UNITED STATES
The Huffington Post
March 12, 2018
By Carol Kuruvilla
“The church should have been the first group to stand up and say, ‘We will not allow this.’”
In early January, a Tennessee pastor who stood accused of sexual assault received a standing ovation from members of his evangelical Christian congregation after confessing to a “sexual incident” with a woman 20 years before. Now, the woman who went public with her allegations against her former youth pastor is again speaking out about her experience, this time urging American churches to more fully reckon with their responsibility to sexual assault victims.
“We as a church, of all places, should be getting this right,” Jules Woodson said in a New York Times op-ed video published on Friday. “It’s unfathomable to me that the secular world, Hollywood, are taking a stand. The church should have been the first group to stand up and say, ‘We will not allow this.’”
Woodson came forward in January with allegations against her former youth pastor, Andy Savage. She claims that when she was 17 in 1998, Savage drove her to a private location after a church event in Texas and forced her to perform sexual acts. She said church leaders at Woodlands Parkway Baptist Church (which later changed its name to StoneBridge Church) urged her to keep quiet and promised the church would take care of the matter internally.
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