SOUTH CAROLINE
Aljazeera America
by Claire Gordon @clairedon
Watch Al Jazeera America Thursday at 9 p.m. for more on the Bob Jones University revelations, including exclusive TV interviews with two alleged abuse victims who attended the school
For decades, Bob Jones University (BJU), a self-described fundamentalist Christian college, has urged sexual abuse victims not to go to the police and counseled them to repent for the blame it said they share, according to an extensive independent investigation published Thursday.
The report, nearly two years in the making, is a catalog of grief stretching back four decades, based on hundreds of survey results, dozens of in-depth interviews and a wealth of corroborating documentation. It details a culture that shamed victims into believing they were ruined by their abuse. It also strongly criticizes the school’s own brand of counseling that rejects modern psychology, and urges victims to look for the “sin” behind their rapes and view their continued trauma as a struggle with God.
More than half of alleged victims surveyed reported they felt the school’s response was hurtful or very hurtful. Some victims said they found counseling sessions worse than their abuse. But the vast majority of the 50 self-identified victims interviewed for the study said they loved Bob Jones University, that they wished it no ill, and hoped sharing their experiences would bring much-needed change.
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