What “NOT to Say” to a Victim of Adult Clergy Abuse
Here’s what “NOT to Say” to a Victim of Adult Clergy Abuse:
Nope. It was not an affair; it was abuse.
We call it abuse because it’s the best description of what happened. We’re not talking about infidelity that begins with two married people working in the same office and choosing to over-share at the water cooler. We’re not talking about a man and a woman who work out together at a gym while complaining to each other about their spouses.
We are talking about professionals who are bound by God, their church or ministry and a code of ethics.
These are men, who use women, whom they have vowed to safeguard and protect, for their own pleasure. These are men, who due to their position are given access to private and confidential details of a woman’s life that she would never freely give to another man. These are men, who use that access as a tool to sexualize what should be a safe and professional relationship. Whether planned or unintentional, it is abuse.
As a result, any “help” that ignores the abusive nature of these relationships is no help at all. It only succeeds in minimizing the abuser’s actions while heaping more damage and blame on the victim.
Help for these women (when married) should not come in the form of affair recovery, which is what I was subjected to and is commonly prescribed as the cure. Affair recovery requires that the unfaithful spouse do the following:
None of the above will help a women in this situation heal. If the woman doesn’t heal authentically then her marriage will suffer. In addition, by calling it an affair you release the abuser from the seriousness of the offense.
This statement demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of the term, “consent.”
Meaningful consent to sexual activity requires a context not merely of choice, but of equality; hence meaningful consent requires the absence of any constraint. Where there is an imbalance of power between two persons arising out of role difference, there is no true equality. And without equal power there can be no true and meaningful consent.
By Rev. Patricia L. Liberty: Associates in Education and Prevention in Pastoral Practice
Author of: Power and Vulnerability in Ministerial Relationships
True consent only comes after having been informed. Before having an operation, the surgeon explains to the patient how the procedure will work, the length of time it will take and the risks and benefits.
Once the patient has all this information, the patient can make an informed choice as to whether she wants to have the surgery or not. If the patient were not given all the information beforehand, it would be impossible to consent to a surgery that she knows nothing about.
In addition, if the doctor performs a random procedure on the patient this would be an abuse of power, taking advantage of the patient’s vulnerability.
In the same way, a therapist or any professional who counsels/advises must give their client enough information for the client to consent to the treatment.
In my case, when I agreed to attend sessions with my online Christian counsellor, I agreed to be vulnerable, share my innermost feelings in a safe place, receive advice and professional care as well as have my past experiences of abuse and neglect validated. I consented to these things and put my trust in that counsellor to provide them.
Had I known that my counsellor:held poor boundaries (which are meant to protect client and therapist), would create a dual role for himself (when he asked me to work on a couple of projects with him); would succumb to cross-transference; express his love for me and slowly engage in sexually explicit texts and phone conversations that would destroy the professional nature of our relationship, throwing my life and my husband’s life into complete chaos…I would not have consented.
However, once in the thick of it I could no longer give meaningful consent. I was emotionally, mentally and spiritually open and vulnerable, I trusted this counsellor to the point of dismissing early on red flags that now make me cringe. I required that safeguards and boundaries be kept in place by the professional for my protection.
“Women do not expect these types of unique relationships to be sexualized therefore their guards are down. Due to the level of trust that we apply to these professionals, we may miss or misinterpret behavioural red flags. “
Deborah Lott, author of “In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists”
From day one, I wholeheartedly trusted my counsellor’s motives for communicating with me. His credentials and faith played a big role in this. Over months, I began to feel a connection to him which I have since learned is nothing I should be ashamed of but a natural response to the listening, support and encouragement that he gave me early on. Not only this but I have also learned that it is critical to trust your therapist (or your pastor, a social worker, mentor etc. ) in order to get the most benefit from counselling sessions.
Looking back now, I see that our sessions began ‘professionally’, but it was the communication in between: first via email and later moving on to texting, where the red flags occurred. Red flags, some of which I did not compute and others which later on, I chose to ignore, giving his intentions the benefit of the doubt because I thought his involvement in my life was important to me and my healing.
