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Tag: rape

God is not an abuser: Responding to Daughters of Promise

January 30, 2019February 7, 2019

by Rosemarie Miller and Stephanie Krehbiel

Updated 2/6/2019: In the time since the publication of this interview, the editors of Daughters of Promise have retracted the essay that we discuss here in all platforms where they are able to do so. In a Feb. 6 email to Into Account, they accepted full responsibility for their mistaken judgment in publishing it, adding, “Your interview gave women in our readership the ability to articulate what was disturbing about the article. ” They are preparing their own public statement. Into Account deeply appreciates their acceptance of accountability and their desire to learn.

Rosemarie Miller is a survivor advocate, speaker, and writer who works to raise awareness about the prevalence of child sexual abuse in faith communities. Raised as a Plain Mennonite, she now works with survivors from a wide range of church backgrounds, including many from conservative and plain-dressing Anabaptist groups.

We published Rosemarie’s personal narrative of abuse on Our Stories Untold last November. Several week ago, I did an interview with her about her anti-abuse advocacy.

Recently, Rosemarie contacted me again, and what she showed me led to the following discussion. –Stephanie Krehbiel

Rosemarie, let’s just start with the tough stuff:  You and I both read an essay that disturbed each of us so much that we decided together that we need to talk about it publicly. It’s in the most recent issue of a conservative Anabaptist women’s magazine called Daughters of Promise, and the author of the piece is writing about her marriage to a man who had what she labelled as an “inappropriate relationship” with a girl who was living in their home.

More accurately, we later learned, her husband had sexually abused a teenage girl for two years before being caught, prosecuted, and convicted of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. (Content warning: the hyperlinked definition contains explicit descriptions of sexual assault. The source is a defense attorney’s website, which may be triggering for some readers.)

We also agreed on the reasons for publishing our conversation: not because we want to shame the author of the essay or cause damage to the magazine, but because we’re seeing and experiencing the suffering that this piece is causing to sexual violence survivors, and we don’t want anyone who is having similar feelings to suffer alone. And also because the essay follows some recognizable and troubling patterns that both of us are committed to fighting.

You received a copy of this piece from a friend who was devastated by it. Talk to me about that. Why did she share it with you? What did she object to in the essay?

Yes, this has been a very tough thing to process. I personally felt physical pain after reading this article, even though it took me some time before I could really begin to articulate well what was disturbing me so much. Of course, it was clear on a fast, first reading that we were dealing with a case of a minor who had been sexually abused. The survivor who shared it with me was so deeply impacted that she was reaching out for support to process the article. She saw the minimization of the abuse of a child in the use of the term “inappropriate relationship”, rather than correctly labeling it “abuse and a crime”. She noted many other things as well, such as the wife seeming to equate unreservedly trusting her husband with trust in God, as well as her evidently allowing him full and free access to their own minor children as fast as she was legally allowed, including him moving back into their home with the children once he was out of jail.

I had a very similar reaction. And one of the things that most disturbed me was the degree to which the author didn’t even seem to see the victim as a person. She was one of the “town girls,” which struck me as a way of making her seem less valuable, less worthy, than the “Godly” people in the author’s family and community. There’s one part in particular where she writes, “God reminded me that, more than my husband had sinned against me, he had sinned against His Heavenly Father.” But if we’re going to use the language of sin, we need to point out that he sinned against the victim. That victim being a young teenager who came into his home to escape another situation in which she was raped and abused.

Right! The “town girl” reference was something that my survivor friend and I had both noticed. Since I grew up in a culture that would have used the phrase “worldly girl”,  it didn’t fully impact me on my first reading as much as it did my friend who had exposure to the phrase in her childhood. She said it well: “Then there’s the phrase town girls. That is code for ‘ lesser in value’. There’s an underlying mentality that the girl is expendable. She’s never mentioned again after he comes clean. What happened to her? She’s the victim. Not the husband.”  Also we both noticed after the wife’s initial reference to the victim, the narrative from then on only focuses on how hard things were for her and her family, and then how ultimately wonderful in the end, with God working all this out for good. I get that the wife was writing this from HER perspective, but at a minimum, it would have been helpful if the editorial process at Daughters of Promise had caught this concern and addressed it somehow.

