This article addresses sexual abuse in churches and missions contexts within the Stone-Campbell movement. The nature of independent congregations with autonomous governance greatly limits the standardization of child protection practices and hinders the data sharing of reported abuse across the network of churches. Through case studies built from factual reports of abuse perpetrated by members of Restoration fellowships, this article urges leaders to adopt more robust mechanisms for responding to sexual misconduct to protect vulnerable populations on the mission field.

Introduction

There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence suggesting that individuals who move abroad as missionaries are revered as the tip of an unspoken spiritual hierarchy within sending churches.1 Restoration churches, like few other Protestant Christian traditions, continue to operate without a governing body, universal creed, or mission-sending board. This independence enables congregations to remain agile as they pursue theological purity and contextualized outreach. Yes, it often leads to a significant gap in congregational sharing of information related to child protection or data points related to reported abuse.

I have written this article to address one of the most neglected issues within Churches of Christ and Christian Churches: Sexual abuse within missions contexts. Sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse are underreported within the general population,2 and this is equally true within institutions of faith.3 It would be natural to assume, then, that there would be an even greater shortfall in understanding how sexual abuse occurs and how often it is concealed on a foreign mission field. A literature review demonstrates that sexual abuse by missionaries has rarely been a topic of research; the few notable exceptions focused on Anabaptist churches or indigenous communities around the world.

Mission leaders are frequently sent out with the honor and trust of churches engaging with their work.4 When those mission leaders wish to perpetrate harm, however, they also have the unique advantage of discrediting victims’ reports through several mechanisms. Predators often rely on character accusations to frame their version of a victim’s memories. They may make a defense of their status in the community or threaten to destroy the character of the victim if they speak of their abuse. In an isolated setting where an inherent trust is even more significantly tied to family-like team bonds with other missionaries, the natural response is to protect a perpetrator to preserve the integrity of one’s righteous vocation. Fundraising margins, perceived expectations, and cultural stress all stack onto the emotional load of missionaries, making them what some scientists have identified as a critically stressed population.5 In the simplest of terms, missionaries are not typically functioning with an extensive bandwidth to tackle criminal investigations into sexual abuse.6

Before going further, it is important to establish what exactly I intend to accomplish. First, in this article, I do not intend to establish working definitions associated with sexual trauma. The following paragraphs will not direct survivors of abuse to resources, explore psychological presentations of trauma, or discuss therapeutic modalities for recovery. If you are a person who has experienced trauma related to sexual violence, be advised to read this text with thoughtful caution and with emotional awareness. Seek help or call an emergency number if you begin to notice unwanted physiological symptoms of stress.

Instead, this article is intended for leaders, including those in independent churches, as well as missionaries and leaders in training organizations. It is a call for more sophisticated systems of data sharing and more robust child protection mechanisms to bolster the best practices of responding to sexual misconduct in global missions. The case studies I highlight in this article are composites of true stories shared with the author either because of her adjacent research in the global anti-trafficking field, her time spent as a missionary in Southeast Asia, or her work in founding a missions nonprofit that addresses gaps in missionary accountability.7 The first case study is based on a criminal case with open-source court briefs, but each of the composites in this article involved an actual perpetrator from Restoration churches. The evidence presented in this paper will expose vulnerabilities in the protection systems within independent churches or private universities. It will make suggestions for these institutions to respond with care and urgency to protect others from being harmed by sexual aggressors.

To establish the burden of proof for the issue at hand, one may first consider the evidence of reported cases of sexual abuse among childhood victims in the United States. The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) is a leading source for actionable child protection data in the United States, whose latest statistics showed that one in nine girls and one in twenty boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault. For females, the risk is particularly high from ages 16–19, when they are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault. These adverse experiences often lead to co-occurring challenges, where victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are four times more likely to use drugs, four times more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and three times more likely to experience a major depressive episode as adults. One often misunderstood phenomenon is that only 7% of perpetrators are strangers to victims of CSA, while 34% of perpetrators are family members, and 59% are acquaintances of the child. Finally, RAINN reports that 88% of child protection cases involved a male perpetrator, 9% of cases involved a female, and 3% were unknown.8

