by Crystal Seymore
Crystal Seymore’s story of abuse is a tangle of oppressive and violent threads. It’s hard to say which of those threads most deserves to be highlighted in this introduction to her narrative.
Is it the spiritual abuse by Church of Christ clergy members? The way ministers’ words are given unquestioned power because of the assumption that they’re closer to God than other people?
Is it the racist heart of conservative Christian purity culture, manifested in Crystal’s shaming as a single mother? The abusive theology empowering the white, evangelical church men who used Crystal sexually, then drew on every discourse available for denying the humanity of Black women in order to make her feel unworthy of being treated any better?
Is it the way that same purity culture teaches women to internalize the message that sex and childbearing outside of marriage will “ruin” them? That their “ruined” status means that they can henceforth be used at the convenience of men who have reputations to maintain, with only themselves to blame?
Is it the cumulative nature of this abuse? How spiritual abuse from a church can groom a person for sexual and emotional abuse from a partner? How sexual violence, economic oppression, illness, and racism together create layers of social vulnerability that some predatory people seem hell-bent on exploiting?
Is it the way white clergy and other white leaders weaponize their social justice bona fides as a means of exploiting and silencing people of color? The way that this kind of weaponization can be sexualized?
The fact is, all of these oppressive and violent threads are vital to understanding Crystal’s experience. The men she writes about here did what abusers do: they made her feel isolated, as though the problem was her, as though the problem was simply that she was irreparably sexually broken in a way that made her matter less than they did. For many women of color, this is the reality of sexual abuse: it is endlessly, exhaustingly tangled up with the many forms of harm they experience in a patriarchal, white supremacist culture.
When the messages that you don’t matter come at you that relentlessly, asserting that you do matter, that you do have worth, that you are a whole person and deserve to be treated like one–that takes tremendous energy, courageous vulnerability, and relentless commitment to honoring the truth. Crystal, we stand with you. What you’re doing by speaking your experience is radical, beautiful, and brave.
–Stephanie Krehbiel, Executive Director of Into Account
Growing up in the Church of Christ. I felt very isolated, especially as a minority. My mother was very religious and wanted my sisters and me to be brought up in the church, so we went. My family faced a lot of racism and because of it I never really had many church friends. And not only were we minorities, we were poor. My parents were judged a lot. It was their fault we ran out of food or because my dad had a back injury while working for a Church of Christ and couldn’t work. They really made my father feel bad about himself as a man because he wasn’t able to be the provider they expected him to be. He eventually stopped going to church.
In the Church of Christ a lot of things were frowned upon, premarital sex being a big one. I was a 23 yr old virgin when I met my ex. He was older and more experienced. The things I learned in church didn’t prepare me for life outside of the church. Their message was sex is wrong, don’t do it if you aren’t married. My plan was to be married, have kids and a wonderful life. I know this all sounds incredibly naive but that was how I was raised and what was expected of me as a “good Christian girl”. I was also born with a chronic illness that oftentimes resulted in me being taught by a teacher from home. So I didn’t have a lot of exposure to people my age until after I graduated high school. I didn’t get my heartbroken by a crush or the bad boy in school and learn what to avoid. Learning things as an adult has bigger repercussions and it made me even more vulnerable. I didn’t know what abuse was except it had to do with someone hitting you physically. I didn’t know that someone you loved saying cruel things was abusive. I was never taught about domestic violence in church.
My ex said all the right things. We got engaged, he met the family, we all went to church together. Then he would call me names and apologize. He’d tell me things like,” we both love each other and in God’s eyes we are already married”. And it was true. I loved him so much. After I had a sexual relationship with him, the relationship got very bad. But all I knew was that I couldn’t give up on him because being a virgin was what I was told I needed to be by the church. Now that I wasn’t any longer I didn’t know who I was anymore or what it meant about me.
The first time I got pregnant was actually because he tampered with the protection I demanded we use. It resulted in a pregnancy but it was an ectopic one. I still remember the expected due date October 26th. I was being punished by God I thought. I woke up after the emergency surgery to save my life and felt dead.
No baby, empty inside, physically in pain and still so ruined, ruined, ruined. I thought I might as well stay with him. I became pregnant again and this time it was a healthy pregnancy. The church refused to acknowledge my pregnancy. They wouldn’t throw me a baby shower or announce I had my baby. They didn’t want to support sin. I was sin. Because of this I convinced myself I had to make it work. So I moved in with him. And he was so abusive emotionally that I couldn’t eat and my weight dropped to 90lbs.
I knew I had to make a choice. I could stay with him and eventually get married, or I could leave and protect my child. I chose my child. I didn’t want any child that I loved so much to see me suffering and beat down. I left him and became a truly single parent.
But my mother loved me and supported me. She was a beautiful human being, and she didn’t care about anything that I viewed as a mistake. Then she was diagnosed with Colon Cancer. So after a year of taking care of her, I no longer had my best friend. The church wouldn’t even help me bury her after her life insurance skipped out on us on a technicality.
