USA – Many Women Target of Sexual Advances by Faith Leaders – Survey

WUNRN

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 10, 2009

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the
target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday
says.

The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so
pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations,
religious traditions and leaders.

“It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply
a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers,” said Diana
Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.

It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone
else at the time of the advance.

Carolyn Waterstradt, 42, a graduate student who lives in the Midwest, said
she was coerced into a sexual relationship with a married minister in the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for 18 months. He had been her pastor
for a decade, she said, and told her the relationship was ordained by God.

“I believed him because I was looking for direction and for help,”
said Waterstradt, who ended the relationship years ago and entered therapy. The
pastor was removed from the clergy.

Waterstradt said she has suffered lasting psychological and spiritual
consequences from the relationship, including depression and a deep distrust of
organized religion. “It’s very difficult for me to walk into a
church,” she said.

A growing number of denominations are moving to do something about such
problems, particularly since the Catholic Church’s highly
publicized sex scandal involving its clergy.

At least 36 denominations have policies that identify sexual relations
between adult congregants and clergy as misconduct, subject to discipline.

The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative
rabbis, uses investigating panels to look into complaints against rabbis. It
notes that the “power imbalance between clergy and those to whom they
minister makes it clear that sexual contacts in these situations are by
definition non-consensual.”

In the United Church of Christ, ministers must attend a workshop on clergy
sexual abuse every three years, and those seeking jobs in the ministry must
have their names checked against government sex offender lists, said the Rev.
J. Bennett Guess, spokesman for the 1.2 million-member denomination.

Locally, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia requires clergy members, other
employees and volunteers to receive training in prevention of adult sexual
misconduct and prevention of child abuse, spokesman Henry Burt said.

The diocese “takes very seriously its obligation to make its churches
and institutions safe places for children and adults to grow in their faith in
the church,” Burt said.

Lawmakers are also taking note. Clergy sexual misconduct is illegal in
Minnesota and Texas. Texas law, for example, defines clergy sexual behavior as
sexual assault if the religious leader “causes the other person to submit
or participate by exploiting the other person’s emotional dependency on the
clergyman in the clergyman’s professional character as spiritual adviser.”

For its study, Baylor used the 2008 General Social Survey, a nationally
representative sample of 3,559 respondents, to estimate the prevalence of
clergy sexual misconduct. Women older than 18 who attended worship services at
least once a month were asked in the survey whether they had received
“sexual advances or propositions” from a religious leader.

The study found that close to one in 10 respondents — male and female —
reported having known about clergy sexual misconduct occurring in a
congregation they had attended.

Researchers say they don’t know whether the incidence of clergy sexual
misconduct had changed over the years. Nor do they know whether sexual
wrongdoing by clergy is more, or less, frequent than in other well-respected
professions.

But, Garland said, “when you put it with a spiritual leader or moral
leader, you’ve really added a power that we typically don’t think about in
secular society — which is that this person speaks for God and interprets God
for people. And that really adds a power.”

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