As I noted earlier, it is incredibly difficult to investigate sexual abuse on the mission field from existing literature, especially within independent church networks. One critical study, however, established a baseline understanding of statistically significant correlations between religiosity and sexual abuse. This study interviewed 397 first-year college students at a public university in the Southeastern United States. This study found that “persons coming from fundamental Protestant religious family background[s] were more at risk of being sexually abused by a relative.”9 The researchers conducted multiple regression analyses in their study, yielding a startling finding: correlations with CSA were stronger for a student’s denomination than for their gender. This correlation is especially telling when compared to RAINN’s statistics that 82% of CSA victims were female.10 Not surprisingly, the study also found that the greater a family’s social isolation, the greater the risk of sexual abuse in the family. These results constitute a strong case for a more robust discussion on the protection of vulnerable populations in the mission field, where both religiosity and social isolation skew in the same direction.

In 2014, Dr. Robert J. Priest and Dwight P. Baker co-edited a book that, in part, began to lift the stories of “recovered memories” of sexual abuse in missions settings.11 The evidence of such horrific memories is accessible to those willing to listen and engage, and the following case studies invite readers to take the opportunity to do just that – listen and then engage. These accounts of physical, emotional, and spiritual invasion will inform the implications I present at the end of this article.

Case Study 1: Exploiting the Vulnerabilities of Children in Orphanages

It was his second time to go on a short-term mission trip with his church to Port-au-Prince. Ben’s parents had traveled with him and the rest of the group of volunteers the year before, but they felt comfortable with their seventeen-year-old traveling without them this time as the White Avenue Church of Christ embarked on an eight-day Spring Break trip to Haiti. The mission team planned to work alongside Brighter Days Children’s Home, a residential home for children at risk, which partnered with White Avenue through their annual missions budget.

The team consisted of fourteen individuals, ranging in age from eight to fifty-six years old. There was a married couple with two younger children, three teenagers from the youth group, a youth minister, and three couples nearing retirement. Everyone on the trip had visited Brighter Days in the past, except the youth minister, who White Avenue had recently hired.. The week’s plan seemed familiar to them at this point, with one day of sorting items to distribute, three days of Vacation Bible School activities, and two days of work projects between travel days.

While everyone on the trip planned to stay at a nearby guest house designed for short-term teams, Ben asked if he could stay at the Brighter Days compound for a more authentic experience with the children at the residential home. He expressed interest in long-term missions and wanted to take advantage of the week to get a better understanding of what life might look like for him if he committed his vocation to cross-cultural ministry among vulnerable kids. He seemed genuinely interested in reestablishing a connection with the children he met the year before, and his expressed interest in missions excited the adults on the trip who helped arrange an agreement for Ben to reside at the compound each night rather than return with the rest of the team to the rented guest house.

At the end of the third evening of activities, a Brighter Minds house parent was checking in on the children in her care one last time when she noticed an unusually large shape in one of the bunk beds in the girls’ sleeping room. When she turned on a light in the room, she found Ben scrambling to exit the bed of a seven-year-old resident, seemingly disoriented and unable to explain his presence in the room. The house parent ushered Ben to the office on the compound, where she called her superior requesting immediate support.

Aidah, the Brighter Minds Executive Director, arrived within twenty minutes. She first asked for Ben’s passport, and he nervously handed it over, not knowing what was about to unfold. Over the next several hours, Aidah and her staff prioritized check-ins with the children who had interacted with Ben that week. Out of twenty-eight residents, six girls reported that Ben had sexually assaulted them in some way. Some reported that he had cornered them in a bathroom on the compound and forced them to watch as he sexually touched himself. At least three girls under the age of ten shared that he had snuck into their beds at night, and were confused by what had transpired as they tried to explain how Ben had removed their clothes and covered their mouths. Another group of four boys described how Ben taught them a “game” where he showed them how “boys have fun together.”

Aidah, along with a male staff member from the residential home, the youth minister from White Avenue, and the couple leading the trip, then sat down with Ben to gather his statement. The hours of waiting in isolation had been unnerving to Ben, who found himself in an unfamiliar country and afraid he would never be able to return home. To cooperate, Ben confessed to an unmanaged addiction to pornography. He described hating himself because of his inability to keep images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) out of his mind. He admitted to multiple encounters with the children at Brighter Days, and he wept through his statement.

