Aimee's Story
- a wife's perspective
We joined the church as student ministers and we loved it! There was a vibrant young adults’ ministry and my husband and I were heavily involved with discipleship and mentoring. It became apparent, after being at the church for a while, that there were some issues between the Senior Minister and the youth minister. The senior minister had also clashed with the wardens, the nominators who had appointed him, and the parish council. Part way through our second year as student ministers, there was a church-wide meeting hosted by the regional bishop, where some allegations of bullying were brought against the senior minister. We were incredulous! We thought this man was amazing and was being falsely accused. He had been so kind and pastorally sensitive towards us. He had taken us under his wing and supported us in ways we’d never before experienced. He told us that he was being bullied himself by a vocal and powerful group within the parish who wanted him gone because they didn’t like the way he was teaching the Scriptures truthfully. The bishop recommended that he resign, he refused, and about 40 people left our church. We believed he had been a victim of a smear campaign.
Shortly after this, my husband needed to find a full-time position because we were finishing college. We had not intended to stay at the church, but we felt quite strongly that our senior minister had been unfairly treated and we wanted to support both him and the church that was still reeling from past events. The church was appointing a new Assistant Minister, and my husband was asked to apply. After much thought and prayer, we decided to change our plans and stay at the church to support the Senior Minister and to help rebuild. The church and the Senior Minister received us with open arms. When we told him we planned to accept his offer, his exact words were “You just made my year”.
When the bishop questioned us about our rationale for wanting to stay, we explained that we wanted to support our Senior Minister and the grieving church. After some discussion, the bishop agreed to license my husband to the parish. My husband was given a mentor, outside the church, who was to provide oversight as we settled into the role, especially in light of past events and accusations. We thought this was wise, but didn’t expect to need his help.
A few months into my husband’s new role as an Assistant Minister it was like a switch had been flipped overnight. The man who had cared for us so generously and praised us constantly for our work and our service suddenly turned into someone else entirely. He became aggressive, vindictive, controlling, intensely critical and angry. I would receive phone calls at home from the church secretary at 9.03am if my husband had not arrived in the office promptly by 9am. My husband was becoming anxious and withdrawn. We were arguing at home because I had two small children, no family close by, and I needed his help from time to time. He was unable to be available to me at all because the Senior Minister required his constant devotion to the exclusion of all others, including me.
When I needed to have a diagnostic ultrasound for a lump in my breast, my husband was not allowed to take time off to look after our preschool-aged children so I could attend the appointment (thankfully, the lump was benign). On one particularly harrowing week I had been parenting alone because my husband had been away on a conference and one of our kids had been taken to hospital. I asked my husband to take a Friday afternoon off to give me a bit of a break given he had been away for days. He asked his boss, who refused. When pushed, my husband told the Senior Minister that I was struggling and I needed some help. The Senior Minister immediately called me at home and told me he was coming over to our house to have a crisis meeting with us. I told him I was exhausted, but that I was not at crisis point, and I asked him not to come at this time. He ignored me and told me he was coming over anyway. When he arrived at my house, he appeared at the door by himself (my husband was still en route). He insisted he be admitted rather than waiting for my husband to arrive, and he pushed his way past me inside.
During that meeting he proceeded to tell me that I was mentally ill and clinically depressed and that I required psychological counselling. Even though I asked him to allow me to make my own inquiries, he phoned a psychologist and booked me in for an appointment on the spot. I was furious and confused but, in the end, I decided to attend the appointment anyway. The psychologist happened to be a wonderful, godly woman who had some experience of working within the Sydney Diocese and had also been a pastor’s wife. After hearing my story and learning about how my husband and I had been treated over many months, she sat in front of me horrified, with her mouth wide open, and said simply but directly: “you have been groomed by an abuser”. I will never forget those words.
She also found that I did not have depression (nor any clinical diagnosis for that matter) and that my exhaustion and stress was entirely appropriate to our situation. She described to me the traits of narcissism and helped me to understand the implications. My husband and I attended the sessions together and began to make a lot of changes. And oh, the irony: the very phone call that was made out of a desire to control me opened up the lifeline that my husband and I needed. Praise God for his providential care!