I’m going to quote the author more extensively here, from the end of the piece, because it sounds like this is the part your friend is talking about: “My favorite verse is Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, to them that are the called according to his purpose.” I know that we may have a love-hate relationship with this verse. I think when we understand its true meaning – that all things work together for the good of God’s Kingdom, not for our earthly pleasures – this verse truly becomes a comforting verse in the valleys.”

The author seems to be invested in the idea of this as something that happened to her family, not something that her husband actively did to another person. I’m thinking of a number of cases I’m familiar with or have been involved with in which victims are pitted against the perpetrator’s family.

Yes, I too have noticed over the years that the greatest concern is often for the perpetrator and his or her family, not for the victim and their family. I am somewhat at a loss to explain this when it comes to the church and community in general. In this specific situation,  I am going to guess that since the wife evidently was hit by this disclosure out of the blue–having had no inkling, she felt, previously–that her sense of helplessness and events being out of her control–is reflected in this re-telling of events. I can only hope and pray she will receive effective and knowledgeable counseling to help her properly process and heal. While I am a victim’s advocate first and foremost, I am also deeply concerned for the families of perpetrators, and realize they are victims of the crimes and sins, and need much support and help. But in our concern for them, we must NEVER EVER neglect the primary victim. I hope and pray that the support and concern for the young victim in this case was clearly shown by the community and church, even though there is no evidence of it in this article.

At some level, I think this is about symbols, and what Christians claim to hold sacred. The idea of family is sacred. The idea of heterosexual marriage is sacred. But sexual violence victims are rarely seen as sacred; they’re much more likely to be seen as inherently suspect. They’re seen as people who destroy marriages, families, and communities. So of course churches side with the people who represent what is sacred to them.

I would guess that there is a lot of truth to that observation, Stephanie. I also have observed over the years that the idea an adult would molest a child is so reprehensible and unimaginable to some people, that they must always find some way to blame the victim. “They must have wanted sex!” “She must not have dressed modestly!” “Well, we always KNEW she was ‘troubled’!” And in this case, she was a “town girl”. We need to begin accepting the sad reality that there really are ravening wolves among us who actually are so evil that they prey on vulnerable, helpless people, who are absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing. And further, we must fully recognize and accept that the adult is ALWAYS 100% the adult, and the responsible party. NOTHING a child does EVER excuses an adult victimizing them. As long as we justify, excuse or in any way try to minimize the seriousness of sexual abuse crimes against others, we are party to the crimes and sins. We make it harder for the offenders to ever get the help they need, and we make it easier for new crimes to occur against vulnerable people. This is really serious stuff, both from a spiritual and legal perspective.

Let’s talk about the legal perspective for a second. Both you and I know of dozens and dozens of these crimes that never make it to a courtroom, but this one actually did, and the offender–the author’s husband, David Dwight Stoltzfus–was in prison for five years. We read the media coverage of his crimes after reading his wife’s essay. How did you feel when you read that coverage?

I was disturbed when I read the article in Daughters of Promise because I recognized so many areas of concern. But when I read the news coverage of the situation, I was literally staggered. It was extremely hard to read. This man took a child, who had already been victimized sexually, into his home to allegedly provide a safe haven for her, and then sexually violated her nearly every day for two years, while threatening to return her to her home where she had previously been traumatized. My heart broke completely anew for the victim and all she has gone through in life.  I can not stop thinking about her. I pray, oh I pray, that she is now finally truly safe and loved, and surrounded by the support system she needs to heal and function in life. Such a betrayal to a child even ONCE is devastating, let alone to be taken in by people alleging to love Jesus and His Holy ways, and then to be abused again under threats.

