What Victims Of Abuse Really Need From Christians

This is the second of a two-part series on forgiveness and abuse in the church. Here’s the first article.

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The last couple decades have been a wake-up call for Christians on the topic of sexual misconduct. It turns out that not all was as it seemed. Push over the rock, and there’s been an ugly side of church life exposed.

Much like the rest of society (think Harvey Weinstein), we’re in a time where we’re questioning the culture that allows abuse to run rampant. Many people are getting to share their stories, and conversations are being had. We’ve exposed the problem.

But that’s not the end of the story. The problems that caused abuse in the church run deep, and so does the harmful culture of cover-up that came with it. It takes more than headlines to change what caused this crisis to happen.

As one survivor of sexual abuse in the Catholic church put it,

[The sex abuse crisis is] not something that I think can be fixed by our priests alone. The pain and the harm has been caused by the church and the solution will need to come from the church—and that includes all of us.

Change won’t come without effort from every Christian. We need to understand how churches responded badly in the past, which I discussed in my previous article. Now, in part two, I want to explore what we can do to learn from past mistakes and to respond well.

Here are some thoughts.

Victims need to be heard.

It’s common for Christians to have a knee-jerk reaction of recommending forgiveness and trying to wrap up the issue as quickly as possible. But when we do this, we’re shrouding the complicated emotions that come from abusive situations (more on that in the previous article).

What victims need first and foremost is to be heard. Today, more and more churches are starting to put the victim at the centre of their response to abuse. In an article entitled “The divine act of forgiveness has cloaked decades of abuse”, church leaders discussed a new model of teaching forgiveness:

[Proposed] models accepted that forgiveness was a very sensitive journey that must originate from the victim, and not be demanded of them under the guise of spiritual direction. Rather, this model of forgiveness allowed victims to remember their abuse and infused this remembering with a call for justice. It placed control of their lives back in the hands of victims. Forgiveness was seen as a means to create a future that was free from the influence of the perpetrator and marked by healing.

These models may involve counselling from a pastor/mentor or advice from psychologists. It’s a way of hashing out where you are, before you decide where you’re going. This is especially important in understanding the complex emotions around abuse, including shame, grief, battered self-image and second-guessing your own motives.

Victims need a system that supports them.

Slowly, the church is putting measures in place to help victims, as well as prevent abuse. But the truth is, some Christian organisations are only just coming up to speed on ChildSafe, let alone how to respond to – and prevent – abuse in the church.

According to surveys, most churches tend to believe that they are safe spaces for victims. However, the overwhelming majority don’t have a policy for addressing complaints of abuse or violence when they come up.

It’s similar to assuming your church is safe in a fire, but never installing extinguishers or having an fire emergency plan.

I believe every Christian leader needs to think ahead and consider what the process would be, to ensure that everyone involved is able to be heard and cared for. There are many resources available to do this.

Victims need patience.

Forgiveness is an important part of healing, but the process to get there can be lengthy. Even when a victim can forgive, it’s not the end of the road – the victim may still need support going forward.

Many survivors of abuse will also never receive an apology for the treatment they’ve received from their victimizer. You don’t get the dignity of affirmation of what happened. It’s easy to feel erased, especially if no one else knows what’s happened.

What the church needs to do is to keep patiently travelling and praying with the victim as they work out their next steps. While it’s important to be Christ-like in your response to someone who harms you, God can also handle the messy emotions that accompany it.

Of course, one major thing that victims need is for society to respond well to abusers. That includes identifying them, challenging them and counselling them. This brings me to the next section.

How do we respond to abusers?

I want to make a disclaimer: Christians – and society at large – have frequently protected victimizers. We’ve often shied away from confronting abuse in the church or believing it could happen.

This is no different for when an abuser claims to be a Christian – and perhaps worse. Christians can tend to assume that we’re all trying to do the right thing, and they give the benefit of the doubt.

It’s also common that Christians can often treat abuse like any other one-off sin. We allow abusers to weep over their wrongdoing, and then go back to their lives, as though that’s the end of it.

But these types of sins are usually cyclical. As we see here:

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome… What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” (2 Peter 2:20-22)

It’s a well-documented phenomenon in the world of psychology. You can’t assume that a sorry will be enough. By not sufficiently challenging abusers, we can put more victims in harm’s way and leave the victimizer to continue on into the next cycle.

Abusers must see the wrong, and want to change.

Like forgiveness, you can’t demand repentance from someone who’s unwilling to give it. Real repentance goes beyond remorse. Repentance is an intentional desire to change your ways.

This will require obvious actions, because repentance is an active word. It means making changes. Zacchaeus is a good analogy. He didn’t just weep and pledge to move forward, but he made a direct effort to make amends, committing to repaying his fraud. He gave half his possessions to the poor, then paid back four times what he’d cheated (Luke 19:1-10).

Biblical forgiveness, after all, hinges on repentance and restoration to God.

Abusers need accountability.

This is may involve adding things, like counselling and ongoing discipleship. It may also involve taking things away, like limiting access to women or removal from positions of power. In the case of domestic violence, it may mean estrangement between husband and wife. For child abuse, it could mean confronting a prominent church leader and laying charges.

Some would argue that insisting on ongoing responses because of sin is a “lack of grace”. But equally, it’s inappropriate to dismiss the seriousness and depth of sin. If we restore someone to the situation they were in that fostered abuse, we need to ask the hard questions. (What’s the risk now? And who pays for it if things go wrong?)

There’s no easy answer here – wisdom and prayer can help guide. But it’s worthwhile reiterating that none of these approaches are “unforgiving” by nature. Wrongdoing has repercussions, and safety matters.

Conclusion

Forgiveness has loomed large for me recently. In fact, I began this series because the person who harassed me fell back onto my radar.

It gave me a complicated reaction, and took me back to when it was happening and the roller coaster that was. It made me wonder if I had really forgiven. But I’ve realised that, in fact, I’ve travelled a long way in how I’m processing the situation.

Many others are doing similar, and for much more severe situations. But they may not be able to speak about it, or have the courage to own it. That’s why it’s important for others to start a conversation and take away some of the fear.

When we have discomfort talking about abuse in the church, we end up supporting the abuse. When we don’t understand what forgiveness means in these circumstances, we also end up harming the victims.

This is why I want to start conversations about abuse in the church, whether it’s institutional or cultural. Whoever you are and whatever you do, everyone needs to think through what we can do in these matters of violence and abuse – matters that may be happening right in front of us.

It’s only then that we can start being part of the solution.