Let Bishop Easterling's Words Ring Out

A male survivor of clergy sexual abuse speaks

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

Like Bishop LaTrelle Easterling who spoke so powerfully about sexual assault at the United Methodist General Conference, I was discouraged from telling what happened to me when I was an adolescent in the United Methodist Church.

As a survivor of domestic violence in a previous marriage, Bishop Easterling shared that when she entered the ministry, she was urged not to reveal that part of her life. “I was told to be silent about that painful part of my past. They said it would make me look weak and women in ministry already have enough battles to overcome,” she said.

Bishop Easterling said, “The silence in the church about violence against women can be deafening," but she raised her voice to tell all women who have suffered abuse: “You are strong. You are brave. And you are beloved of God. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are created in the Imago Dei. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise. You are of sacred worth. You are resilient.”

The same powerful word needs to be proclaimed to boys and men who have been sexually assaulted in and outside the church as I was.

It was August of 1967. I was 16 years old, sophomore class president, sectional wrestling champion, and still basking in the afterglow of participating in the state tournament. It had been the best year of my young life. And I had no way of knowing that I was about to be "swallowed alive" by a terrible evil that I could never have imagined existed in this world.

No one had heard of sexual predators in those days. There were men who "liked boys," and some who molested young girls, but they were always somewhere else, in a city far away, never in our world of Holstein cattle and feeder pigs in the American heartland, and certainly not in our little white-frame country churches in Loyd and Ithaca, Wisconsin. It was unheard of and unthinkable, and, as we would all come to know; it was happening to thousands of boys and girls in country and city churches all over the world.

Yes, I am a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. I always knew it, but I didn't feel the pain of it until I was 42 years old. When it broke (another story), I began the long process of recovery. Sharing what happened with my wife, Jo, and others close to me, was the beginning of my healing. Therapy, weekly support group meetings with other survivors, and prayer has brought me to a good place in my life.

The post-traumatic episodes I suffered for over ten years are gone. The nightmares I had have abated. I still see the face of the abuser in my dreams occasionally, but there is no more terror. I am also at a point of full forgiveness. I can pray for him and empathize with the pain in his life that led him to sexually assault me and several others.

I do not, of course, excuse the behavior. I held him publicly accountable in the church and the community.

Let Bishop Easterling's words ring out in every congregation in Christendom! She speaks for all of us, girls, boys, women and men who have been sexually assaulted.

“The church cannot simply bandage the wounds of the abused," she said. “We need to speak to the abuse itself.” She called on those present at the General Conference to find purpose and direction in Luke 4:16-21 and Jesus’ proclamation that “I have come to liberate, free, uplift and unbind and love. I have come to end oppression, bondage, domination, abuse and hate."

Bishop Easterling's sermon has ushered in a new day. In this time of "new beginnings" we have an opportunity to offer healing to survivors, their families and the congregations that bear the scars of clergy sexual abuse. Perhaps bishops, district superintendents and lay general conference delegates could organize similar services of lament in annual conferences, districts and in local churches where sexual assaults by clergy and other church leaders have occurred.

There is work to be done.

Other Resources

Valley of the Shadow, August 2020, https://agupdate.com/agriview/lifestyles/barn-boards-baling-wire/article_e8996f7d-eb57-5e1a-92cd-d9f50cc82dc3.html

A Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing from my book, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, 1996.https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/sheep+showing+fair/FMfcgxwJWXWNgWNDdfVDbvFgVqqdGxWW

For over thirty years, the Rev. John Sumwalt has spoken out widely and written about the cover up of clergy sexual assaults in his own United Methodist denomination. He is a retired member of the Wisconsin Conference.