Giving voice to those abused by priests and pastors

By Elaine Ayala
Express News
February 16, 2019

https://bit.ly/2SBXcNP

A local survivor of abuse holds support group meetings in San Antonio every second Monday. Photo by Bob Owen

As difficult as it is, Patti Koo reads every word she can about priests and pastors who sexually abused children and adults in places that should have been safe, in houses of worship where perpetrators found protection and victims weren’t believed.

She’s a survivor of such abuse. Her pastor and Bible study teacher in the Rio Grande Valley groomed and manipulated her when she was at her most vulnerable — when she was in counseling with him, where he sexualized religious notions and ultimately assaulted her.

He was a popular preacher, had a religion column in the local newspaper, the McAllen Monitor, and enjoyed the support of congregants. They didn’t believe Koo and blamed her instead. “We lost a lot of friends,” she said.

It’s why many survivors never report the abuse, says Candace Christensen, who specializes in gender-based violence prevention in the Department of Social Work at the University of Texas in San Antonio. That’s especially true in cases where the stories around the abuse are complicated and not as clear-cut as the rape of a child.

She calls those who come forward “heroic.”

Over the span of 18 months, beginning in 2000, Koo’s Baptist-ordained Presbyterian preacher Kenneth Perry Wood sexually abused and assaulted her. She was 44 then, and a physician’s assistant.

“I should have known better,” she recalls thinking over and over again. Her journey included a suicide attempt. She knew the risks of going public.

It took all she had to tell her husband. It took far more to tell her children. Then she and her husband went to the police.

Mission Presbytery, the San Antonio-based regional authority of the denomination, discouraged the McAllen church from hiring Wood over questions of financial malfeasance. At one point, it ordered him to stop preaching, teaching or offering pastoral care.

Koo was empowered by seeing her complaint through the judicial system. Wood was charged with sexual assault by a mental health professional and convicted of a second-degree felony. He received deferred adjudication. He didn’t serve time but got five years’ probation and has to register as a sex offender.

Helping others has been part of Koo’s own healing. She’s a volunteer peer counselor for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. SNAP has been busy as dioceses make public their files on credible accusations of sexual abuse by priests going back more than 75 years.

More victims are stepping forward by such reports. This past week the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published an investigation exposing hundreds of Southern Baptist pastors for similar crimes, forcing the denomination to take some ownership of its complicity.

Koo encourages survivors to go to the police and contact the district attorney even if their abuse is decades old, even if their abusers are dead. Despite statutes of limitations, officials are waiting to see “an outpouring,” she says.

Koo discourages victims from filing reports with church officials, at least not first nor only with a church authority. She’s distrustful because they’ve worked to keep the abuse secret.

Some social workers don’t think reporting will necessarily be healing. Some of them point to other forms of non-punitive justice called “restorative” and “transformative.”

Koo is the SNAP volunteer who gets chased out of church parking lots, where she passes out flyers. That happened last fall outside a Catholic church in Canyon Lake, where a priest was removed because he was credibly accused of the sexual abuse of a minor in the 1980s.

At 62, Koo feels healed, at least most of the time.

“In a second, something could happen, and you’re back to it,” she says. “It can be something small. Something circles back to it. Somewhere in your brain, it collects.”

She ticks off what she wants survivors to know: Her support group meets every second Monday in San Antonio. She speaks Spanish. Her email address is snappkoo@gmail.com.

On his Facebook page, Wood lists himself as a former associate pastor, counselor, newspaper columnist and youth minister, among other titles.

His biblical missives and stories of faith always begin with “Thinking Allowed.” Most are mundane. A few contain odd sexual overtones like this one: “Christianity without resurrection is like making love in long johns.”

Koo now attends a Methodist church.