Victim Stories
All of these stories are the real-life experiences of people that we have personally connected with, in their own words. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the victims, click on the links to read their full stories. We hope you are as horrified by these testimonies as we are. Please join with us in praying for healing for these people and for the many others just like them who are not described here. Please pray for systemic change to prevent more testimonies like these.
*Trigger Warning. Some of these stories may be personally distressing to readers.
"As time progressed, it became clear that the SM wanted me to hide that he had asked me to leave. He wanted me to find another job so that he could suggest to everyone that the reason I was leaving was because I had gotten another job."
"Almost two years ago I was bullied out of a job I loved, by men I trusted, who still refuse to
meet with me to discuss what happened. I’ve been told by one of their wives that believing
I’m a victim doesn’t make me one. By the same logic, believing you didn’t abuse your power
doesn’t mean you didn’t."
"a couple of days later he called me over to his office. He blasted me for two hours about how everything was really my fault and that I shouldn’t have confronted him with his actions because it had upset him. He yelled and was extremely aggressive, both verbally and physically. After that conversation I went home and had a serious psychological breakdown. The result was that I was too sick to be able to work for the next two years."
"From that time on I turned the off the location setting on my phone in case he somehow traced me, and I never answered the door again."
"The marriage guidance he offered was so brutal it shook me to the core. He drilled me about my ability to financially provide for my family, he suggested that I should consider moving churches, and he even asked my wife and me personal questions about our sex life and suggested that by now one of us should have had an affair."
"The final straw was when in September I told the Senior Minister that we were expecting our third child in March. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I can see that when this baby is born you’re going to collapse in a screaming heap. I’m not prepared to take that risk with my congregation. So, you’ve got a tough choice to make.”"
"When I was called out of the blue (six months into the Senior Minister’s time there) and told there was to be a meeting about my future, I found myself sitting in front of the Senior Minister and two wardens. The third, I later found out, did not attend out of protest. I was told “the reason you are being dismissed is that you do not know the reasons why you are being dismissed.”'
"Any new ideas that weren’t his were met with indifference or resistance. Worse, any differences of opinion about current practices or future plans, particularly the querying of proposed risky financial commitments, were taken as signs of disloyalty."
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.
We were already losing our church friends and family, the community that we had adjusted to, the house that we were living in, and even our reputation. We spoke to other ministers outside the church, but not many really understood what had happened to us. Some made us feel like it was primarily our fault. We felt shattered and were not sure what would come next.