Adult Sexual Abuse in Religious Institutions - eBooks.

Adult Sexual Abuse in Religious Institutions
Faith seeks understanding

By Anne Stephenson

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A compassionate yet uncompromising guide that equips religious communities with practical insights, procedures, and understanding to address adult sexual abuse by spiritual leaders.

This book will help you:

• Identify warning signs and psychological traits of offenders within institutions
• Develop robust, ethical procedures for responding to complaints
• Prevent re‑victimisation by ensuring victims need to tell their story only once
• Recognise the importance of involving law enforcement and rejecting mediation as a solution
• Address sexual abuse as a severe breach of pastoral duty, on par with professional ethical violations
• Empower victims to heal and envision a hopeful future as survivors

 

Features

• Insightful chapters drawing on decades of ministry and chaplaincy experience
• Clear guidance on institutional response, victim support, and offender accountability
• Interdisciplinary approach combining theology, psychology, and ethics
• Accessible yet profound, suitable for ministry teams, pastoral caregivers, and faith leaders

You are buying a zipped file containing eBook editions of this 86 page book in PDF, ePub and Mobi formats. (2016).

ISBNs:

PDF 9781927260524
Mobi 9781927260548
ePub 9781927260531

Click for Print book

Description

In many faith communities, the subject of sexual abuse by clergy or spiritual leaders remains largely unspoken – an “elephant in the room.”

This book confronts that silence head-on, offering a theology-informed, ethically rigorous, and pastorally sensitive guide for institutions seeking to respond justly when such abuse is revealed.

Drawing from personal experience and professional training, the author articulates key indicators to recognize sexual offenders and lays out clear, compassionate procedures to support victims.

She emphasizes the importance of preventing re‑victimization by ensuring victims need not repeatedly recount their trauma, while affirming that law enforcement must be engaged promptly.

Mediation between offender and victim is decisively dismissed as inappropriate, given the profound power imbalance.

Instead, the book frames such abuse as a breach of fiduciary trust – on par with violations in any professional field.

Grounded in Christian tradition yet broadly applicable across faiths and cultural contexts, the text addresses the sacred nature of pastoral relationships and the profound damage when that trust is broken.

This resource guides religious leaders through theological, psychological, and ethical terrains, equipping them to create safe, accountable, and healing environments.

Concise but powerful, the book emphasizes that victims can emerge as survivors with good futures ahead.

It is an essential guide for anyone involved in pastoral care, institutional leadership, or community wellbeing – an invitation to move from denial to responsibility, from failure to reform.

Review

“In this book’s opening pages the author states clearly her intent in writing this resource, which is nothing less than naming what she calls the elephant in the room no one wants to name, and especially no one within religious institutions.

The naming of this ongoing reality is exactly what this author does. She claims quite rightly that no religious institution is devoid of the need to deal justly and compassionately with both ‘victim’ and ‘abuser’ when incidences of adult sexual abuse are brought to light and faced up to.

I deliberately choose to juxtapose these two words – ‘justly’ and ‘compassionately’ – as this is the approach the author takes in this valuable resource written out of personal experience.

The subtitle of the book – Faith Seeks Understanding – captures accurately what this book sets out to accomplish and I believe achieves in a most succinct, readable, and informative manner. As such, this book will be a valuable resource for all manner of people both inside and outside of religious institutions.

The author conveys well the complex issues that frame instances of sexual abuse. She helpfully identifies some of the key warning indicators along with some of the key psychological frames of reference that we need to understand to grasp the full extent of adult sexual abuse and particularly how and why it occurs within the context of religious institutions.

It is fair to say that all religious institutions have needed an urgent wake-up call to become aware of the realities of adult sexual abuse by its spiritual leaders. This crisis and the way it has been addressed have proven to be very impetuous.

In many cases there is a need to both address and  establish far more robust procedures that work towards ensuring the pastoral and ethical accountability of those in key positions of trust and influence.

The language used by the author of ‘offender’ and ‘victim’ are rightfully used throughout the book to clearly identify and then address what is at heart an abuse of power which breaches the all-important ethical principle of ‘fiduciary duty’.

As the author establishes, within religious institutions this amounts to breaking the sacred trust between the leader (the one with power) and the congregant who has deemed the leader to be trustworthy.

Because of this sacred trust the consequences are life- changing and the healing required is immense and of a specialised nature both for the victim and offender. The author conveys well the full extent of both the abuse and the healing journey required.

I commend this book as a valuable pastoral resource. It is vital for all involved in any pastoral ministry.”

Rev Dr Mary Caygill in Methodist NZ newspaper Touchstone March 2017

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 — Why this book is written

• How does all this happen?

2 — My growing understanding

3 — Religious Institutions: The art of being in unity

• Relationship of safety and trust
• Hierarchical structures and societal reform
• Poem about hierarchy

4 — The pastoral role within religious institutions

• A Theological perspective for clerical sexual abuse
• So what happens when a spiritual leader crosses  the boundary line and sexualises the pastoral relationship?
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

5 — What is the mindset that gets things so wrong?

• Psychological understandings
• Psychopathy
• Narcissism
• Physiology of sexualisation for the offender

6 — Good outcomes of clergy sexual abuse

• How to treat a victim
• The effect on the victim
• Creating personal and social confusion
• A victim’s relational tree is severely damaged at all levels
• Gossiping

7 — What is healthy?

8 — Openness to the wider community

• Publication of the name of the offender

9 — Awareness for a victim

10 — Spiritual leadership

• Boundaries and relationships
• Projection
• If you get it wrong (as a religious leader)
• Suggested robust procedures for a complaint of clerical sexual misconduct

11 — How does the person offering pastoral care handle a disclosure?

• Pastoral care for the sexually abused
• A person has been wounded deeply. You are offering pastoral care.
• Pastoral care for the sex offender in the religious community
• Pastoral care for someone who is disclosed as an offender

12 — Self care for the pastoral worker

• Respect for the other person’s boundaries
• Other tips on spotting a sexual predator
• For the victim within your care

13 — In honour of the truth

Closing Thoughts

Bibliography

Anne’s professional background

Anne’s personal background

About the Author

Anne Stephenson is a retired Methodist minister residing on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. With a background in nursing and extensive experience as a hospital chaplain – and later as coordinator and director of industrial chaplaincy in the Waikato – she brings deep pastoral insight and professional training in working with sexual offenders, their victims, and their families. Her experience grounds this book in both ethical clarity and compassionate care.