My other concern is for this perpetrator’s children who he clearly has access to. I pray the perp has people in his life who are truly effective and knowledgeable about child molesters who are helping him be fully honest with God and himself about the desires for power and control that he used as his justification to abuse this precious child. If he does not have that, if he does not have help, we both know that studies show that offenders are highly likely to reoffend at some point again in their lives. Clearly the judge was concerned about this as well, after having reviewed all the facts of the case, including the reports from the psychologist and others, that he sentenced him to be placed on the sex offender registry for life.

And as gentle as I want to be with his wife, due to the extreme pain he caused her, I have to admit that reading she tried to defend the perp in the courtroom was very hard for me as well. Where were her instincts as a Christian to defend and protect the child who had been entrusted into her care, in her home? Reading the news account, in conjunction with her own article, just made me even more concerned for her, and her need for knowledgeable support. There are major things to wrestle with in a situation like this, and it takes a lot of safety and support to be able to do so effectively. I pray she will find that kind of support system.

What do you think a spiritually mature response to this essay would be? What would you do if someone submitted it to you, as an editor?

Stephanie, I hope I would have godly wisdom to respect where this woman is at right now in her journey, while still realizing that publishing an article that has these errors in it helps to perpetuate the cycle of abuse by failing to clearly identify the situation as that, and advocates for blind trust and no boundaries with a sinful, criminal spouse who had not earned the right to have blind trust, let alone with children. Further, the fact that she is lamenting that law enforcement got involved–when a person who is truly repentant should turn themselves in to law enforcement and freely confess their crimes–does readers a disservice. We need to be teaching how to respond appropriately to abuse cases. I know that is our desire in this interview and that because we both DO care and DO want to raise awareness and provide education, we are committed to sending this interview to the publishers of Daughters of Promise.

I think one thing I want these editors and publishers and others like them to understand is that publishing something like this is not actually a kindness to the author. It is enabling. She has been terribly hurt already; she deserves a community that is able to tell her the truth.

I absolutely agree. The truth is hard, but the truth sets us free. And uncompromising honesty is the best course in life to follow. We can not have one type of injury in our physical lives, have it misdiagnosed and mishandled medically, and expect to heal well. The same is true in our spiritual and emotional lives. Injuries must have accurate diagnoses, and treatment, for full healing.

There’s one more thing I want to talk about in relation to this case, and that’s the witness intimidation. The news coverage mentions that the perpetrator’s mother received two years of probation for trying to stop the victim from reporting the rapes to the police. What were your feelings when you read that?

Stephanie, I think my first reaction was grief for the victim who was subjected to that on top of everything else! My second reaction was deep relief that the evil of witness intimidation was caught, called out, and dealt with in a public and legal manner. I pray that it serves as a strong warning and deterrent to others who would be tempted to fall into this sinful and criminal practice!

Yes, it was an unspeakably cruel thing to do to a kid. I was thinking, too, that it was a completely recognizable behavior, in terms of what you and I both see as advocates. Usually it’s too subtle to be criminal witness intimidation, but there’s still an implicit threat. “If you don’t let this go, you’re going to destroy the church.” “Are you really willing to ruin this man’s life?” “You’re going to get a reputation, you know.” “Are you sure you’re not enjoying all this attention?”  At the heart of all of this is an existential shaming that, in our culture, I think works especially well on women and other marginalized people. The message is: “How dare you prioritize your body and your safety? How dare you believe you’re important enough to be worthy of respect?”

And that takes me back to the essay, in which the author–who, again, is married to a rapist–talks about how she used her faith to stop herself from certain kinds of thoughts. She wrote, “God clearly laid on my heart to never be my husband’s policeman or mother. I was called to walk beside him as a loving wife. I didn’t want to be a suspicious, untrusting wife. It is hard to have a happy marriage if a couple can’t trust each other.” And then later, “I often hummed the song ‘Then sings my soul, ‘My Savior God…how great thou art’’, when unforgiving thoughts wanted to come to my mind. I had to remember how great my God is, how much He gave to save me and not let my mind harbor bad things.”

