SOUTH CAROLINA
The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
DEC. 11, 2014
For decades, Bob Jones University told sexual assault survivors that they were to blame for the abuse, and not to report it because doing so would damage their families, their church and the university, according to a long-awaited investigative report released Thursday.
The attitude of Bob Jones, an evangelical Christian university in Greenville, South Carolina, toward abuse victims was “blaming and disparaging,” according to 56 percent of the hundreds of current and former students and employees who replied to a confidential survey as part of the inquiry. Written comments in the survey, and interviews that investigators conducted with some respondents, detail startling, often hurtful treatment of survivors, rather than the support they sought.
“I was abused from the ages of 6 to 14 by my grandfather,” one respondent said. “When I went for counseling I was told: `Did you repent for your part of the abuse? Did your body respond favorably?’ ” The person reported being told that going to the police “tore your family apart, and that’s your fault,” and that “you love yourself more than you love God.”
Another person said the university taught that “abuse victims are considered `second-rate Christians.’ ” Yet another said, “Victims heard, consistently, from chapel speakers and faculty/staff that abusers should be forgiven, that they bore the sin of bitterness and that they should not report abusers.”
About half the abuse survivors said the university had actively discouraged them from reporting the assaults to the police.
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