56 APRIL 2020 WOMANSDAYMAGAZINE
Inspire / KEEP THE FAITH
Joseph groped her in a stairwell before the
performance. Katie returned to her dorm
that Sunday, despondent. That night, the
truth seeped out to her college friends.
“I just couldn’t keep it in anymore,” she
says. That summer, Katie’s mother sensed
that something was wrong and convinced
Katie to see a counselor. Eventually, with
the therapist’s help, she disclosed the
abuse to her parents, who were stunned—
Joseph had been a family friend—but
tried to be supportive. Her father reported
the abuse to the church, and the police
were called.
The next year, Joseph pleaded guilty
to a single count of indecent liberties
with a child and received 36 months of
probation. He had left Calvary soon after
Katie reported the incident. Joseph’s attorney
declined to comment on allegations of abuse
outside the indictment, but he said, “[Joseph]
is deeply remorseful. He is aware of the
harm he has caused.” Joseph remains on the
North Carolina sex offender registry.
COMING FORWARD
By 2017, Katie was taking steps to heal from
the abuse. She had moved to Raleigh, NC,
where she bought a house and started a job
in marketing. She briefly found a church that
made her feel comfortable and even joined
a support group there for survivors of sexual
abuse. “The more I started to process what
happened to me, the more I began to see how
prevalent it is everywhere,” she says.
That year, she watched as sexual abuse
survivors came forward as part of the #MeToo
movement. The mention of abuse at the hands
of religious leaders, rather than by powerful
men in media and entertainment, naturally
hit close to home. Those disturbing stories
were labeled on Twitter with the hashtag
#ChurchToo. There were thousands. “I was
shocked at the number of stories coming in,”
says Katie. For the first time, she started to
think about sharing her story publicly.
Activist, poet, and yoga teacher Emily Joy
Allison, who, along with her friend Hannah
Paasch, started the #ChurchToo movement,
knows the fear and shame that come with
revealing details of abuse. In November 2017,
she posted her own story online. “There are
specific things about religious sexual abuse
that don’t apply to [other types of abuse],”
says Allison. “It needed its own conversation.”
As Allison explains, one complicating factor
for victims of sexual abuse in faith communities
is the emphasis, especially in evangelical
churches, on “purity culture,” in which sex
outside marriage is forbidden and teens are
taught to avoid physical temptation. Linda Kay
Klein, author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical
Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young
Women and How I Broke Free, says this ethic
often intersects with sexual abuse in harmful
ways. Women and girls might be blamed for the
abuse because they are seen as having tempted
their abusers. After a sexual violation, they
may also feel as if they’ve failed to uphold the
church’s purity standards. “It’s so common
for victims of abuse in these communities to
be shamed,” Klein says. “And they are often
discouraged from talking about what happened
to them, especially publicly.”
In an environ ment that relied on silence,
#ChurchToo offered a megaphone. After
Allison detailed her story online, the hashtag
became a tool others could use to share stories
of sexual violence and trauma w ithin churches
and put a spotlight on institutions that failed
to protect the vulnerable.
And #ChurchToo isn’t just an online
phenomenon—ripples have been felt in the
real lives of high-profile pastors and church
leaders. In March 2018, Andy Savage, a
rising star pastor in Memphis, resigned after
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