RICHMOND (VA)
International Policy Digest [Richmond, VA]
May 22, 2025
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Today, I’m joined by Katherine Archer, Father Bojan Jovanović, Dr. Hermina Nedelescu, and Dorothy Small for a wide-ranging discussion on clergy abuse—its psychological toll, institutional roots, and pathways to reform.
Katherine Archer is the co-founder of Prosopon Healing and a graduate student in Theological Studies. She will begin a Master’s in Counseling Psychology in the fall. Her work focuses on clergy abuse within the Eastern Orthodox Church, blending academic research with nonprofit advocacy. Archer champions policy reform addressing adult clergy exploitation, advancing a vision of healing grounded in justice, accountability, and survivor support.
Father Bojan Jovanović, a Serbian Orthodox priest and Secretary of the Union of Christians of Croatia is known for his searing critiques of institutional failings within the Church. His book Confession: How We Killed God and his work with the Alliance of Christians of Croatia underscore a commitment to ethical reform and moral reckoning. Jovanović advocates for transparency and internal dialogue as essential steps toward restoring trust in religious life.
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu is a neuroscientist at Scripps Research in San Diego whose research probes the neurobiological underpinnings of human behavior, particularly in the context of substance use and trauma. Her current work explores how trauma, including sexual abuse, is encoded in the brain’s circuitry and how community-based interventions can address PTSD and addiction in survivors of clergy abuse.
Dorothy Small is a retired registered nurse and longtime survivor advocate with SNAP. A survivor of both childhood and adult clergy abuse, Small began speaking out long before the #MeToo movement gave such voices a broader platform. A cancer survivor and grandmother, she now writes about recovery, resilience, and personal freedom, amplifying the strength of survivors and the urgency of institutional accountability.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In 2024, journalists faced unprecedented threats, with at least 124 killed—the highest number recorded to date—though some sources report 122. The violence in Gaza accounted for a significant share of these deaths. Beyond physical danger, journalists today confront a host of pressures: online harassment, legal intimidation, surveillance, the erosion of press freedoms, and increasing self-censorship. I’ve experienced several of these realities myself. That is the nature of this work.
Each of you here has encountered similar challenges through very different lenses: as a distinguished member of the Serbian Orthodox clergy, a young adult woman within the Orthodox community, a Catholic youth, and a neuroscientist. These identities frame the most critical points of contact within each of your narratives. You all chose to speak out—something most people never do. So let me ask: Once someone breaks that silence and becomes outspoken—whether about their own experience or on behalf of others—what happens? What shifts and consequences follow when the truth is no longer kept quiet?
Katherine Archer: When I was 21, I came forward and reported a clergyperson for what I experienced as a violation of trust and an abuse of pastoral authority. If I had to choose one word to describe how I felt in the aftermath, it would be annihilation. The Orthodox Church upholds the use of icons in worship and annually celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy–a commemoration of the end of iconoclasm, or the historical period when people smashed and destroyed icons.
I have often felt a deep dissonance between the reverence given to painted wood as the representation of the human person and my own experience, as a living person, coming forward with a painful and vulnerable account of harm involving a priest. Over the years, I have spoken with many survivors who shared similar feelings after trying to report experiences of abuse within Orthodox Christian communities—whether through conversations with fellow parishioners, clergy, or through official channels.
It is a beautiful and moving tradition to process around the church holding icons on that particular Sunday in Lent. Yet it is profoundly more difficult to carry the weight of someone’s story, confront painful realities, and respond compassionately to a living human reporting such things.
Father Bojan Jovanović: When I first spoke the truth, my truth experienced a paradox: liberation and humiliation in the same breath. I talked about the attempted sexual abuse I survived within the Serbian Orthodox Church and about an even more harrowing reality — the knowledge that a child had been raped and murdered in a monastery. The facts were clear, but the world I spoke them into could not receive them.
Instead of being a space of light and confession of sin, the Church became a prison of denial. Some immediately tried to silence my voice, to “protect the Church,” as if the truth were the threat and not the crime. Others looked at me with discomfort, as if I were the one disrupting the order. Theologically, I felt like a prophet bringing truth, only to be met with stones. Psychologically, it was only the beginning of confronting the deep trauma I had suppressed and wrapped in silence for years.
