It's more than 3 percent

According to a new study, “one in 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader.” That’s about 3 percent of the women sitting in pews, and the study showed that the conduct crosses all denominational lines.

I’m glad to see a study that gives actual numbers to what anyone who pays attention has long known is a widespread and devastating problem -- clergy who sexually exploit adult congregants. But my concern about the study is that it may inadvertently give a misimpression as to the number of women being abused.

I think the number is really much bigger than that 3 percent.

The actual executive summary of the study says that the 3 percent figure is based on “women who had attended a congregation in the past month.” Thus, the study merely shows that 3 percent of churchgoing women had experienced “clergy sexual misconduct.” (I’ve also got a longstanding problem with that minimizing word “misconduct,” but I’ve blogged about that in the past and so I’ll let that one slide for now.)

Here’s the thing: The study doesn’t reflect the women who were sexually abused by a religious leader and who completely stopped going to church. Nor does it reflect the women who were sexually abused by a religious leader and who now go to church only sporadically.

Based on the people I hear from, I expect there are probably at least as many clergy-abused women who don’t go to church as those who do.

Gee whiz. . . it’s not hard to imagine why they might stop going to church, is it?

Particularly among those who went through the painful and usually futile effort of trying to report the minister, many simply gave up on the whole notion of a faith community. After that, it wasn’t about the betrayal of one religious leader, but with the stonewalling and victim-blaming that almost invariably occurs in churches, it wound up being a betrayal by the entirety of the woman’s faith community.

Lots of those women simply don’t go back. They don’t go to any church. Ever.

For example, imagine all those young women who were sexually abused by former Baptist pastor Darrell Gilyard -- at least 44 of them that we know about. (I say “former” because Gilyard was recently convicted of child molestation.)

Many of those women were essentially kicked in the teeth by former Southern Baptist president Paige Patterson when they tried to report Gilyard’s abuse. And what many of them were reporting was actually characterized as assaults and rape. All of it was abusive.

But Patterson, a high-level Southern Baptist leader, turned his back on those young women.

What sort of message do you imagine that sent? Was it a message of care and concern from the Baptist faith community? No, certainly not.

Is it any wonder that some of those women may have come around to believing that a faith community is a charade?

Would you be surprised to learn that some of those women had not "attended a congregation in the past month?"

The number of women who have been sexually abused by clergy is a whole lot bigger than that 3 percent.