I grew up attending predominantly white churches. And in order to attend these churches I’ve had to sometimes ignore racism or pretend that it’s not an issue. I grew up hearing white people tell me how clean and well behaved my siblings and I were. I had white people touching my hair or telling me that I was a pretty black girl. I think after awhile you try to excuse these comments or attempt to forgive and offer mercy and try to be patient. I think it’s why when I heard racist language coming from one of the men I had an encounter with, I wanted to help him work through it.
I didn’t date much after I left my ex. I concentrated on raising my child. And none of the men I dated treated me badly; it just didn’t work out and we usually remained friends afterwards.
But I did have bad encounters with two men who as far as I know still have connections with the Church of Christ. One was a chaplain at the time and the other was a minister. They both went to Abilene Christian University, a Church of Christ school. l was healing from my past until I decided I wanted to meet a Church of Christ man.
I was in the middle of finishing my education to become a social worker when I met a Church of Christ chaplain, Josh. We had a mutual friend on Facebook, and Josh introduced himself. We had the same kind of interests. So we began talking in 2017. He was in Dallas, Texas and I was in Oklahoma. We had a lot of great conversations early on. Sometimes we’d video chat. It became clear that he was having some personal issues though. Because I thought he was a great guy, I offered my support.
We would have long conversations, every day. I tried to encourage him. Our relationship became a romantic one. He wanted to meet and spend time with me. I was a little concerned we were moving too fast and I backed out of it at first. Especially after a disagreement we had. Josh had professed support of Black Lives Matter. I asked him had he ever dated a black woman and he told me that he never thought of black women in that light. He went on further to say when he lived in Abilene the black women he met were hypersexual and their boyfriends were usually incarcerated. We argued about that one. At one point I said to myself, “This is over. I’m out.”
Then Josh convinced me that what he meant was that this is what he thought in the past. It was his old prejudices, and was something that he was working on within himself. He really wanted to meet me and he apologized for the way he phrased it. He convinced me that everything would be okay and he wanted to spend time with me so I arranged a hotel for him to stay at and he got on a flight to see me. I met him at the airport and then we went to get him set up in the hotel. I was going to go home because it was early in the day and my child would be home from school soon.
The plan was that we would spend time with each other the whole weekend. One thing led to another and we had sex. Afterwards, he became upset and said that it wasn’t what God wanted for him. I left the hotel and he flew back to Texas immediately. He said that he couldn’t talk to me and needed time. He unfriended me.
We eventually began to talk again because I think he felt guilty. At one point I tried to forgive him, but it was obvious that any friendship we had ended the day we met. I was going through a rough patch. I had to move because of a slum landlord and was living in a hotel with my daughter, while I looked for a place to live. With him being a chaplain I thought I could share this with him and ask for him to pray for me. I wasn’t asking for money or anything material.
Instead he was distant and then very angry. I told him that I didn’t understand. He said, “I can’t fucking help you.” Those were his words. He wanted no part of being my friend. I was now a nuisance to him.
Josh had invited me into this secret Church of Christ group called, “The Faithful Resistance.” In it were members all who were ACU alumni. Their goal presumably was to fight injustices like racism, and to support the marginalized. That’s where I was introduced to Mark, a minister from Texas. He messaged me. He said he liked the things I posted in the group. He was my same age, and a minister. Ministers are good guys, right? That’s what I was taught. That’s what I believed. And we had so many awesome conversations, some would last hours over the phone. In our conversations he talked about how he felt sex without the benefit of marriage was okay, much like Josh did. Nothing at all wrong with it, it’s healthy.
Eventually, we decided that he would visit me. I remember it was 2018 when he visited. We decided together that he would come, but he made all the plans himself, without asking me what times would be best for my schedule and my child’s schedule. He told me he had an Airbnb booked. He also told me the location and that it was near my home.
As a single mom of a child that wasn’t old enough to be at home alone, I thought that the close proximity to my home would be perfect. I could hang out with him and then go home and wait for the babysitter and then go back out with him.
But later he told me that his booking had changed. It was now on the west side of the city and I lived on the east side at the time. I still thought it could work because I had a babysitter lined up, until she cancelled (one of my sisters who was pregnant at the time). We had early release school days and he planned to meet me on a Friday afternoon. So there was no way I could make it across town, spend time with him and make it home to be with my child who was getting out of school early. So my youngest sister said, “I’ll watch her but I don’t get off work until 6pm.”
I was so upset that the plans were becoming messed up. I contacted him when he arrived and apologized profusely. I told him I was so sorry. I didn’t know what to do, but also, I was sure that he’d understand. On a weekday afternoon, people are usually at work or they have kids to pick up from school. That’s why I thought he’d be understanding and a little more flexible with time.
When I finally met him at his Airbnb, he didn’t mention that he was upset. I apologized when I got there. He wasn’t really interested in going out any longer. It’s something I picked up on because of the fact he was drinking already. We couldn’t go out with him intoxicated. I asked him again, was he okay, and he said he was fine. He offered me something to drink. I was so anxious that day I had taken anxiety meds and I couldn’t combine the two. He seemed put out that I wouldn’t drink with him.
