Key witness in Michigan State abuse scandal alleges double standard in evangelical church

EAST LANSING (MI)
Baptist News

February 1, 2018

By Bob Allen

The first woman to go public with allegations of sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, the former sports medicine doctor at Michigan State University, says the laudatory public reaction to her story would have been different if it had happened at church.

Rachael Denhollander, star witness in the sentencing phase of the former USA Gymnastics director’s trial for criminal sexual misconduct, gained widespread attention in national and Christian media when she invoked her faith in her impact statement.

“I pray you experience the soul-crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me — though I extend that to you as well,” she said to her abuser.

But Denhollander, whose husband has a master of divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently enrolled in doctoral studies there, said advocating for other victims of sexual assault within the religious community once caused her to leave her church during a different scandal involving an evangelical megachurch.

Denhollander, the last of more than 150 survivors providing impact statements in the highly publicized case against Nassar, says church “is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse.”

“That’s a hard thing to say, because I am a very conservative evangelical, but that is the truth,” Denhollander said in an interview with Christianity Today. “There are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church.”

Denhollander said she and her husband left a church in Louisville, Ky., that was “directly involved in restoring” C.J. Mahaney, the former president of Sovereign Grace Ministries accused of covering up sex abuse in a class action lawsuit dismissed due to statute of limitations in 2014.

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