Krystal Woolston struggled along with her mental health as a youngster, but she headed to school hoping for a brighter future. Then, a married pastor who looked as if it would care about her gave her a distinct path forward. He told her God wanted her to have sex with him to assist her heal.
Looking back 12 years later, Woolston realizes how vulnerable she was to his spiritual manipulation.
“I used to be just falling, freefalling in so some ways,” Woolston said. “Everyone deserves to find a way to go to church and be secure.”
It took her six years to know this pastor’s pattern of “special treatment” was really manipulation and that the sex was, in truth, abuse. It took 4 more years to get her denomination to stop him from leading church youth trips.
Woolston doesn’t want anyone else to undergo the identical thing.
She and a small group of abuse survivors and advocates have been working to make certain it doesn’t. They want sex between clergy members and adults they’re spiritually guiding to be illegal in all 50 states. It is currently only against the law in 13, including Connecticut, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia. But advocates are working behind the scenes to introduce state laws saying that these sorts of relationships, often characterised as “affairs,” aren’t consensual but criminal.
“Criminalizing abuse is one other way of claiming, Here, see, it’s abuse,” said Kate Roberts, an adult clergy-abuse survivor and cofounder of Restored Voices Collective. “The more it’s legitimized as abuse in various ways, the higher that’s for prevention and for survivors getting the assistance that they need.”
Many states have laws that say people in some professions, similar to doctors and therapists, cannot have consensual sex with clients. Professional authority changes the character of the connection between adults, making some very vulnerable to manipulation and thus in need of legal protection. Restored Voices Collective and other victims’ advocates say the identical thing is true of ministers.
“If a victim of adult clergy sexual abuse comes forward, there’s a robust likelihood that that person goes to be blamed as someone who’s ruining the pastor’s profession and [told] that is something that is only an ‘affair,’” said Boz Tchividjian, an advocate and attorney who helps with the hassle. “The query is, if a pastor or a faith leader uses their spiritual position to discover, groom, and ultimately sexualize a relationship with an individual under their care or supervision, is that actually a consensual relationship?”
Tchividjian, who has been advocating for survivors for many years, said he gets more calls from survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse than some other form of victim. In most cases, they’ve never told anyone. They are sometimes not even sure whether or not they’re victims of abuse and are consumed with shame and guilt.
“This is something that may be very different from child sexual abuse,” Tchividjian said.
Lucy Huh, who researches adult clergy sexual abuse at Baylor University, said victims consider what they must lose—their reputations, relationships, marriages, faith communities, and even their faith itself—and most remain silent, keeping their trauma to themselves. The result looks very different than what happens to individuals who have affairs.
“Consensual relationships don’t lead to trauma and lifelong suffering,” Huh said.
New research done at Baylor in truth shows that survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse suffer rates of traumatization that surpass even war veterans. In a study that’s currently being peer-reviewed for publication, professor David Pooler found 39 percent of adult survivors screened positive for posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. By comparison, barely lower than 1 / 4 of US veterans who’ve been through a war showed signs of PTSD.
Survivors aren’t surprised by the statistic. Lori Knapton told CT that she didn’t initially know how one can describe the sexual abuse she endured. The best she could do was say her pastor had convinced her to have an affair with him. It was her husband who identified this was a misuse of the pastor’s spiritual authority and truly not a consensual affair, but manipulation—sexual abuse.
“It was very much emotional, mental, psychological, physical abuse, however the spiritual component was the deepest a part of it,” Knapton said. “It felt like he raped my soul.”
When Julie Sale first realized she was a victim of clergy sexual abuse and reported it to her church, she was fighting suicidal thoughts. The response was devastating.
“Originally I used to be just attempting to live, just attempting to take one other breath,” Sale told CT. “When you’ve got trusted the institution your whole life to guide the best way you reside—decisions that you just make, the way you raise a family—after which suddenly that church just kicks you out and says you’re helping Satan essentially, it’s soul destroying.”
According to previous research that Pooler has done at Baylor, only about 10 percent of victims who reported their abuse to their church said they received a positive response. Some of those that talked to CT for this piece said their churches ultimately disciplined the pastors. Some pastors were fired, but not all of them—and even those that were dismissed and even defrocked can apply to work at one other church and pass a criminal background check with flying colours.
“You’d think pastors could be out in front on this,” Pooler said. “It’s survivors leading the best way.”
Maine passed laws criminalizing adult clergy sexual abuse in 2019. California is currently considering similar laws. State senator Dave Min, a former law professor on the University of California, Irvine, sponsored the bill in January.
“Consent shouldn’t be a defense,” the proposed legal language says, “if the one who commits the sexual battery is a member of the clergy who, in such capability, is ready of trust or authority over the victim and uses their position of trust or authority to use the victim’s emotional dependency.”
Huh, who was involved in drafting the laws, said she hopes laws like these will change the best way people take into consideration this issue.
“The US has the potential to set a real precedent in recognizing that clergy sexual abuse of adults is a serious issue by establishing criminal consequences for many who prey on their congregants,” she said. “Most other countries robotically blame the victim while protecting the abuser in any respect costs.”
Changing laws shouldn’t be a simple road, though. At a California Senate Public Safety Committee hearing in April, representatives from the California Public Defenders Association and the American Civil Liberties Union spoke against the laws for criminalizing consensual sexual contact. Though Sen. Min said he was willing to make changes to the laws, he drew the road on the matter of consent. The committee decided to not vote on it, killing the bill.
“It is so hard for survivors to be heard, much less to acquire justice,” Huh said.
Huh and others appealed the matter to the governor and plan to maintain fighting.
In some cases, laws takes years to get passed. Sometimes, there’s a bit of progress after which nothing happens. There are few making open arguments against this type of laws, but inertia, neglect, and lack of concern present major obstacles for advocates who need to make change.
Knapton decided she could be vulnerable in an effort to humanize the difficulty and push for laws. She shared her traumatic story with elected representatives in her state. They gave the impression of they cared, Knapton said, however the proposed bill was later tabled.
“It felt like that’s what’s been happening for the last five years, people hearing my experience after which being like, We don’t care about it,” she said.
Woolston is within the early stages of this effort. She knows that her story might well be ignored too. But she’s hopeful that things will likely be different now.
“I even have a support network now that I didn’t then,” she said. “I even have people who find themselves like, We’re not going to allow you to fall.”
