Episode #57: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: Things to Consider When Disclosing Spiritual Abuse, with Sarah Stankorb

The Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, and Acts 29 Churches have all had significant challenges with sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse in their systems, something that becomes even more pronounced when religious systems become intertwined with private and home schooling, sex education, and the expectations of rigid gender norms.

Sarah Stankorb, author of the national best-seller Disobedient Women, interviews women who have been victimized within Evangelical systems. And while online spaces provided camaraderie, acceptance, and empowerment, the disclosure of abuse and sexual crimes often gets met with the opposite outcomes.

Sarah talks with us about things to consider when disclosing spiritual abuse, including:

How the Church Enables Abuse (4:00): Sarah outlines: “Many of the theologies that can underlie abusive relationships within institutions. You may see in Christian school the threat of corporal punishment, which puts children in a position where it's [not in] the interest for them to question authorities. So if you are trained from a very young age not to dare question your parents or you will be struck. When you encounter abuse within a church system or at work, that's based into your experience that you must obey, you must not question, and that creates an extra hurdle.”

Intertwining Church and School (6:00): Sarah discuss how the Pastor and Principal being one in the same can be harmful, “I think in both places, if you are a superintendent of your small Christian school, or the head of your Christian school is your pastor, that notion of the godly authority figure, who cannot be questioned, can reside in both places, and again that makes reporting much less likely and it makes it harder for families to call anything in question in both places.”

Homeschooling and Being Insulated (12:00): Sarah describes how homeschooled children often have no one to turn to: “The number of stories that have come out of homeschool, Christian homeschool environments, where overwhelmed mothers, too many children, their education gets neglected. They are also part of a very insular community with home churches. So they may only know three, four, or five other homeschool families like them that are deemed godly enough that they can interact with. They don't have many friends. They don't have outside adults that they could turn to for help…. If there is abuse in that environment, the child has virtually nowhere to go.”

Reporting Abuse in Higher Education (17:30): Sarah details her research and the specific issues within the schools she conducted her reporting: “There were sexual assault policies that were confusing people all sorts of different ways. There were disciplinary measures that were far more extreme if a student cheated on a test versus raped someone. So students were obviously quite upset about that.”

Parallels Between Secular and Christian Universities (19:00): Jeremiah discusses the issues at Michigan State and draws a parallel between Michigan State and the Southern Baptist convention: “The bureaucratic issues that happened at Michigan State … were really similar to the bureaucratic issues that happened in church systems, like the Southern Baptist Convention, where there's a passing the buck, where there's a denial of accountability, where there's an administrator who ultimately has no criminal justice experience, nor should they who are being put in the role of criminal justice person.”

Title IX (23:00): Sarah talks about Title IX and exemptions from it: “Religious schools can apply for the Title IX exemption. So, those protections that usually you would expect to exist within a college or university just might not because your institution asked not to have to comply with it.”

Right to Silence (27:00): Julia insightfully says, “If we pressure that person to make whatever case they want to make, we're doing the same thing in some ways as the religious structure that has said. This is your fault. You are equally responsible and people have the right to their autonomy. And sometimes that silence and privacy, and sometimes that's breaking the silence. Every person has different resources and circumstances to consider.”

The Importance of Listening (32:00): Sarah describes her experience after using Botox to aid her Vocal Tremor: “For me, it [Botox] made me compute completely mute. For a month at a time, I would move my mouth. And nothing would come out, then I had a month where I could whisper. So if someone really, really, really wanted to hear me, and would stop and listen to me, they could…. I kept silencing, physically silencing myself on this quest for some better version of my voice. I think one of the big scars I've imposed on my own life was those periods of just not being able to say what was on my mind.”

The Internet and Community (36:00): Sarah says: "The internet gave people a chance to show what they had experienced. And for many people who are either in high control churches, or in isolated families, or in situations where they did not know other people who had dealt with what they dealt with, seeing other people speak up online made them realize this: Oh, this is not just me. ”

A huge thanks to Sarah for all the work that she does to support victims of spiritual and sexual abuse. 

Let's heal together!