We eventually had sex. Sex was what I did to appease my ex when he was angry. I tried to appease Mark because I knew he was angry even when he denied that he was. Mark was upset, and I needed to make Mark happy. After sharing my body with Josh like that and being rejected minutes afterwards, I was unsure of myself as a woman. I felt ugly. I needed to feel beautiful again, to feel cared for and I thought I’d get that with Mark. But he treated me even worse.
The next day, Mark was cold and distant. I had the weekend to hang out with him and he told me he needed to leave. He put me in a Uber and left town. I cried the whole way home.
When he got back to Texas, he confronted me. He told me in a message that the meeting was tawdry and I wasn’t the woman he thought I was because we had sex early in the date. The word tawdry kept playing over and over in my head. It felt like he was calling me a whore. He acted like he hadn’t participated, that he hadn’t wanted that kind of relationship with me, when he made it clear he did before we met. He could’ve easily left if he didn’t want to see me. His words were cold and cutting, he told me that I didn’t deserve grace or forgiveness because of how I treated him by keeping him waiting and having sex with him too early in the date and that it was sad that he had to explain this to a grown woman.
My response was to go in the bathroom and immediately throw up. That coming from a minister destroyed me a little bit. He was confirming the church’s judgment of me and how I felt about myself for having sex without the benefit of marriage. All of this coming from an ordained minister, so it had to be true, right? I was thankful my sister was watching my child for the weekend, because I was distraught. I offered to pay him back for the gas he spent on traveling to see me. He wouldn’t take it.
Josh and Mark both told me beforehand that sex was perfectly fine before marriage, which pretty much goes against their own theology. Sex was what they wanted from the beginning.
I tried to hold on to these men. Not because I wanted to make them love me, although I honestly cared about them both. It was because I knew that if I dropped any form of friendship I’d have to accept that they used me, that they treated me the way that they did because they saw me as trash. That I let myself be used and I didn’t want to accept that. I needed to try to still be their friend. I thought that trying to forgive and be a friend at least would redeem me a little.
Part of me feels so confused at a lot of this. I start minimizing it. I keep asking myself, “Am I really a victim like women who have been raped?” I’m not a victim in that way. Do I deserve to talk about this? Maybe they were right in the way they treated me. And I shouldn’t say anything at all. But I also know that I wouldn’t have trusted them like I did, had they not been associated with the church. I know that in the Church of Christ community, these men will be supported regardless. That their positions of power and reputations matter more than any pain that they’ve caused me. I know this and they do as well. I’m not a graduate from ACU or Lipscomb or any other Christian School. I’m not a scholar and I’m not well known in Christian circles.
Both men knew of what I went through in the past. I shared my experiences with them. I know that my past experience with emotional and sexual abuse affected how I behaved. I knew what they wanted from me and I wanted to be loved, wanted to make them happy, wanted to please them. I was sexually assaulted on the street in broad daylight by a man who had a history of sexual assault and a rape charge. My ex made sure that I understood that sex wasn’t for me, it was for him and a way to show him that I loved him. It was a way to avoid being called the names that hurt. He told me when we would have it and how to please him. It was never about me.
In the Church of Christ a lot of ministers usually come from a family of people highly regarded in church circles. They receive nearly unwavering support based upon their families’ reputations alone. They start with going to Church of Christ universities like ACU, Lipscomb, Pepperdine etc. and by emulating the ministers before them that sometimes will take them under their wing and offer guidance. Once they finish their degrees, they’re respected people and they’re given opportunities that allow them to have even more influence.
I experienced this with Josh, the chaplain. He’d often cite his education and experience working with the marginalized. He made sure that I knew that we weren’t on the same level. And he admitted that it bothered him when he felt I challenged him. Even though as a black woman and one who grew up poor I had personal insight into a lot of issues. He brought up to me that he intentionally lived in a rough part of town in Abilene, Texas and ministered to people of color. He told me that he came from a family of ministers, some who were known to fight for civil rights. So I guess he felt like that was enough. When a minister has years’ worth of good deeds and sermons, that’s enough for people in the Church of Christ. And if anyone questions them, it must mean they’re out to get them in some way because they’re much too decent to cause any harm.
I write this not for them. But for you, for those of you who are reading and can relate. I’m writing this for the women that feel like they’re ruined because they’ve had sex before marriage. I’m writing this for the minorities in church who feel unheard. I’m writing this because Minister Teresa’s story pulled this out of me and I feel that I must stand with her in solidarity. I’m writing this because these actions and other harmful treatment of women are often supported by people in the Church of Christ. I’m writing this because I want people in the Church of Christ to do better. Ignoring these issues makes you complicit. This is very hard to share because even today it still hurts. Every now and then I feel a memory from those experiences roll down my cheek.
If you wish to contact Crystal about this story, she asks that you not do so directly, but rather through her Into Account advocate at skrehbiel@intoaccount.org.