An Affair vs. Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse: who are the victims?

I met with a small group of women who are survivors of spiritual and sexual abuse because a man whom they trusted and was in spiritual authority over them took advantage of his position and sexualized their relationship. What happened to each of them was abuse; not an affair.

When I left that call, I was angry. Angry that I had to listen to story after story of the SAME story. Angry that in each painful story I heard pieces of my own story. Angry that the cost of the abuse had stolen so much from each of us.

There is a lot of judgement put on a woman when she is deemed to have had an affair with her pastor, worship leader, elder or any other type of spiritual mentor who had authority over her.

There is the initial finger pointing with the message that she is completely to blame for the horrific way in which she was used; there is the traumatization after a church demonstrates a lack of both compassion and empathy, sometimes asking the woman and her husband to leave the church.

There is loneliness when her church family and friends sever contact; there is confusion and bitterness when forced into an affair recovery program that does not acknowledge the abuse.

Later, (and this can be years later for some but for me it was about 7 months later) once she realizes that it was abuse and not an affair, there is the struggle to reframe her experience and view it through a different lens, gradually and painfully recognizing red flags of her abuser that she missed the first time around.

There may be guilt if she still cares for, or is emotionally attached to the person who abused her. There is the shame and embarrassment wondering why she didn’t recognize the red flags; there’s wondering if she could have stopped it from happening.

There is the work involved (if she chooses) to come out to family, friends, her church and even the public and reveal her new understanding that something happened “to her”.

There is the desperate need to have her husband understand the true nature of the abuse and acknowledge that she was used, taken advantage of, manipulated and abused by nature of her abuser’s position.

There is the constant battle of having to fight to be heard and understood and to have her experience validated from the people she cares about. In many cases, she becomes her own researcher, educator and defender while simultaneously navigating the pain of her husband and managing her own healing journey.

I recall writing a 32-page typed document and giving it to my husband. It was my story of abuse by my Christian counsellor. I shared my experience and thoughts and added quotes from books and online articles and documents in an effort to “make my case” with my husband. What a horrible experience that was to have to advocate on my own behalf, to my own husband because there was no one I could rely on to plead my case.

In fact, it’s absurd and this treatment would not be tolerated in other areas where women are abused. In fact, it would seem that the non-Christian community is better able to recognize and support victims of abuse than the church is and that is a devastating truth to those of us who have been through this.

The thing is, when there are two married people of equal power  (co-workers or friends) who engage in an extra-marital relationship it is called an affair. There are two clear victims: the two betrayed spouses. That’s it. It’s clear how to deal with that and an affair recovery program will give some wonderful guidelines.

You need to take full responsibility for the affair, cut off all ties with your affair partner, hand over your phone and passwords to your spouse, admit that you are a selfish narcissist and get some individual counselling. You may have to commit to some other “high cost” expressions of your remorse to help make your spouse feel safe, like signing over your house to your spouse, quitting a job or a hobby where you may run into your affair partner, selling a car or house where you and your affair partner spent time, and create an extensive relapse plan.

They will tell you that your spouse has every right to divorce you at any point if you are not demonstrating enough remorse, expressing empathy and working on your personal growth in an amount that makes your betrayed spouse feel safe. If you’ve had an affair, you are clearly to blame and you need to do whatever it takes to clean up the mess you made.

However…

When a woman is accused of having an affair with a professional like a doctor or any health care worker, counsellor, social worker pastor, psychologist, church board elder, worship leader, spiritual mentor or any man who had a fiduciary duty to protect her or had spiritual authority over her, the accusation of an affair is wrong.

Calling it an affair minimizes abuse by a man (professional or spiritual leader) to a moral mistake. Treating it like an affair maximizes the mental and emotional damage that the female victim will sustain.

It’s abuse. Abuse of power and abuse of a human being.

In this scenario of abuse there are three victims:

• the abused woman

• the abused woman’s husband (sometimes referred to as the co-victim)

• the wife of the abuser

What should any Jesus-loving, compassionate Christian do when there are three victims? Take sides? Choose who to help first? How about come to the aid of each one individually and give them the love, support, validation, and tools that they need to recover?!

…and yet the Church’s response makes it seem so.

The Church’s response only takes care of two of the three victims and leaves the third positioned at the bottom of a deep, dark pit of confusion, grasping for a line of hope if the truth of the abuse was acknowledged by the Church as they stepped in with a life-line for all three victims.

We, the Church, need to be that person.

When it comes to sexual abuse in Christian settings (and the inevitable spiritual abuse that goes hand in hand with it) too many Christians and churches do the wrong thing. In fact, they behave in the worst way possible by minimizing the abuser’s role and putting equal blame on him and his victim. The husband of the abused is always recognized as a victim but never given the information or tools that would allow him to support his abused wife while also working through his own trauma. In an upcoming post, I plan to share what I think this type of program could look like.

Bottom line: we need the church to step up and call abuse, what it is. so that all three victims can receive the support that they need in a way that they can best benefit from it.