Diana Garland, Baylor University, Clergy Misconduct Research 12.10.09

Diana Garland is Dean of the School of Social Work at Baylor University and principal author of a new report on Clergy Sexual Misconduct.  The survey,which was carried out in partnership with the annual General Social Survey, found that in a typical congregation of 400 people, 7 women will be subject to Clergy Sexual Misconduct. This equates to 3% or 1 in 33.  70% of of victims reported that the pastor was married at the time of the misconduct.  The survey interviewed a nationally representative sample of 3,559 respondents to estimate the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. The majority of sexual misconduct cases in the interviews she conducted happened during the course of a counselling relationship.

On education as prevention Diana is positive about this as one of a range of responses but says that "You can't educate sex offenders and expect that's going to change the problem, we've got to change the mentality [of the public]". Diana says for her it is "Not just about educating the professionals, it's about raising awareness culturally, that a sexual relationship between a relationship between a religious leader and a congregant is not consensual, because of the professional power."   The department school has just developed a bible study curriculum wich deals with power relationships and clergy abuse as part of that. Most offenders were men who were advanced in their careers. The research did not address the psychology of the offenders. Diana is not sure that the psychology of offenders is helpful in terms of prevention and sees the promotion of self-care for pastors as being more critical than training. Most religious leaders in the US have not been to seminaries so the majority do not have obligatory education.

Currently Clergy sexual misconduct is illegal only in Texas and Minnesota and Diana would like to see this extended across the US, she is clear that "Our goal is not to send pastors to jail, it's to be clear that clergy sexual misconduct is not just immoral, it's illegal".

On the central issue of consent Diana says "We don't have the cognitive categories in our culture for understanding that an adult woman could be involved non-consensually in a sexual relationship that is not violent".

The study also found that CSM was three times as high in African-American congregations, 1 out out of 11, or 11%.  The full journal article is due to be published soon. Diana organised focus groups of local African American church leaders who fully engaged with the issue, which was subsequently taken up by an Adventist radio station, which reported in full and had phone-ins and a debate.

On what victims need, Diana says that the women she interviewed were more traumatised by the response of the community than they were by the sexual abuse. The loss of community was devastating and Diana thinks that this may be unique in the area of professional boundary violations. She adds "All the women had changed churches, and all but the Catholics had changed denominations, so their loss was not of faith in God, but of their faith in the community". One of the big needs is for support for the families of victims; almost all of the marriages of victims survived and in many cases it had been the husband that first saw it the sexual relationship as abuse, rather than as an 'affair'. But so far there are no resources for partners or families.  The single most important help for victims was meeting others and realising that they were not the only one "An entrapment is released when she realises 'it's not just me' ".  In Diana's view connecting victims, whether on the phone or through groups, is the first line of care. However not all needs can be met through support groups "There's too much post traumatic stress, depression, suicidal feelings, illness".  Diana would like to see secular counsellors being prepared to deliver specialist care, rather than returning survivors to the church to leaders who don't have the role or the training. Practitioners then need to be able to give victims a language for what they have experienced, and to look at the issues of responsibility and shame. She adds that an important piece of the treatment is a physical examination, as the person may have neglected their health following the abuse of power and the possible exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.

Diana and her husband David co-wrote an exegesis of the biblical story of David and Bathsheba. In popular retellings of this story, Bathsheba is often portrayed as a seductress, rather than someone victimised by David, the King, chosen by God. 
 

Diana feels that the power dynamics are even greater with clergy than they are with therapists, or doctors or others, as their role is more all encompassing and are expected to show moral leadership, and even to speak about matters of ultimate truth. Indeed, when the project recommended that pastors should not also engage in counselling, pastors were relieved and thanked her for the suggestion, saying "It's just too much [to do all these different things]".

As a woman in the church Diana has witnessed CSM, and what really motivated her in this work is her experience of seeing congregations torn apart by it.

In relation to rehabilitation Diana says that there isn't the data so far to come to a view on. The first response should always be to remove the person from the position of power, but so far that isn't happening - they are quietly moved, or forgiven, or just take their congregation and start up in another part of town, which is apparently quite a common move.  Offenders appear to range from an isolated incident of a pastor that was exhausted and stressed and forgot himself, forgot his role, to genuine perpetrators who are predators, and everything in between. To make one judgement about "should they, can they [be rehabilitated]" is not possible right now.  However she also feels that 'treating' offenders as though they are sick, is not the right approach. The existence of a psychiatric disorder [in the perpetrator] may explain, but it does not excuse".  Unless the psychiatric condition is so severe that the person is really not responsbible for their behaviour then the person is responsible for their behaviour, so what made them do it is something that the person needs to sort out and deal with. The problem is that this is a problem of boundaries, which are defined, in CSM, by the community.  Structured groups, an AA type model, taking responsibility for actions, would be the most useful.

 "The question about restorative justice is an interesting one as it uses not a psychological frame but a frame of  community".  She noted one instance where a serial offender had been moved to a new community following treatment, "The assumption was that he was sick, and now he's well - this is the wrong paradigm". Restorative Justice "If not for the women who have been harmed, then for other women, who do not want to confront their own abuser, to have to listen to her story, I think there's something very powerful about that". Also, "For him to go back to the congregation and to say 'I'm sorry, this was wrong , this is how what I did was wrong', but they never go back [to do this]."  "We tend as a society to be 'therapeutic', in the worst sense of the word - someone does something wrong, it's because they're sick, not because they're bad."

For the future, Diana believes that the survey has now spelled out the prevalence of CSM definitively and is of the view that further exploration of the cultural differences between churches would be interesting. Of most interest is seeing how prevention strategies are playing out, in particular whether the language to describe it can be changed.  Also of interest is the experience of treating professionals - how many CSM victims are they seeing, what are the symptomatologies and treatment protocols etc. Diana agreed that further exploration of the harmful effects would be productive "We know there are suicides, we know there is PTSD, but, does everyone who suffers this kind of abuse end up with PTSD? Not everyone I interviewed did."