When clergy are abusers

Hello Carolyn, and thanks for responding!

You’re absolutely right about the value of brevity in blog articles. I have to confess to you that being the opposite—very lengthy at times—is in fact a fault of mine. Often when writing I end up feeling that “this” needs to be said and “that” needs to be said, while “something else” needs “more background” or a “more complete explanation.” The result can be a very long post! My own version of the “seduction tactics” list topped out at 1,266 words, which is more than four times as long as your own!

So this is not about length. I do believe the article could indeed be kept to the length you were suggesting, without any significant loss to its basic intention, which was primarily to list these tactics used by certain rogue clerics and invite others to add to them. I hope my own commentary on them was a helpful addition, but it is an optional one. Tthe chief reason my “version” was longer was that the original article seemed to imply certain things I disagreed with, so I wanted to set out my own views more clearly.

Although the appearance of sexism was one problem I had with the article, other problems were with the appearance of rigidity and extremism. These could be resolved while still keeping the article quite short.

I’ll just discuss three of those issues.

First, I don’t see any reason to criticize the list as it stands if it hadn’t been introduced the way it was. The article classes all of these behaviors as “boundary violations” when that’s by no means true of all of them. Fair enough, some of them (like “sharing confidences”) are clear violations of one kind or another, but others may not be.

One example is “scheduling counseling sessions when no one is around.” Surely when somebody has a counseling session with a minister, they don’t expect a third person to chaperone the meeting itself? That would violate their privacy. Perhaps it means there’s no-one else in the building, but I can visualize scores of occasions where there doesn’t happen to be anyone else around, yet the meeting is perfectly innocent.

This problem would be eliminated with a different introduction to the list. Instead of branding all these behaviors as “boundary violations” in themselves, the article could simply point out that what follows is a list of “tactics” (or “techniques,” or “behaviors”) that have been used by clerics to get inappropriately “close” to someone they’re targeting sexually… or something of the kind.

That problem was compounded by the opening sentences which equated “boundary violations” with something even worse: a “criminal sexual assault”! The underlying fault was the failure to distinguish clearly among three different categories of things the article talks about.

One category is the listed “techniques.” These may (but not necessarily) be “tactics” used by predatory clerics, and may (but again, not necessarily) be “boundary violations” in themselves.

A second category whose existence the article implies is behaviors that do constitute real “boundary violations,” but do not involve sexual activity—such as “sharing confidential information.”

A third category is sexual activity with a cleric. That’s also a “boundary violation,” but unlike other boundary violations it constitutes the real essence of the offense.

The trouble is that the article as written seems to conflate these three categories as if they were all the same. Yet no reasonable person could agree that merely “inviting someone to attend a seminar” constitutes a “criminal sexual assault”! I hope you see what I mean about the “appearance of extremism.”

I’m not suggesting for one moment that the article needs to go into detail about the distinctions among those categories. It only needs to be clear and simple. I think the repeated use of the ill-defined term “boundaries” causes unnecessary confusion. That’s why I’d personally be inclined to start off by talking about something like “sexual exploitation,” a term I think is clear enough to everyone, instead of “crossing sexual boundaries,” which is more vague. Then it’s fine in the middle to mention how clerics may progressively encroach on people’s “boundaries,” followed finally by the list of “techniques” or whatever they’re labeled.

The second issue is my suspicion that you’ve borrowed some of this terminology and discourse from other sources, but it won’t always go over so well with a general audience. Two things especially stuck out like a sore thumb. One was the word “clergypersons.” I’m sure the writers of the King James Bible would have called that word “an abomination before the LORD!” There are far better substitutes. Another is the last sentence of the first paragraph, which reads as if it was lifted straight from Andrea (“All Sex Is Rape”) Dworkin. I’d moderate that claim to make it sound more realistic.

The third issue is that I think the article may be misleading about what is covered. Here’s the impression I was left with at the end of that first paragraph. Suppose a single woman bumps into an attractive young man—possibly at a Christian rally, or even in the grocery store—and discovers he’s the minister in a church not far away. What does she do? If she wants to pursue a friendship, presumably with more in mind, the most natural thing in the world is for her to go to one or more services at his church, and get to talk to him again. Does this mean that the instant she walks through his church door and becomes “someone who attends his congregation,” she goes all weak at the knees and becomes utterly powerless to resist any sexual advance he might make to her? Or that if their relationship does become “intimate,” that makes him guilty of a “criminal sexual assault”?

Plain common sense should tell us it means no such thing; yet that’s what that first paragraph literally seems to be saying. I had to go to a different Web site to get clarification.

Three-quarters of U.S. states, so I’m told, have no criminal statutes covering sexual relations between clergy and adult partners, but those who do usually limit this to behavior occurring “within the confines of the counseling relationship.”

In other words, this is chiefly about clerics who are acting in a similar professional capacity as therapists toward their clients. That puts a different complexion on the whole matter. It’s not about relationships with anyone who might happen to walk through their church door. That makes far more sense.

I hope that helps to clarify some of the concerns I had.