UNITED STATES
Verdict
Marcia A. Hamilton
There was a time when evangelical Christians said that they didn’t have issues with sex abuse or assault like the Catholic Church, because they did not have a hierarchical structure. The stories of Baptist abuse have challenged this assertion, as do recent stories about the mishandling of reports of sex abuse and assaults at two fundamentalist colleges: Patrick Henry College and Bob Jones University.
Fundamentalist Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status when it forbade interracial dating in a 1983 Supreme Court case. Later, its policies changed on interracial dating, but its current sex abuse policies to be in line with other religious entities more concerned about image, rather than children.
It has been widely reported that the school has been accused of mishandling reports about sex assaults by employees and reports from students of being abused as a child in a fundamentalist home. There is a persistent theme in the stories so far that are public, that the school blamed the female victims.
For example, Catherine Harris was told in the 1980s when she disclosed abuse as a child, that if she reported her abuser to the authorities, she “was damaging the cause of Christ, and . . . responsible for the abuser going to hell.” A victim of sex assault in the 1990s by a university employee was asked whether her clothing was “too tight” and told that “it wouldn’t look good for her if” she told anyone. These are troubling stories indicating that, if they are representative of the school’s response, it is far behind where it should be in terms of the protection of its students from sex assault and rape. The intimidation of the victims, the blame game, and the preference for the image of the religion over the needs of the victim are striking. And familiar.
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