For me, this was the most disturbing aspect of the whole thing. Because the language she’s directing at herself is the language of spiritual abuse. Her personal spirituality is her business, but publishing her essay promotes the kind of denial that endangers other people, including children. God is not a gaslighting narcissist who demands that we ignore reality.

As you said earlier, the statistical reality is that this man has probably abused more than one victim and will probably abuse again. No one in their right mind should be trusting him with kids or teenagers. And yet his wife isn’t alone in convincing herself that trusting an abusive person or an abusive system is somehow analogous to trusting God. That’s the most effective form of witness intimidation, right there: a theology that teaches victims to trust abusers.

You summed that up well, Stephanie! “That’s the most effective form of witness intimidation, right there: a theology that teaches victims to trust abusers!” I have certainly seen that over and over in my work as an advocate as well. People feel that because the abuser has offered a verbal statement of repentance that it must be accepted fully, at face value, whether or not the offender goes on to show any effective fruits of repentance. These would include things such as removing themselves voluntarily from access to vulnerable minors, accepting without complaint all logical consequences, getting themselves into professional counseling with someone who is highly trained in child abuse cases, reporting themselves to law enforcement, and so on. I have heard expressions such as, “I feel so sorry for him–he’s really hurting!” and “We shouldn’t throw stones–we are all just a step away from doing like he did but for the grace of God!” I’m sure as an advocate, you have heard similar statements.

I have, although to be honest, I think you hear them more often, because the communities you relate to on a regular basis are more fundamentalist. Certainly, I hear a lot of empathy for perpetrators expressed at the expense of victims. But this notion that everybody is just a stone’s throw away from committing sexual violence seems to be particularly powerful in plain Anabaptism and other fundamentalist traditions. And it’s used as a means of minimizing and normalizing sexual abuse when it happens.

I have a thought that I’d like to share about the belief that we are all just a step away from molesting a child, except for God’s grace. Because that statement can be confusing if we don’t use godly discernment on it–it sounds kind of humble, kind of Biblical–and I’m sure that is the reason it gets used! But we need to stop and really think through the fact that portraying sexual abuse of a child as something we can just sort of tip and fall into,  without much warning, is dangerous territory and false teaching. Because the truth is–we FALL close to where we STAND. If I choose to stand within mere inches of the edge of the Grand Canyon, I will almost certainly fall over the edge, and likely to my death, were I to have a sudden bit of vertigo or a slip or fall. But if I choose to stand well back from the edge of the Canyon, I will still fall, but not plunge into the Canyon to my death. I think it’s important to realize that if we are not standing right up at the edge of child abuse, we aren’t going to just “fall” into it. It is a series of choices, a series of decisions, and steps, that leads someone right to the edge of the Abuse Canyon. They didn’t just wake up one morning, and just step or fall right into abusing a child.

That’s true. I think it also reveals a really deep confusion about the difference between consensual sex and sexual abuse. Like, you don’t fall into Abuse Canyon unless you enjoy using sex as a weapon of power and control against other people. You can be completely interested in consensual sex, enjoy it regularly, and never have the slightest temptation to be sexually violent or wield sex for power and control. The problem isn’t sexual desire. The problem is a desire to manipulate and dominate other people. And there is no cheap form of grace to make that go away.

You are so right, Stephanie! While I absolutely believe in the power of God to redeem the worst sinner who comes to Him in full and complete repentance, the sad truth is that way too many abusers never get to that point. Even if they stop abusing children sexually, they often continue to relate to others with power and control in dysfunctional, abusive ways. This is something I have seen first hand, and it just creates a strong desire in me to see pastors, churches, community leaders, spouses and really, everyone, educated on how to respond with wisdom and great discernment to abuse cases. The victims need help to recover and find healing, the secondary victims need help, and the predator certainly needs help. We can’t ignore anyone in an abuse situation and think we are doing things right. This is too serious of a matter to continue stumbling around as has historically happened!

