katharine.

In Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman eloquently describes what the Episcopal Church may be doing to Erik Campano. “Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense,” writes Herman. “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. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”

A powerful institutional church seems to be working hard to silence its victims. And who are the church’s victims? With the Episcopal Church we have worshipped, served, and shared not only our spiritual hopes and fears but also our financial resources. We are, in fact, the church itself. Now we are silenced by the very power we helped to create.

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Church Response, Impact of CSA, What Is CSA?

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Profile in Courage: Erik Campano

August 6, 2013

Sometimes we are blinded by our own knowledge. I’ve spent so many years reading and writing about clergy sexual abuse that I sometimes forget how naïve I once was. Most people still live in that state of naiveté, unaware of the scope and danger of CSA. The scope is huge: more than three percent of churchgoing women have suffered sexual advances from clergy as adults. And the danger is huge: The Hope of Survivors lists consequences of CSA including depression, self-harm, eating disorders, PTSD, suicide attempts, impaired relationships, and loss of faith.

Before I became a victim, I knew none of this. I thought it was fine for unmarried pastors to date their unmarried congregants. If my pastor and I had both been single, we might have “dated” (meaning: his sexualization of our pastoral relationship might have escalated to the physical) — and it would have made for an even bigger nightmare.

Erik Campano survived this experience with a female minister, and he tells the story here. Sadder and wiser, Erik now writes with great power and clarity on this issue. I plan to share his superb article Eleven Reasons Why Pastors Should Never Date Their Parishioners with my friends and family who still live in that state of innocence. I hope they will understand my experience better, but even more, I hope they’ll join the growing number of churchgoers who are willing to “see something, say something.” An informed congregation can help keep clergy from crossing the line.

How I admire Erik Campano’s resilience! It took me years to be able to write about my experience, and he is sharing the horrors of his church’s response only months later. He has had to overcome the same stigma we all do, and more: if it’s difficult for a woman to come forward, it’s even harder for a man. And while I choose not to name my abuser in my writings, he holds his abuser, church and denomination publicly accountable. For that, I commend him.

You can read Erik’s interview with another survivor, Michele, at his blog, Accurate and Courageous Journalism of Religion.

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Church Response, Impact of CSA, Surviving & Healing, What Is CSA?

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