SOUTH CAROLINA
Aljazeera America

[with video]

by Claire Gordon

Raised in a conservative Mennonite home in rural Ohio, Katie Landry was a sheltered kid. She hadn’t even held hands with a boy when, at age 19, she says her supervisor at her summer job raped her.

Two years later, and desperate for help, she reported the abuse to the dean of students at her college.

“He goes, ‘Well, there’s always a sin under other sin. There’s a root sin,’” Landry remembers. “And he said, ‘We have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape.’ And I just ran.”

Landry ended up dropping out of college, and didn’t tell anyone else for five years.

Her college was Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., the flagship campus of American fundamentalism, which teaches a literal interpretation of the Bible and separation from the world. Last year, BJU hired a…