Rosemarie, thank you for bringing this essay to our attention, and for this discussion. Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be our last interview.

Why Abuse Survivors Still Think Twice Before Telling their Stories: Retaliation At Goshen College

by Stephanie Krehbiel and Hilary Scarsella

ACTION ALERT: We’re asking folks to send email of support for survivors to Goshen College’s president and board. It can take a little as 30 seconds to amplify survivors’ voices.

Documentation:
Introduction to May 5 event from Anneliese Baer
Victim Impact Statement from Anneliese Baer
Victim Impact Statement from Rachel Stoltzfus
Update Statement from Erin Bergen (July 2018)
Goshen Signed Resolution Agreement with U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights
Facebook Live Stream video of statements by Anneliese Baer and Rachel Stoltzfus, recorded at Goshen College, May 5, 2018

“There are many survivors who would like to be present today, but are restricted by time, financial burden, and the ever-present weight of Goshen College’s past inaction and silence surrounding our abuse. Let us not forget the voices that are not present today, and the implications of who has the most access to this space. As we take in these stories, remember that this meeting is not happening in a vacuum. It is happening after 6 years of constant silencing, and that affects how the information is presented today.”
–Anneliese Baer, May 5, 2018, Goshen College

On May 5, two courageous women who were abused in the Goshen College women’s soccer program, Rachel Stoltzfus and Anneliese Baer, spoke on the Goshen College campus about their experiences. Their stories included testimony about sexual harassment, racial misconduct, homophobia, stalking, financial manipulation, emotional abuse, housing and food deprivation, and life-threatening physical conditions. The stories began with the 2011-2012 school year, spanned the tenure of two different coaching teams, and implicated multiple current and former members of the Goshen administration and Athletic Department. Rachel and Anneliese spoke in front of Goshen President Rebecca Stoltzfus, a select group of students, the president’s cabinet, and other invited members of the larger Goshen community.

At the behest of other victims of abuse in the Goshen athletic department who could not be present or were legitimately fearful of retaliation if they showed up at the May 5 meeting, Anneliese and Rachel made their statements accessible to fellow victims and their supporters through a public Facebook Live video. In the time since that meeting, a number of Goshen leaders have tried to discredit the survivors who spoke, focusing on their decision to do so publicly. These survivors agreed to a physical meeting with a restricted guest list, but contrary to some of the recent assertions made by administrators and Goshen board members, there was never any agreement about containing these victim impact statements behind closed doors. Accusing these women of wrongdoing for publicly streaming their own words has operated as a convenient pressure valve for an administration that is clearly facing the heat from multiple directions.

We are sympathetic to the pressures administrators and board members face when confronted with the failure of their institution to adequately respond to abuse, but managing such pressures is well within the job description for administrators, and well within the expected commitments for board members. These women are not asking Goshen leaders to do anything but their jobs, and even that request, they make at great personal risk to themselves. It’s the responsibility of Goshen’s board and administrators to negotiate the difficult dynamics of their positions without passing the burden of that difficulty on to survivors calling the college to account for abuse they experienced at Goshen as students.

One of the most harmful things a college president can do, after revelations of systemic abuse in an athletic department, is to attack the integrity of survivor whistleblowers in front of all the students and personnel in that same department. When administrators and boards try to take pressure off of themselves by criticizing victims, the only people who really benefit, ultimately, are abusers.

And yes, that has already happened at Goshen, since May 5.

