sexual assault
'The Burial' / Skip Bolen, Prime Video
Gary’s goal in the trial was to bring the buried deeds of the Loewen Group into the light, to tell the story they hid behind contracts and laws and cultural biases and systemic injustice. In doing so, he aims to purchase some measure of justice. Is this what Willie Gary learned in Black church?
From Women Talking
Do We Stay or Do We Go?
Women Talking centers on Mennonite women wrestling with how to respond to serial sexual assault by men from their colony. The film explores the complexity of forgiveness and touchingly reminds viewers that leaving one’s community can be an act of faith.
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Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson (4) walks off the field during training camp at CrossCountry Mortgage Campus in Berea, Ohio, on July 28, 2022. Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters.
The question, for all of us, is what do abusers gain by offering vague apologies? What are they trying to achieve? The men and their supporters are attempting to weaponize a Christian culture of unending forgiveness. While forgiveness is indeed a virtue, it should never come at the expense of those harmed. [John] Crist and [Deshaun] Watson (and their colleagues) refuse to properly repent, apologize, or seek to repair the harm they are accused of. Instead, they ask their victims — and us — to move on.
A protester hoisting a placard during Nigeria's ChurchToo Protest in Lagos, Nigeria. Credit: ChurchToo movement.
Amid drizzle, the protest started featuring young Nigerians, mostly Christians dressed in a uniform white shirt like Monago’s. They spilled across both sides of a major road reducing traffic almost to a snarl. To avoid protesters from gaining entrance into the church, COZA beckoned on the Nigerian police who gated the church entrance, a common strategy mostly deployed by authorities to intimidate protesters in Nigeria. But the protesters, undeterred, defied police on standby, chanting and hoisting placards, some of which read: “Pastor Step down”; “Say no to rape in the church.” Monago’s reads: “By attending COZA you are enabling rape.”
Photo by mauro mora on Unsplash
We don’t know what disability justice is because we haven’t begun to reckon with our history of injustice.
Rev. Heidi Hankel. Photo by Colin Lenton
DURING REV. HEIDI Hankel’s interview for the lead pastor position at Philadelphia’s Bethesda Presbyterian Church, she learned that one of the church’s deacons was under investigation by law enforcement for allegedly sexually abusing a member of the youth group. Hankel was later offered the job.
No one would blame even the bravest of pastors for turning it down, but fortunately for that small Presbyterian church, Hankel is a reverend who likes to hop down in the trenches to be with her parishioners. She was afraid, she said, but also propelled by her faith to address the violence openly and holistically. She took the job.
“I didn’t know if they would fire me,” said Hankel. “But I felt at least I could stand before God one day and say I handled this well.”
Hankel had a simple answer for why it is so important for church leaders to loudly and actively work to prevent and address abuse: “God isn’t silent. And if God isn’t silent, we as his body—his hands and feet—should not be silent.”
Israel Palacio / Unsplash
The Pentagon said there were 6,053 reports of sexual assaults last year, according to an anonymous, bi-annual survey. It is the highest since the U.S. military began collecting this kind of survey data in 2004.
Capitol building in Washington, D.C. / Shutterstock
VAWA expired back in February, leaving shelters and survivors worried about their futures. However, on March 7, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) introduced an expanded version of VAWA in the House. While it’s been introduced bipartisanly, it’s almost entirely supported by Democrats, who comprise 110 of its 111 co-sponsors. VAWA is reauthorized every five years and with each new reiteration has been expanded to offer new services for communities and individuals that are suffering. In the latest proposed legislation, many Republicans object to assisting two of the communities designated for special protections: Native Americans and transgender individuals.
Protester on behalf of abuse victims while Pope Francis celebrateds mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Peter & Paul in downtown Philadelphia. Sept. 26 2015. By a katz / Shutterstock
Over the past few decades, sexual abuse survivors, whistleblowers, and journalists have exposed a horrific pattern of sex abuse and cover up in the Roman Catholic Church. As a Catholic millennial, I have never known a church unmarked by the abuse crisis. In the bathrooms at my Catholic high school and my small Midwestern parish, I distinctly remember posters detailing who I should call if I was abused or assaulted by an authority figure. Last year, the Pennsylvania grand jury report and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick revelations made my generation aware of this crisis in a renewed way. Too often, in responses, the voices of survivors themselves are too often lost.
I recently had the opportunity to discuss the current state of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis with Tim Lennon, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. Lennon is the president of the board of directors of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a nonprofit support network for survivors of sexual abuse by religious and institutional authorities.
“They struggle in the absence of information.”
