The Huffington Post has an excellent article up about a woman who was sexually harassed by a WCG minister in Pasadena when she was a student.
This is NOT an isolated case when it comes to the details she tells in her story. It has long been recorded in the Ambassador Reports, The Painful Truth, and other blogs and web sites about how ministers in Pasadena and Big Sandy would ask men and women, sexually charged questions when called in for counseling. This kind of behavior was practiced by many in Pasadena. Many of these perverts are now in leadership positions in other COG groups where they still do the exact same thing.
Women suffered the brunt of these sick ministers, though many men did too. Many stories came out of counseling sessions of ministers masturbating while talking about the sexual habits of coeds and men. Some of these men are now parked in LCG, PCG, RCG, UCG and COGWA.
I Was Sexually Harassed By A Christian Fundamentalist Minister
The author writes:
Today, I read an article by a fellow HuffPost blogger about how cruelly some individuals in her fringe religion treated her when she was date-raped and got pregnant.
Her words ignited a passion in me to tell my own “church abuse” story publicly for the first time. Maybe her courage and mine will inspire other women with Fundamentalist or other extremist religious backgrounds to speak up, or maybe even escape and find a new spiritual path, one that supports both genders as we seek to love our neighbors as ourselves.
My parents joined an extreme Fundamentalist Christian fringe group when I was six years old.While enrolled at Arizona State she got accepted to "God's College."
During the second half of my junior year, a string of unfortunate events led to me be accepted at the last minute after all into “God’s college”.
My friends threw a going-away party the night before I left. During it, I saw the wife of a junior minister making out with her brother-in-law. His hand was up her shirt! As in most Fundamentalist “religions”, members are encouraged to tattle on one another. I was torn. I didn’t want to get involved. But I didn’t want to sin. So I did my duty and told an elder what I’d seen. He assured me he would handle it.
As a female transfer student from a “worldly” [read:pagan/heathen/sinful] university, a girl with a budding journalist’s mind and attitude, I was under scrutiny from the minute I arrived on that small campus. The third day, I was called to the dean’s office. He asked me if I had accused a godly woman of inappropriate conduct with her brother-in-law. I said yes and told him accurately what I’d seen.
He informed me that I had not seen any such thing, that she had denied it, and that I was to never speak about it again. (Probably not blog about it on HuffPost, either!)The author then relates how the minister's wife went and lied to the ministry about her, then was called in and was instructed to find a minister to counsel with and this is what happened:
The minister I chose had me sit on a small, hard wooden chair set a good distance from his large wooden desk. He ignored me completely while I fidgeted and cried. I was terrified of him, of God, of the church itself. Of my blood running in the streets when an avenging Jesus came back to slaughter unbelievers. I knew Jesus would be extra vicious with those who had spurned the truth.
Then she relates the sickening part:The minister began to ask me horrifying questions.“Where did he touch you?”
“How did that feel?”
“Did your panties get wet?”
“Did you see his...”
I told him the truth, because I had been taught not to lie. That first day, he just listened to me tearfully confess that my teenage body responded to being around Dave. I was shaking and crying as I told him these deeply intimate, shameful things. He told me to come back the next day.
The next day, after I waited silently in my little chair for what seemed like an hour, he asked similar questions. But this time, he was so angry at me (I thought) that he was banging the underside of his desk drawer. His face got really red and then he made a sound I’d never heard before. Then, in the middle of my next sentence, he seemed to suddenly relax. He told me to leave.
I had no idea what was going on.
He did the same thing the next day. And the next. It was terrifying when his face got so red! And the banging noise!This man and the other men who did this same thing over the decades now think they are God's chosen ministers in the various splinter cults. They have done no wrong in their lifetime.
Read the entire story here: I Was Sexually Harassed By A Christian Fundamentalist Minister
Read her excellent blog here: Wendy Keller Compassion Page
