Lawsuit Alleges Temple Baptist Church Leaders Turned Blind Eye to Woman’s Abuse

By Phaedra Haywood
New Mexican
June 3, 2017

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/lawsuit-alleges-temple-baptist-church-leaders-turned-blind-eye-to/article_a090f406-b9c8-5af4-8e40-40aaf690f687.html

A woman in her 30s is suing Temple Baptist Church of Santa Fe, saying that as a child she was molested by two teachers at a school run by the church in the 1990s.

After years of abuse, the woman’s complaint says, she married and had children with one of her abusers — whom she says was the grandson of church leaders — and didn’t realize until she had a “triggering event” in 2015 that what had been done to her was wrong and illegal.

“The perpetrators were both uncertified male teachers who had been raised in the culture of the Temple Baptist Church and School,” according to her complaint filed last month in District Court. “The second perpetrator teacher essentially ‘dated’ Plaintiff as a 12-15 year old child, and groomed her to participate in his sexual abuse of her in those years as part of a ‘relationship’ and ‘God’s will.’ ”

As a child, the complaint says, the woman “did not comprehend that the tickling, grabbing, rubbing, massaging and penetrating of her private parts by adult male teachers was ‘sexual abuse,’ nor the harms it would be causing.”

The woman, who is identified only as “Jane Doe,” claims church officials suspected her now ex-husband of sexually abusing her but “did not intervene, other than blessing and encouraging the marriage that took place not many days after plaintiff turned 18.”

Temple Baptist Church Pastor Jim Velazquez said in a recent email that the school portion of the church closed eight years ago and “the leadership at that time died 12 years ago.”

According to the complaint, the alleged abuser’s relationship to church leaders amplified his power over her and “blinded adults to the abnormality of the ‘relationship’ between the twenty-some year old teacher and the 13 or 14 year old plaintiff.”

After the woman married her alleged abuser and the couple had two children, the lawsuit says, she began suffering from unexplained anxiety and depression.

She sought a legal separation in 2006. But after receiving marital counseling from the church, the pair reconciled and moved together to Arizona.

“Plaintiff’s marriage was one where she was not allowed uncontrolled access to social networks, to computers, to friends, or to employment,” according to the complaint.

In 2015 — just as her own daughter was nearing the age she had been when the alleged abuse began — the complaint says, a co-worker learned of the woman’s story and told her that what had happened to her was illegal sexual abuse, prompting a “psychological triggering event.”

After years of coping via dissociation, rationalization and repression, the complaint says, the woman began to suffer from “traumatic and painful … flashbacks” of the abuse and sought therapy.

Around the same time, the complaint says, she discovered her husband was watching pornography that featured “mother and daughter” scenarios and she became increasingly concerned with protecting her own child from abuse.

The woman’s attorney, Brad Hall of Albuquerque, has represented dozens of victims of childhood sexual abuse in cases involving the Roman Catholic church.

Hall said Friday that it’s not uncommon for a person to begin remembering childhood trauma when their own children reach the age they were at the time of the abuse because, by viewing their own children through adult eyes, they are able to see how physically small, naive and vulnerable they were at that age.

Jane Doe reported the abuse to authorities in Arizona and Santa Fe, Hall said, but to his knowledge nothing was ever done.

Hall said the criminal justice system rarely pursues old cases of child sexual abuse. But, he said, civil suits can be helpful for victims who in many cases “aren’t necessarily looking for a lot of money but are looking for therapeutic accountability and recognition of what happened.”

Hall wrote in the complaint that “upon information and belief, there are other persons who were sexually abused as minor students,” at the now-defunct school at the church on Yucca Street adjacent to Santa Fe High School.

He said his client is not ashamed to use her real name but decided to file the complaint anonymously on his advice that it might be easier on her children and extended family, many of whom, he said, still live in Santa Fe. The lawsuit also does not name her ex-husband.

The woman’s lawsuit claims church officials failed their duty to ensure school officials were qualified and that students were protected from abuse.

The suit seeks actual and punitive damages for the woman, who says in the complaint that her former husband should also be required to register as a sex offender in Arizona and New Mexico.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 505-986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com