With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine.
SEXUAL ABUSE is not about sex: It’s about power.
At least that’s what Ona, the female protagonist of Miriam Toews’ novel Women Talking, insists in the aftermath of one of the most horrifying incidents of sexual abuse in recent history. Toews’ book is based on true events: Between 2005 and 2009, more than 100 Mennonite women and girls in a remote community in Bolivia were raped at night by what they believed were demons punishing them for their sins. These attacks were perpetrated by men in the community who used modified animal anesthetics to drug and rape the women in their own homes. The victims’ ages ranged from 3 to 65.
Toews’ novel is a fictional account of a conversation between eight of these women. As Toews’ story develops, the rapists are imprisoned, other men of the community have gone to bail them out, and the women—illiterate and unaware of what lies beyond the boundaries of their community—gather to decide between three courses of action: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. As they debate, their dialogue is infused with theological discussions and surprisingly dark humor. These conversations give insight into the community’s culture, religiosity, and the ways that each woman copes with her personal grief.
Oddly, the voice of August Epp, the meeting’s minutes taker and the only man present, dominates Toews’ narrative. This story about women resisting a patriarchy gives an unexpected amount of attention to a man.
INCIDENTS OF SEXUAL misconduct in faith communities shine a spotlight on issues of power in congregations.
As important as recognition, prevention, and intervention are for ending sexual violence, faith communities have significant work to do on routine, everyday abuses of power.
The way faith communities distribute labor and educational responsibilities, as well as committee assignments and financial obligations, often fall along stereotypical gender, class, and age lines. These mundane misuses of power in church settings desensitize us to recognizing serious boundary violations when they occur.
Faith communities assess power differentials and concurrent risks to determine policies that provide checks and balances on power imbalances. For example, individuals who are ordained have more power because of their level of education, professional status, and theological notions of representing God or a tradition. Adults have more power than youth because of social experience, economic means, or physical ability. In these dyads, power accrues to the individual with more resources. This is generally a solid starting point when assessing power differentials and then minimizing risk by creating practices of accountability. However, we rarely occupy one identity or one role when participating in congregations.
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When I was raped by a fellow student 3.5 years ago, I was treated egregiously by both the administration of my school — Baylor University — and the broader community in the fallout. But do you know who didn’t fail me? My church.
Now as a mother of a young adult and two teenagers, I believe it is important to share my story so that society is aware that sexual assault occurs frequently, even in Asian American communities. Just because we do not share our experiences publicly does not mean that Asian Americans are immune to sexual violence. Just because we carry the burden for decades doesn’t make our experiences untrue. Just because we do not share our stories doesn’t mean that we need to continue to live in shame.
Image via REUTERS/Sivaram V
Sister Anupama, who led the protests in Kochi, said that the survivor approached the superior general in early 2017 with concerns about harassment — she was facing disciplinary action because of her resistance to “lie down with” the Bishop. Her concerns were ignored. In June 2017, before reaching out to church officials in northern India and the Vatican, she first revealed to a parish priest and bishop in Kerala that she had been abused by Mulakkal. The complaint then reached the Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, the head of the Syro-Malabar church, but no action was taken.
Like Sasse, moderate pastors who don’t want to upset the conservatives in their churches find themselves talking about how “all of us” are broken. How “all of us” are to blame. They talk about how social media is hurting us. How a broken sexual ethic is hurting us. And if the sexual abuse victims sitting in their congregation are anything like me, they are thinking, “No. A man hurt me.”
Image via REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Vincent Kessler
Mukwege heads the Panzi Hospital in the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu. Opened in 1999, the clinic receives thousands of women each year, many of them requiring surgery from sexual violence. Murad is an advocate for the Yazidi minority in Iraq and for refugee and women's rights in general. She was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Sept. 27, 2018. Tom Williams/Pool via REUTERS
We are in the midst of a national trauma, with a vast number of women in America — across political lines — being re-traumatized by the events of last week. This moment requires pastoral care for survivors and those who love them, prophetic truth-telling about what is (or ought to be) morally acceptable and unacceptable, and the hope for some more profiles in courage in the United States Senate.
Photo by Steevy Hoareau on Unsplash
When I realized that I’m not alone in my fears for my own safety as a woman, and as an Indigenous woman, I began to notice everything. I watch interactions between men and women more closely. This hyper-awareness is leaving many of my friends on edge across America, women who have now seen a man like Kavanaugh lauded for his work while his victim is called a liar. We don’t trust the people on the streets, in elevators, or in our neighborhoods. We are paying attention.