Hermina Nedelescu: I received supportive responses from most individuals and institutions. In contrast, the response I experienced from the Greek Orthodox Church of America was, in my view, deeply disappointing and lacking in basic compassion. From my experience, their response felt—and continues to feel—fundamentally inhumane.
Dorothy Small: Reporting the sexual assault by my grandfather, just shy of age six, resulted in a slap across the cheek by my grandmother and a swear in French. Ultimately, it resulted in no further abuse by my grandfather. However, almost a year later, living under the same roof as the predator, my grandmother brought me to a Catholic orphanage to be adopted. At the last minute, I was adopted by an aunt and uncle. They were abusive. I feared them. But they were familiar. I feared the orphanage far more. It was unknown. Plus, I feared nuns.
Reporting the schoolteacher helped to stop the harassment my best friend was receiving. It also caused me to be blamed and scorned by my parents. I only had one friend who stood beside me. Ultimately, I ended up moving across the country to escape a small town and the state where I lived. I could not recover from the emotional consequences of living in that state. It took about three or four years for the emotional pain to ease. My parents contacted the principal of the school, mandating that the teacher had until evening to reveal what he did with me to his wife, or my adoptive father would pay him a visit to his home. He had to tell his wife.
Reporting the priest led to a massive fallout. On a work visa from a foreign country, he was pulled from the ministry in the diocese here and remanded to his bishop, where he returned to active ministry. I was banned by the pastor of the Church from all ministry for reporting him. If I had not, I could have continued ministry even though they knew what happened. Silence would have been rewarded. I lost a few close friends due to the publicity of the lawsuit and their discomfort being associated with me. I feared retaliation beyond being shunned, ostracized, and ridiculed, which led to my retreating at home for six weeks, afraid to leave. Some told me that I was hated and accused of seducing the priest.
Once loved and accepted by my church community, I fell sharply from grace. There was also a backlash from my adult son. I ended up walking away from the community that was like a family. It caused marked spiritual confusion and distress for well over five years.
Jacobsen: How were people helpful in this coming-out experience?
Archer: The community of survivors and advocates is incredible. I have come to know some incredibly fierce, strong, and benevolent people. I am moved by people like law professor Amos Guiora and some of the attorneys we have spoken to, who are empathic but knowledgeable and have a fierce resolve to help survivors see justice.
I am excited about the community I will join in the fall to start working towards my Master’s in Counselling Psychology, with professors willing to engage with complex ideas and not turn to binary thinking or platitudes. I do not think a person needs a vast community, but since we are wired to connect with others, some community is necessary for healing. It can be a community of another person, holding a story with respect and tenderness and unwilling to inflict further harm. That is a true “triumph over iconoclasm,” by the way.
Jovanović: Individuals — not institutions, not the majority, but individuals — became lighthouses in my night. These people did not demand proof but listened to my heart. Psychologists, friends, and a few believers who truly understood Christ’s message of love and justice — helped me rediscover my humanity. Their support was not in words, but in the silence where I could cry without shame.
From a theological perspective, it was through these people that God drew near to me. Paradoxically, it was only after I left the institution that called itself His house that I felt God’s presence in my pain. Through them, I understood that faith is not unquestioning loyalty to an institution, but the courage to break with evil in the name of truth, even when that evil is draped in robes.
Nedelescu: Colleagues, mentors, and even strangers responded with empathy and moral clarity, affirming that speaking out was valid and necessary. Some institutions took immediate steps to understand what happened and offered to help in any way possible, whether through documentation, emotional support, or a safe space to be heard. Those responses reminded me that despite my suffering, individuals and institutions are committed to accountability, dignity, and survivor support.
In contrast, the only institution that responded in a reactionary and, in my view, deeply disappointing manner was the Greek Orthodox Church of America. That response had a severe emotional impact on me and compounded the trauma.
Small: With my grandfather, I suppose that although initially, it met with a shocked reaction from my grandmother, there was no further incident the remainder of the time I stayed with them. The positive thing about the schoolteacher was the response I received from the superintendent. I expected to be chastised. Instead, he listened as I berated myself. He interrupted and told me never to speak harshly and negatively about myself again. I was just talking about myself and the way I was spoken to at home. The teacher, however, only received a verbal warning. He did not lose his position.