Survivors’ fears of retaliation have not been unfounded. As Into Account has continued to work with survivors at Goshen, they have brought us extensive documentation and evidence of recent retaliation. Due to confidentiality and our concerns about further retaliation, we are not sharing all the details we have at this point. However, it is our confident opinion that Goshen administration and Board of Directors share responsibility for responding to abuse revelations and May 5 victim impact statements with tactics that have fomented further abuse against current students.

On a related note, Goshen College is currently in a mandatory agreement with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education, due to multiple failures in Goshen’s Title IX protections against sexual harassment. Those failures were found by OCR investigators after our client, Erin Bergen, filed a federal complaint against Goshen for mishandling her own case of sexual assault.

Title IX forbids retaliation against students who report abuse. Title IX also demands that schools take preventive action to protect students from hostile environments. Since May 5, in our opinion, Goshen has already failed on both counts. Those failures have caused terrible harm in individual lives. Furthermore, these failures are undermining what we had dearly hoped was some concrete progress in Goshen’s approach to race and sex discrimination.

As victim advocates representing current and former students who have experienced both, we are in the difficult position of receiving multiple reassurances from Goshen officials that we feel unable to trust, due to duplicitous actions that have intimidated and retraumatized our clients.

Not only are administrative attacks on victims unethical, immoral, and frequently illegal, they are also ultimately self-defeating. The past fifteen years of revelations about sexual assault cover-ups and high-profile administrative resignations at colleges and universities across the country should have taught this to all of us by now. The repressive tactics that worked for previous generations of leaders in higher education do not work any more. Social media is a large part of the reason why.

As of today, that Facebook live video of victim impact statements delivered to Goshen on May 5 has received nearly 3500 views. For a school as small as Goshen, that is a lot of views. There will be more. And these will not be the last Goshen survivors to come forward on social media and say #metoo.

Goshen owes these women. We need to be clear about that: the debt is flowing in one direction. There are far more victims from these soccer teams than those who spoke on May 5, and Goshen can never begin to repay them what they are owed. We are not going to entertain talk of our clients owing yet more gratitude to Goshen leaders for their willingness to listen to stories of abuse that happened in the recent past at Goshen. These women have been more than courteous. They deserve far better than to be treated like naughty children by officials from a school that is still struggling to meet minimal compliance standards related to the kinds of abuse that they suffered.

Survivors use social media because social media is the best way to reach other survivors. With the international #metoo movement, this is more the case than ever before. Social media allows us to organize while at the same time protecting us–albeit imperfectly–from physical and psychological peril. It gives us tools to resist the divide-and-conquer tactics we encounter from institutions. Survivors’ power is amplified through the people that we reach with our stories.

And thus, when college officials decry survivors’ use of social media, it’s time to pay extra attention to the content of what has been posted. To that end, we’re sharing the Facebook live video here, as well as printed versions of Anneliese’s and Rachel’s comments from the video.

We’re going to keep sharing their words. Into Account makes no apology for our role in disseminating their stories. Goshen cannot afford to attack these women; the news they carry is too important. When student athletes make up half of the student body, and when the bulk of recruiting of students of color happens through the athletic department, nothing is more important than making sure that the leaders and coaches of that department are people whose first priority is the health and safety of students. Not administrators’ egos. Not institutional reputation. Not fundraising goals. Right now, holding the health and safety of students as the first priority means practicing nondefensive solidarity with those who are asking for accountability, apology, and change.

To quote the refrain of thousands of wise activists over many years of struggle: People are more important than institutions. We understand the loyalty that can lead people to want to believe the best of their alma maters, particularly when they had good experiences there themselves, or know people who work there and work hard. But a college that builds its economic survival on the backs of abused students is undeserving of such loyalty. If you want the colleges and universities that you love to survive in a way that is worthy of your support, hold them to these high standards. Anything less is a betrayal of your trust.

 

ACTION ALERT: We’re asking folks to send email of support for survivors to Goshen College’s president and board. It can take a little as 30 seconds to amplify survivors’ voices.

