LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog
June 5, 2019
By William Lindsey
I’m very pleased to be able to share once again an outstanding essay by Ruth Krall. In this essay about re-thinking how we’ve come to view the phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people in religious contexts, Ruth urges us to consider applying terms and concepts from the realm of public health to this phenomenon. Is this abuse an epidemic in religious contexts today? Is it endemic in religious structures? Is it pandemic? Because Ruth’s essay is dense and long, I’ve broken the essay into two parts. The second part will follow in a day or so, and will link to this first half. Here’s Ruth’s essay:
Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking
Ruth Elizabeth Krall, MSN, PhD
In 2015, I spoke at SNAP’s national conference and I raised the issue of the clergy and religious leader sexual abuse phenomenon not as a mental health pathology problem (which it is), nor as a spiritual perversion (which it is), nor as an institutional corruption problem (which it is), but as a long-standing and poorly addressed public health issue. It was in that context that I raised the issue of the sexual violence advocacy movement’s need to involve the Surgeon General of the United States, the nation’s academic Public Health Community, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (ii)
This public health agency help is urgently needed because these governmental agencies have the personnel and financial resources to do population-specific demographic studies. These kinds of studies are essential to our understanding of the specific issues contained within the clergy and religious leader sexual abuse narrative and to our finding a collective way forward that both can and will protect vulnerable individuals inside a wide variety of religious and spiritual traditions.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.