Content Warning: The following contains references to sexual violence and assault.
The past few weeks, my attention has been drawn to the ongoing issue of sexual violence and the victims left behind.
The story of Michael Justice I wrote about last week does not appear to fit the type of person we might imagine as a candidate to be raped: physically strong, male, a university wrestler, in the sanctity of his dorm room—yet still raped by an acquaintance. Then, recently, Christa Brown reported on the duplicity of Southern Baptists around their sexual abuse scandal.
Like so many institutions, the SBC has both slow-walked reform while pretending to care for victims. It is a familiar pattern. On the one hand, making detection, apprehension, and conviction more difficult while on the other, appearing to offer support and encouragement to victims.
One of the most egregious offenders has been the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Long ago, they quietly did away with their list of predators in our churches. At the same time, they offered free counseling services through the convention.
It was as if to say: “We will do nothing to inform Texas congregations about predator pastors and ministry leaders. But on the upside, if a pastor or minister in your church sexually abuses you, we will give you free counseling.”
Three consistent facts or principles regarding sexual violence are most often true.
First, the perpetrator is not satisfied with a single victim or incident. Child sexual abuse survivors rarely report only one encounter.
Rather, the same perpetrator abuses numerous times. While one incident has devastating consequences for the victim, sexual violence is rarely a singular event.
Second, institutions, churches, and even families are often more concerned about appearances than they ever are about victims. Church leadership and hierarchies most often follow that rule by relocating an offender or quietly dismissing them and staying silent.
Silence always works in the perpetrator’s favor. More concern about reputation and appearances than about the well-being of victims pushes the perpetrator out and away.
Third, such silence allows the perpetrator to slip away and abuse more victims. Single victims are rare because that is not how predatory sexual behavior works.
Pray all you want to cover up a denomination’s or church’s failure to report a child abuser or a staff member to law enforcement but the inaction always works in the abuser’s favor.
There is a curious brokenness around rape, sexual abuse, or sexual assault. While sexual intercourse among consenting partners is an experience of love, pleasure, and intimacy, sexual assault is not. It is about power and control.
It may also be about the pleasure of the hunt.
Having never been an avid hunter, I know only what I have heard from hunters recounting their experiences. Depending on what is being hunted, one stalks or waits in an opportune spot for the prey.
Like hunters of wildlife, sexual predators know who they are looking for—whether in a classroom at school or church, in an office, or out in open society. Also, like wild animal hunters, they have the grit and determination to wait.
None of this is to disparage wild game hunters; it is an attempt to convey why sexual predators are as dangerous as they are.
Perhaps in the history of hunting, there are a few who try it and never do it again. That is rare with predators.
Each “success” is momentarily satisfying but always leaves an aching for more. Perhaps it is a way to abate some inner shame or guilt, but nonetheless, the urge returns, and most of the time the perpetrator repeats his behavior. (I use the masculine pronoun because only 2–5% of sexual predators are women.)
So, with all that said, when churches, denominations, universities, school districts and other institutions attempt to silence the victim, they empower the perpetrator. If there are any guarantees in this life, then the guarantee is perpetrators will always be empowered if not apprehended, prosecuted, and removed from society.
Such a guaranteed outcome is so assured that we need to ask whether those who are silent should be prosecuted for their complicity.
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A private practice counselor working with veterans and survivors of trauma. Previously, Chancellor served four churches in Texas for 33 years, then ran a Mental Health Department of Alan B. Polunsky Maximum Security prison which houses death row.