Let’s Have a Locker Room Talk

January 31, 2018February 1, 2018

by Stephanie Krehbiel, Executive Director

Exposing the Abusive Underbelly of College Athletic Departments

Last week, ESPN’s Outside the Lines did an investigative story on the culture of secrecy and self-protection around sexual abuse in the Michigan State University athletic department. While the story’s impetus was the heinous serial sexual abuse committed by physician Larry Nassar, much of it on the Michigan State campus, ESPN’s reporters found a widespread pattern of concealing sexual violence in the MSU athletic department. Among the many discoveries they made, one was the degree to which the athletic department contained and managed reports of sexual violence, without accountability from the rest of the university.

The insularity and secrecy that ESPN found at MSU is more common than we’d like to think. At Into Account, we work with athletes from departments at small, religious liberal arts schools who tell us versions of the same story: secrecy, insularity, and complaints of serious abuse being handled, or simply minimized and ignored, by unqualified athletic department personnel.

Public conversations about sexual assault and college athletics tend to focus on student athletes as perpetrators. What the Nassar trial has made apparent, however, is that abuse is systemic in athletic departments. When student athletes perpetrate abuse, it’s a symptom of a wider university and athletic culture. To address the problem in full, we also have to turn our attention to abuse as it is perpetrated and enabled by coaches, trainers, team doctors, and administrators.

Size Matters: But Not in the Way You Might Think

At large universities, athletics are big business, full of mass pageantry and ritualized playgrounds for the wealthy. (A fragile big business, though; most “Power Five” conference athletic departments are just breaking even, or operating at a loss.) At many small liberal arts colleges, however, athletic departments have a more direct relationship with the lifeblood of their colleges: they function as recruitment machines, and without them, some colleges wouldn’t have high enough enrollment numbers to stay open.

Continue reading →

Committing Sexual Violence No Impediment to EMU Social Work Degree

April 22, 2017July 10, 20172 Comments

“Launch Your Future,” EMU’s website shouts in bold capital letters, as they prepare to hand a social work degree to a student who has – by EMU’s own finding – committed sexual violence.

Continuing Eastern Mennonite University (EMU)’s culture of staggering mishandling of sexual violence, EMU student Joel Wheeler is days away from graduating with a social work degree, despite the fact that EMU determined he committed “non-consensual vaginal intercourse,” “on at least one occasion.”

From the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, here is the legal definition of the word “rape”: ““The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

hercampus Continue reading →

To social justice Christians who think that sexualized violence in your church is a trivial thing to focus on because there are “more urgent issues right now”

February 10, 2017February 10, 2017

You’re wrong. Let’s talk about why.

by Stephanie Krehbiel

Continue reading →

6 things to consider if you’re asked to meet with a church official

July 6, 2016July 28, 2016

9_doorOne of the toughest questions in advocacy work is this: When is it worthwhile to talk to powerful people within the institutions in which you’re trying to enact change, and when is it not? There are no easy answers to that question. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to get access to people with that kind of power, and so when we get the chance, we feel like we need to take it.

Furthermore, many church leaders downplay their own power. So it can be tempting to believe that all it takes to enact change is a heartfelt conversation or two with the right person.

If there were only one piece of counsel that we could offer to people advocating for survivors of sexual violence (and this applies to many types of violence and oppression) in church settings, we think it would be this: When you’re addressing a specific case of abuse, be cautious of any invitation to speak with a church or church-affiliated official who wants to explain to you “what really happened,” or to have a “heart-to-heart” or any sort of one-on-one conversation. Be cautious even if you think that the official is one of the good ones, someone you believe can be reasoned with.

If you get an invitation like that, there are a few guidelines you can follow to ensure that you don’t end up either feeling re-victimized or being an unintentional participant in minimizing and enabling sexual abuse. Continue reading →

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We specialize in strategies for holding institutions, perpetrators, and enablers accountable for violence, harm, and cover-ups.

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