Battered wife syndrome and the BGCT

I was resting on a San Antonio bench, when a person from the Baptist General Convention of Texas recognized me, introduced himself, and extended a hand. He was warm and genuine, and I was glad to meet him. He asked if he could introduce me to a high-honcho BGCT person, and I said fine.

He brought the man over, and we stood and talked. I looked at the face, but didn’t see anything compassionate in the eyes. What I saw looked more like annoyance. I listened to the words, but they sounded rote and meaningless.

I wrote this man several years ago, asking for help, and I almost met him once when I was leafletting the BGCT at the Dallas Convention Center. I had stepped in for some water and saw him coming down the corridor. I approached, extended a hand, and said “Mr. X, I’m Christa Brown.” He glanced at me, but walked on. I don’t fault him for that, but at the same time, I don’t expect our recent chat in San Antonio will carry much more meaning for him than that passing glance did.

At the end of our San Antonio chat, he told me to get his number from his assistant and call him if I had thoughts on how they could help. It’s a way of putting the ball in my court. I try to imagine Jesus telling a wounded person, “Call me.” In my head, the whole conversation becomes comical.

It’s as though a bloody wounded sheep finally found it’s way back, collapses at the shepherd’s doorstep, and the shepherd says, “Oh...there you are...I was just starting to think about going to look for you. But hey...now that you’re here...why don’t you go back out and round up the rest of those bloody sheep and bring them into the corral. They’re so unaesthetic out there in the field and they detract from the pastoral scenery...and besides...all that blood on the ground isn’t good for the crops.”

Back in 2004 and 2005, I repeatedly told BGCT officials how they could help. I asked for the sort of help they described in their booklet, Broken Trust, and I asked them to provide victims with counseling referral lists. I flew at my own expense to meet with them in Dallas. I asked for some symbolic gesture as a way of showing the denomination's care for clergy abuse victims, and I gave them pictures of a simple labyrinth buffered by a small garden. They said they would do it, and we talked about locations. It seemed like such a positive meeting that, as I walked out the door, I literally turned back because I could hardly believe it. I looked straight at the BGCT director and said, “I need to know that this wasn’t just a bunch of talk. Are you really going to do this? Are you going to make this dedicated labyrinth?” He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Over the next weeks and months, we talked by phone and email, and they continued to say they were working on it. “Making progress,” they said. But as I struggled with the church’s recalcitrance, I asked BGCT officials if one of them would go to a church business meeting there in Dallas and speak on my behalf. Not only did they refuse, they cut off communication. They told me to direct any further requests to their lawyer, who just happened to also be the lawyer for the church. The appearance was that the BGCT cared more about supporting the church, which was still trying to keep the abuse under wraps, than it did about supporting me in my efforts to bring the abuse to light. And after having personally committed to the labyrinth, no one even had the decency to personally explain why they were no longer going forward with it. The Dallas meeting was nothing but a bunch of talk after all.

After talking with the BGCT honcho in San Antonio, I got on the highway to drive home, and I had to pull off the road a couple times because I was shaking and crying so much. The futility and pain of the conversation weighed on me. The voices of others who vainly sought help from the BGCT rang in my head...victims from a decade ago to a few weeks ago. I feel like a battered wife who, over and over again, keeps wanting to believe her husband when he says, “I promise it won't happen again - things will be different.”

I can’t keep hoping that BGCT officials will actually care about abuse victims, will help them, will do what they say they’ll do, or will even honor what they say in their own booklet. It’s not healthy for me. It’s a psychological mistake.

At some point, the battered wife must look at the long pattern, must stop believing the promises of change, and must say “no more.” That’s how I feel about the BGCT.

I finally made it home, and I curled up on my bed and cried and cried. I woke up the next morning and cried some more. I can’t be that person again... that person who, once upon a time, still held some belief that the BGCT stood for something...that it would care about the wounded...that it would act in accordance with its published words. I wish I could.

The ball is in the BGCT’s court. If they really want to help clergy abuse victims, they need to just do it. And anyway….where’s that labyrinth?