Church, training, education, and what’s next.

Grab some lemonade and a snack, we’re excited to share a longer update from Stephanie!

Dear friends,

I want to tell you about some of the changes that are happening at Into Account. We’re so excited to share what’s coming with all of you, even though some of the reasons for these changes are pretty heavy, because our shift in direction is energizing all of us.

If you don’t have time to read, but want to know the update, click on this text!

For the past decade, Into Account has been providing direct support and accompaniment for survivors of sexual violence and other forms of abuse in churches and church-related organizations. In that time, we’ve worked with survivors from a wide range of backgrounds, and we’ve interacted with many kinds of religious organizations: small churches, large churches, Protestants, Catholics, colleges, seminaries, denominations, non-governmental humanitarian organizations, and more. 

As tiny as we are, the demand for our services has been high. Through economic crises, a pandemic, and political upheaval, we’ve faced a consistent truth: There is not enough help out there for people who are abused by their churches. The work of supporting survivors is poorly compensated, and organizations devoted to that work are stretched thin. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of our valued partner organizations close. These are hard times, financially and emotionally, to be in our line of work.

“As tiny as we are, the demand for our services has been high.”

Like all of you, I dream about a future in which work like ours isn’t needed. But in the shorter term, I dream about a future in which people who do work like ours never burn out from lack of resources. I dream about a future where we can focus on transforming the cultures that produce so much abuse, rather than staving off the ever-present threat of financial crisis and competing with other worthy causes for funding streams. 

At Into Account, we’ve had a lot of conversations over the past year about how we want to move forward. Our current funding model relies on individual donors to fund our labor so that we can provide free services for survivors, many of whom come to us for help confronting the same institutions that perpetrated or enabled their abuse. Within that model, we’ve built a reputation among survivors of church-based abuse as an organization that won’t sell out our principles in the face of institutional pressure or bullying from perpetrators. 

Our reputation has led to more survivors reporting to us than we can reasonably work with, given our small size. Turning away survivors without a clear idea of where to refer them has been one of the most emotionally costly aspects of our work.

Into Account occupies an odd niche as an organization that doesn’t operate out of religious commitments, but nonetheless pays close attention to them as a core part of our work. This niche fulfills one of our founding principles, which is that survivors of religious trauma deserve services that are neither dismissive nor prescriptive when it comes to faith and spirituality. As we say on our website, we aren’t faith-based; we’re religion-informed. Among our survivor clientele are atheists, agnostics, and devout Christians. 

From a funding perspective, our distinctive identity is both a gift and a challenge. As nonprofits go, we are good at drawing in loyal donors. People who are familiar with our work value what we have to offer, and your giving reflects that. The greater challenge is that big funders don’t know what to do with us. Fundamentally, our faith framework is unappealing to social justice and public foundations, and our unwavering solidarity with survivors and dedication to accountability rules out most Christian foundations. 

“From a funding perspective, our identity is both a gift and a challenge.”

The reality is that we do this work for poverty wages. And that affects our capacity, our morale, and our energy to search for new funding opportunities. 

What’s both frustrating and exciting is this: after a decade of working directly with hundreds of survivors and engaging directly with dozens of organizations, we have clear ideas about what’s working and what’s not working, and we have some clear ideas about how to address those things. We’re more convinced than ever that our niche matters. What we need is a little more breathing room to develop our plans, while still being able to pay our bills and put food on the table. 

We notice a big gap in the landscape. While there are firms doing short-form, one-off trainings; and firms doing policy reviews and templates, these are – bluntly – liability protection. In fact, most of what passes for sexual abuse prevention in faith-based organizations is created according to the standards of insurance companies and attorneys, doing little to nothing to transform the long-term culture influencing how churches and organizations respond to survivors’experiences. Organizations dedicated to shifting culture are missing.

As a society, we’re treating sexual violence like a liability problem that needs to be contained, rather than a cultural problem connected to everything else that makes up culture. Everywhere I look, I see our institutions doing the same thing. 

Have you noticed that it’s not working? If you’re still reading, I suspect you have.

Here are just some of the ways we are channeling our curiosity, expertise, and commitment to a world without sexual violence into work that moves the needle on culture change:

We are working to make space for clergy and other church professionals to learn from survivors in non-church settings, where survivors can speak as experts and movement leaders without the paternalistic dynamics that are baked into many church processes. 

We are talking to faith and organizational leaders about the anatomy of a coverup, and how making one “doing the best we can” decision at a time keeps leading them into secrecy and denial. 

We are taking our understanding of “trauma-informed” beyond its current iteration as an industry buzzword that is too easily weaponized against survivors.

We are taking a hard look at the social implications of our theologies around children and childhood. 

We are learning from the extensive knowledge and practical experiences of survivors of color in ways that aspire not to duplicate the exploitative, labor-extractive models set by white-dominant churches and the white-dominated nonprofit industrial complex (of which we are a part). Our planned curriculum is built around the writing and intellectual work of women and queer people of color, who are the thought leaders in the work of confronting sexual violence as a weapon of systemic oppression. 

We are making space for non-religious professionals such as therapists, social workers, and public sector advocates who struggle to understand how a religious background affects their clients, and want to learn from people who are like their clients.

We are working to provide quality resources for better, realer conversations about sexual violence in progressive spaces, including Christian ones. Though progressive spaces are reticent to admit it, we have observed them routinely drive out survivors in ways that duplicate patterns usually attributed to conservative evangelicalism. We approach this work with the deep conviction that there is no collective freedom without freedom from sexual violence. 

And we are welcoming you to participate, whoever you are, if you simply have the interest and the desire to contribute and to learn.

This course is just the beginning of what we’d like to do. It reflects the future we’re envisioning, the direction we’re going, and the collaborations we most value. And we’d love for you to be part of our journey.

Looking for the short version? We’re shifting from doing primarily direct survivor advocacy and consulting to creating an instructional course on preventing sexualized violence and supporting survivors.

Donate to this work! I’m interested in the course!

It’s not just for policy or practice – it’s to create churches and organizations that are fundamentally built to support survivors and address the dynamics that lead to sexual violence. 

We are so grateful for every step you have taken with us so far, and are looking forward to our continued partnership and growth.

Thank you. 

Stephanie Krehbiel, PhD