However, that’s when things started to get even worse. Fast forward six months and things had become so bad that we had no choice but to resign. The senior minister would call my husband at home and shout at him over the phone for an hour or more most weeks. Most of the time he was so manipulative that by the end of the calls my husband was the one apologising! He would shout at my husband in meetings, he would shout at him in his office, and he would regularly seethe with rage.
We were both getting sick frequently and we had lost a lot of weight from the emotional stress of working in that environment. We attended a wedding with some long-term friends from our home church and I was asked by at least half a dozen people if my husband was medically okay because they thought he looked so haggard. Several friends at a Bible college reunion asked my husband the same thing.
It was clear that we needed to leave, but we had no job to go to. When we finally approached the diocesan leadership about what had been going on, thankfully they intervened. They decided they would not license my husband to stay in the parish, they informed the Senior Minister that we would not be returning, and they found us another job. We were grateful for their support. However, we also learned that our Senior Minister already had no fewer than seven previous staff members who had claimed abuse under his leadership and that he had been professionally diagnosed as a narcissist. This information was known by the regional Bishop and the Archbishop of the Sydney Diocese and all of this information was on his file. We were shocked and horrified. I think betrayed is the word I felt which described our situation most accurately. We couldn’t believe that the Diocese had allowed us to be licensed to a parish under a man with a history of past abuses and a diagnosis of narcissism, nor had they given us any warning.
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Our very last week at the parish was dreadful. I had spoken truthfully to some parishioners about why we were leaving. The senior minster accosted me in the church carpark, yelling at me to stop telling people at church "classified information" about him or he would report me to the Archbishop. I invited him to go right ahead and report me and I informed him I was acting in accordance with guidance from the Bishop. My husband was also handing over the responsibilities of his role to the people who would take over from him the following year. The senior minister told him he was to have no contact with any leaders whatsoever, including transferral of resources. My husband asked him why he wanted this, given that it would make their job a lot harder not to receive any of the materials they needed. He responded (and this is what he said word for word - I'm not even kidding) "My name is ____. I am the senior minister here. I am over you in the Lord. I am giving you a directive and I am asking you to obey me".
It took me many years to move on from the trauma of the events that took place in that church. However, in God’s kindness, the year after our annus horribilis he provided my husband with a job working for one of the sweetest, kindest and humblest men we have ever had the privilege of working alongside in the cause of the gospel. This one man single-handedly restored my faith in humanity, and especially in ministers of the gospel, where the first man had destroyed it. It felt like a Romans 5 Adam vs Jesus situation. I wrestled with feelings of anger and betrayal for a long time – not just because of what we had experienced under this first, awful senior minister, but because I felt we had been thrown into the lion’s den by the Sydney Diocese who had failed in their duty of care for us. We made official complaints to the PSU, all we received in response was excuses and blame "we told you not to go there" (this was a lie, we were never given that counsel). I lost a lot of trust in Christian leaders, and it took a long time to rebuild it.
Since that time, I have grown a lot in wisdom (and in age!) and I have walked alongside many, many women whose husbands have been bullied in ministry, or who have been abused themselves in their own roles. I truly believe there is a bullying epidemic in the church and the church needs to wake up to it. This is particularly evident in Sydney but it extends far beyond to every denomination.
I also believe healing is possible, even when there is no repentance from your abuser. Do you know, I can honestly say that I am now grateful for this awful experience. We had the naivety well and truly knocked out of us but, in the course of the past decade+, that has actually been beneficial. We have been able to relate well to others walking through this journey and we can truly empathise with them. We were even able to counsel a young woman to flee from an inappropriate engagement with a narcissist, one which would have had disastrous consequences for her life, all because of this experience. I have sat and cried with women who have been abused by their "christian" husbands. I understand what narcissism is and how it is used to bully, manipulate, gaslight and control. While I would never wish this situation on anyone, not ever, I am still able (with the benefit of hindsight) to look back on it and give thanks to the Lord for his enduring faithfulness. For this, and for all his goodness to us, I am eternally grateful.