The sin of silence
The epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical church
Illustration by Marina Muun for The Washington Post
By Joshua Pease

Rachael Denhollander�s college-aged abuser began grooming her when she was
7. Each week, as Denhollander left Sunday school at Westwood Baptist
Church in Kalamazoo, Mich., he was there to walk her to her parents�
Bible-study classroom on the other side of the building. He brought
Denhollander gifts and asked her parents for her clothing size so he could
buy her dresses. He was always a little too eager with a hug. The
Denhollanders led one of the church�s ministries out of their home, which
meant the man would visit their house regularly, often encouraging Rachael
to sit on his lap, they recalled.

The man�s behavior caught the attention of a fellow congregant, who
informed Sandy Burdick, a licensed counselor who led the church�s sexual-
abuse support group. Burdick says she warned Denhollander�s parents that
the man was showing classic signs of grooming behavior. They were worried,
but they also feared misreading the situation and falsely accusing an
innocent student, according to Camille Moxon, Denhollander�s mom. So they
turned to their closest friends, their Bible-study group, for support.

The overwhelming response was: You�re overreacting. One family even told
them that their kids could no longer play together, because they didn�t
want to be accused next, Moxon says. Hearing this, Denhollander�s parents
decided that, unless the college student committed an aggressive, sexual
act, there was nothing they could do.

No one knew that, months earlier, he already had.

One night, while sitting in the family�s living room, surrounded by
people, the college student masturbated while Denhollander sat on his lap,
she recalls. It wasn�t until two years later that she was able to
articulate to her parents what had happened. By that point, the student
had left the church. Moxon was furious that her church community hadn�t
listened. But she never told anyone what had happened to Rachael. �We had
already tried once and weren�t believed,� Moxon says. �What was the
point?�

Today, Denhollander can see how her church, which has since shut down,
failed to protect her. But as a child, all she knew from her parents was
that her abuse had made their church mad and that she wasn�t able to play
with some of her friends. She blamed herself � and resolved that, if
anyone else ever abused her, she wouldn�t mention it.

And so when Larry Nassar used his prestige as a doctor for the USA
Gymnastics program to sexually assault Denhollander, she held to her vow.
She wouldn�t put her family through something like that again. Her church
had made it clear: No one believes victims.
Rachael Denhollander wipes away tears at the sentencing of Larry Nassar in
a Lansing, Mich., courtroom on Jan. 24. Denhollander was one of many young
gymnasts sexually abused by the USA Gymnastics team doctor. As a girl, she
also was a victim of abuse by a college-age man at her church. (Matthew
Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal/AP)

Across the United States, evangelical churches are failing to protect
victims of sexual abuse among their members. As the #MeToo movement has
swept into communities of faith, several high-profile leaders have fallen:
Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary, was forced into early retirement this month after reports that
he�d told a rape victim to forgive her assailant rather than call the
police. Illinois megachurch pastor Bill Hybels similarly retired early
after several women said he�d dispensed lewd comments, unwanted kisses and
invitations to hotel rooms.

So many Christian churches in the United States do so much good �
nourishing the soul, comforting the sick, providing services, counseling
congregants, teaching Jesus�s example, and even working to fight sexual
abuse and harassment. But like in any community of faith, there is also
sin � often silenced, ignored and denied � and it is much more common than
many want to believe. It has often led to failures by evangelicals to
report sexual abuse, respond appropriately to victims and change the
institutional cultures that enabled the abuse in the first place.

Without a centralized theological body, evangelical policies and cultures
vary radically, and while some church leaders have worked to prevent abuse
and harassment, many have not. The causes are manifold: authoritarian
leadership, twisted theology, institutional protection, obliviousness
about the problem and, perhaps most shocking, a diminishment of the trauma
sexual abuse creates � especially surprising in a church culture that
believes strongly in the sanctity of sex. �Sexual abuse is the most
underreported thing � both in and outside the church � that exists,� says
Boz Tchividjian, a grandson of Billy Graham and a former Florida assistant
state attorney.

As a prosecutor, Tchividjian saw dozens of sexual abuse victims harmed by
a church�s response to them. (In one case, a pastor did not report a
sexual offender in his church because the man had repented. The offender
was arrested only after he had abused five more children.) In 2004,
Tchividjian founded the nonprofit organization Godly Response to Abuse in
the Christian Environment (GRACE), which trains Christian institutions in
how to prevent sexual abuse and performs independent investigations when
churches face an abuse crisis. Tchividjian says sexual abuse in
evangelicalism rivals the Catholic Church scandal of the early 2000s.
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Diagnosing the scope of the problem isn�t easy, because there�s no hard
data. The most commonly referenced study shows how difficult it is to find
accurate statistics. In that 2007 report, the three largest insurers of
churches and Christian nonprofits said they received about 260 claims of
sexual abuse against a minor each year. Those figures, though, exclude
groups covered by other insurers, victims older than 18, people whose
cases weren�t disclosed to insurance companies and the many who, like
Denhollander, never came forward. In other words, the research doesn�t
include what is certainly the vast majority of sexual abuse. The sex
advice columnist and LGBT rights advocate Dan Savage, tired of what he
called the hypocrisy of conservatives who believe that gays molest
children, compiled his own list that documents more than 100 instances of
youth pastors around the country who, between 2008 and 2016, were accused
of, arrested for or convicted of sexually abusing minors in a religious
setting.

The problem in collecting data stems, in part, from the loose or
nonexistent hierarchy in evangelicalism. Catholic Church abusers benefited
from an institutional cover-up, but that same bureaucracy enabled
reporters to document a systemic scandal. In contrast, most evangelical
groups prize the autonomy of local congregations, with major institutions
like the Southern Baptist Convention having no authority to enforce a
standard operating procedure among member churches. This means researchers
attempting to study this issue have to comb through publicly available
documents.
Cardinal Bernard Law, pictured in 2005, knew about priests� sexual abuse
of children in the Boston Archdiocese but helped cover it up for years.
The Catholic Church�s hierarchical structure helped hide the abuse but
later provided a bureaucratic record of the scandal. (Joe Raedle/Getty
Images)

That�s what Wade Mullen, the director of the M.Div. program at Capital
Seminary & Graduate School, did as a part of his PhD dissertation. He
collected reports of evangelical pastors or ministers charged with a crime
in order to understand how evangelical organizations respond to crisis.
Over 2016 and 2017, Mullen found 192 instances of a leader from an
influential church or evangelical institution being publicly charged with
sexual crimes involving a minor, including rape, molestation, battery and
child pornography. (This data did not include sexual crimes against an
adult or crimes committed by someone other than a leader.)

His findings help explain a 2014 GRACE report on Bob Jones University, one
of the most visible evangelical colleges in the country. The study showed
that 56 percent of the 381 respondents who reported having knowledge of
the school�s handling of abuse (a group that included current and former
students, as well as employees) believed that BJU conveyed a �blaming and
disparaging� attitude toward victims. Of the 166 people who said they had
been victims of sexual abuse before or during their time at BJU, half said
school officials had actively discouraged them from going to the police.
According to one anonymous respondent, after he finally told the police
about years of sexual abuse by his grandfather, a BJU official admonished
him that �[you] tore your family apart, and that�s your fault,� and �you
love yourself more than you love God.� BJU officials declined to comment
for this article.
After he finally told the police about years of sexual abuse by his
grandfather, a BJU official admonished him that �[you] tore your family
apart, and that�s your fault,� and �you love yourself more than you love
God.