You had no role in this. Your abuser bears the sole responsibility. Whether he is a chronic predator or a man who for the first time dangerously let down his safeguards crossing boundaries, he bears the sole responsibility. It may be that you were vulnerable, trusting, fearful, needy, wounded or didn’t recognize dangerous red flags, but none of that is your fault.
I’ve had a few proper counsellors since the abuse and one of them said to me:
“He struck when you were least able to defend yourself”.
Those were sweet words for me to hear and as I thought on them over the following weeks the truth of the abuse began to sink deeper into my understanding and I realized that asking, “What was your role in this?” is the wrong question to ask me and all other women in similar situations.
All questions (and accusations) should have been towards my abuser:
Why did you take advantage of her vulnerability when you knew she was already wounded from being neglectedin her marriage?
Why did you begin emailing and texting her in excessive amounts knowing that she’d not had positive feedback in her life for a long time?
Why did you over-share about your life, ask her to help edit your website, pray for you and your other clients?
Why did you use your privilege for evil when you knew that she had shared with you, assuming that you were a safe place and never imagining that you would use her in your own best interest and not hers?
Why did you exploit her natural need to feel loved and protected by using it to meet your unmet needs?
Why did you betray her trust?
Do you see where I’m going here? There are so many questions that we can ask an abuser and yet the average person just can’t wait to interrogate the woman who’s been abused.
It’s backwards, harmful and needs to be challenged.
I will admit that even though today I have a fairly solid understanding of the abuse I was victim to, I did spend hour upon hour hours over months and months trying to sort through the chaos and decide what was my fault and what was his fault.
At times, my husband’s feelings of betrayal kept me from having an objective view of the facts and the abuse. You may have experienced this too. It’s helpful to have someone who understands abuse ground you in reality when you move into self-blame mode.
In her book, “At Personal Risk: Boundary Violations in Professional-Client Relationships”, Marilyn R. Peterson says that victims need to change the way they think:
“They have to give up their critical and self-condemning assumptions that they provoked the violation or contributed to it because they were stupid, said the wrong thing, wore the wrong clothes, did not listen to others, should have known better, or should not have been so needy or dependent. ”
No. Forgiving is complicated and forgetting is impossible. I hope that you do not try to attach an agenda to your healing process. Don’t let anyone tell you what you have to do and when. There is no timeline other than the organic one established by your body and your emotions.
Unfortunately, friends, family and congregants who are not schooled in issues of abuse in power, may hinder your healing journey, or encourage you to forgive your abuser and let it go. That is both unrealistic and poor advice.
For me, forgiveness has had to become a lifestyle. I thought I forgave my abuser early on but at that time I thought he was my affair partner. Once I came to understand the nature of his abuse, I had a whole load of other things that I needed to forgive him for. Still today, I continue to process what he did to me and have new moments of clarity where the weight of what this man did to me feels very heavy.
I don’t even know what I’ll need to forgive him for next week or next month.
For this reason, I choose to live in a lifestyle of forgiveness. For me this means that I am open to forgive once my mind and emotions tell me that I am ready. Forgiveness is a part of healing and there is no rush to do it.
Community, community, community
As an add, I’ve recently connected with a group of survivors of adult clergy abuse and each of them have experienced unhelpful people making the above comments to them. I know there are other examples of inappropriate things that others have said in response to adult cases of Christian therapy or clergy abuse. If you want to share your experience, please email me here. I’d love to hear from you and - only with your permission - add your experiences to the site to help others.
Oh and we’ve created a private Facebook group for support. If you’re a victim of clergy sexual abuse or exploitation (and this includes online, by text or by phone), from a pastor Christian counsellor, mentor or someone else in spiritual authority over you) please join us there.
References
Liberty, Patricia L, Rev. (2017).“POWER AND VULNERABILITY IN MINISTERIAL RELATIONSHIPS” , The Daily Telegraph, 23 April, accessed 22 May 2017, <https://delaware.church/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/POWER-AND-VULNERABILITY-IN-MINISTERIAL-RELATIONSHIPS.pdf>.
Block, Heather. (2003). Understanding Sexual Abuse by a Church Leader. https://www.mennonitebrethren.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/understandingsexualabusebyachurchleader.pdf