“The Silence of the Lambs”
Are Protestants concealing a Catholic-size sexual abuse scandal?
By KATHRYN JOYCE
June 20, 2017
Over the past five years, in fact, it has become increasingly clear—even to some conservative Christians—that fundamentalist churches face a widespread epidemic of sexual abuse and institutional denial that could ultimately involve more victims than the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church. In 2012, an investigation at Bob Jones University, known as the “fortress of fundamentalism,” revealed that the school had systematically covered up allegations of sexual assault and counseled victims to forgive their attackers. Sovereign Grace, a network of “neo-Calvinist” churches, has been facing multiple allegations of child molestation and sexual abuse. In 2014, a New Republic investigation found that school officials at Patrick Henry College, a popular destination for Christian homeschoolers, had routinely responded to rape and harassment claims by treating perpetrators with impunity, discouraging women from going to the police, and blaming them for dressing immodestly.
Allegations of sexual misconduct have also engulfed four of fundamentalism’s most venerated patriarchs. Doug Phillips, a prominent leader of the Christian homeschooling movement, was forced to step down in 2013 from his nationwide ministry, Vision Forum, after he was sued by a former nanny who claimed he groomed her as a teenager to be his “personal sex object.” The following year, Bill Gothard, founder of the influential Institute in Basic Life Principles, resigned amid more than 30 allegations of sexual harassment and molestation by former staffers, interns, and volunteers. In the first case to cross over into the cultural mainstream, Josh Dugger, the beloved eldest son of reality TV’s favorite fundamentalist family, fell into disgrace in 2015 with the revelation that he had molested five underage girls, including four of his sisters. And this July, the chief of another fundamentalist reality-TV clan, Toby Willis, is scheduled to stand trial on four counts of child rape.
You can try and deflect with one article, and I wouldn’t deny that that other religions have had abuse issues, but within the catholic church it is systemic and goes all the way to the top. And now the PA AG’s office has a detailed account of how perverted and corrupt the catholic church is at all levels. If the other 49 AGs would do a similar investigation, the results would cause such outrage that the catholic church would cease to exist in America.
Both are disgusting crimes.
The rape of a child is much more horrendous.
The homosexual rape of a boy by a priest should result in his hanging in Vatican Square.
The rest would stop or quit the priesthood pretty fast.
I can only speak for Lutherans, and no, we are not hiding a sex scandal. I cannot speak for any other denominations.
Bill Gothard, That is a CULT, not a church. He was raping a lot of young girls. I know a family who got caught up in his cult. It destroyed lives. He is pure evil.