With the priest, the victim advocate for the diocese was very kind and supportive. One woman from my parish ended up standing beside me throughout everything, even though she did not understand anything about dealing with someone with so much trauma and symptoms, as well as clergy abuse of adults.
After the lawsuit was mediated, I found a spiritual director ed, who became a strong support person. The lawyer I retained was phenomenal. He had a degree in clinical psychology as well as in law. I also contacted SNAP, which is a nonprofit organization for those abused by clergy. I also had a therapist initially, but she did not understand the complex nature of clergy abuse. I ended therapy.
Jacobsen: How were people unhelpful in this coming-out experience?
Archer: People who will not access a body of knowledge on trauma, consent, or abuse, including spiritual abuse, have said atrocious things to me over the years. I was abused by a man starting when I was 14, so I have been in this space of being a “survivor” (and actually, I do not always like that word) for a long time. However, over time, with healing, ignorant words feel like tiny ant bites as I move towards the people committed to modeling authenticity in their lives and growing and learning.
When people say atrocious things, I think, “Thank you for showing me who you are so I can move far away from you.” So, the unhelpful people have ultimately been helpful, after all, in allowing me to disconnect and attach to healthier people and communities. There are healthy communities; we do not have to feel stuck in sick communities.
Jovanović: The unhelpfulness of people was most deeply expressed in their silence. It was not just the words of denial — the quiet distance, the turning away, that wounded me the most. Some even tried to convince me I had misunderstood what had happened, that “people like that do not exist in the Church,” as if I had imagined my trauma.
The abuser did not inflict the most significant pain, but by those who knew, suspected, or heard, and did nothing. Their theological passivity, their silence in the name of “peace” and “God’s order,” is what spiritually broke me the most. They failed to see Christ in me as the wounded one. They trusted those in vestments more than the truth of a broken soul. Moreover, that, in my most profound conviction, is the greatest betrayal of faith.
Nedelescu: How the Greek Orthodox Church of America has responded has, in my view, been profoundly unhelpful—and continues to be. Rather than expressing empathy or taking responsibility, I experienced their response as involving victim-blaming, narrative distortion, and a general attitude that felt fundamentally inhumane. From my perspective, their actions appear more focused on protecting the institution than on acknowledging the harm I experienced at the hands of one of their high-ranking employees.
That kind of ongoing institutional response doesn’t just fail survivors—it intensifies the harm and reinforces the very silence we are trying to break. It is profoundly disheartening to witness such reactionary and defensive behavior from individuals in positions of authority who, in my view, knew—or should have known—that serious harm had occurred and failed to act to mitigate it.
This aligns with what Professor Amos Guiora, a leading expert on sexual assault and enabling behavior, defines as the “enabling phenomenon.” As he writes, an enabler is “an individual able to reasonably know another individual has been harmed and/or is likely to be harmed yet fails to act to minimize the harm to that individual.”
Finally, the words of Diane Langberg resonate with me: “Systems that cover up abuse through deception, coercion, or abuse of power mimic the perpetrator and revictimize the victim. Tragically, many lives have been sacrificed on the altar of secrecy for the sake of the church or the mission.”
Small: The comments made by those who just did not understand the abuse of adults by clergy were tough. My grandmother struck my face with an open hand. My grandfather threatened me after the assault that if I told, he would tell everyone I was lying and I would get into trouble. No one would believe me.
Much is the same when I reported the priest as an adult. Many stood beside him and turned away from me. I think just the fundamental lack of knowledge and understanding, as well as the impact on their religious practice, made it more complicated than if what happened were with a stranger or anyone but a priest as far as the school teacher admitting to my parents, who discovered evidence in my room, that the teacher caused me to hear some of the most horrific things any person who calls himself a father should ever say to any teenager.
His words took deep root. He was a sadistic bully who left a lifetime of damage in his wake. The consequences of being raised by the aunt and uncle, as well as devastating early childhood loss, left me vulnerable to subsequent abuse, culminating in what transpired with the priest at age sixty.
Jacobsen: Thank you all for continuing to break new ground by offering distinct perspectives on this less-discussed darkness in the community ecosphere around abuse.