Each of the children at Brighter Days was taken to a local clinic where they received examinations for physical and emotional distress. Four rape kits revealed positive matches to Ben’s DNA. Ben was simultaneously transported to a local prison where he gave a similar statement to the one he gave to the childrens’ home staff and his church leaders. In a phone call with his parents the next day, his mother advised him to “say whatever he needed to say in order to get home.” He was fined the equivalent of $2,100 and sent home to Arizona, where state law enforcement officials picked up the investigation.

Ben was arrested within a week of his return and indicted by the state’s Attorney General. Although a minor at the time of his crime, he was tried in an adult court and was convicted of four counts of statutory rape, six counts of sexual battery, and a felony charge of human trafficking. His parents, youth minister, preacher, and several church members were in the courtroom when he received his sentencing of 132 years in federal prison as a 17-year-old.

Questions for discussion:

1. What are some best practices in child protection that may be routine in the United States, but often neglected on short-term mission trips?
2. What were the blind spots of the White Avenue team leaders?
3. What might they have done differently to ensure the protection of children at Brighter Days?
4. Where might church leadership need to gain a better understanding of international law before engaging in short-term missions?

Case Study 2: Not All Perpetrators Are Male, Not All Abuse Is Sexual

When Alyssa landed in Cameroon, she was thrilled to finally begin the adventure she had long waited for. It was the end of July, and much of her broader country team was still on furlough in their passport countries. Pam, Alyssa’s direct supervisor for the well project she was assigned, picked her up at the airport and began showing her the ropes of living in a context far different from her home in Philadelphia. Over the next two weeks, Pam made herself fully available to Alyssa, helping her get her phone, establish her home with potable water and food necessities, and teaching her the basics of motorcycle driving.

During her first month in Cameroon, Alyssa was surprised to discover that her presence was an unwelcome burden to Pam. Alyssa had always been an independent person and found herself quite willing to figure many things out on her own. At the same time, she was in an incredibly unfamiliar place, and Pam seemed always to be there, even if she was reminding Alyssa of how much was required to get new expats acquainted with their life in Central Africa. The two settled into the quarterly tasks outlined in their Memorandum of Understanding with Cameroon’s Ministry of Health, and Alyssa did her best to be a thoughtful and attentive learner, as Pam was a 30-year veteran on the mission field.

After several months of working closely together, Alyssa began to notice some physiological symptoms of stress whenever Pam was around (which had started to feel like an excessive presence). Pam liked to remind her that Alyssa was “in training” and was especially keen to remind her that long work days, even at the point of physical and mental exhaustion, were the responsibility of good Christians to “suffer for the Lord.” When the two single women would travel back to the capital each month for countrywide team meetings, Pam seemed to pepper Alyssa with questions that set out expectations for communicating a united front to the rest of their teammates.

“You don’t say bad things about me to others, do you?” Pam would say, “Because I only say wonderful things about you.”

The comments around unity would persist until they felt invasive to Alyssa’s autonomy.

“Your parents like me, don’t they?”

“Why haven’t you told me anything about your love life recently?”

“You haven’t told anybody about that little fight we had the other day, right?”

Alyssa was growing fatigued of Pam’s constant presence and her expectation of togetherness. The more she tried to set boundaries around working hours, Pam would find “emergencies” that required their joint attention late in the evening. When they traveled for various water projects, Pam required them to share bedrooms to save project funds. The consistent awareness of Pam’s emotions, which seemed to be hurt easily, prompted Alyssa to start questioning herself and the blind spots she may have in her own heart, requiring personal growth toward love and acceptance of others.

She prayed for God to show her how to work through her growing resistance to Pam. She asked her team leader for advice on how to establish healthy boundaries with Pam. And yet, anytime Alyssa suggested that she could use a little downtime to decompress from the stress of life in Cameroon, Pam would begin to cry and ask her why Alyssa didn’t want to share more of their lives. She went so far as to compare their working relationship to a marriage, joking that all they ever talked about was “their kids” (viz., their work projects) and that they needed to do some things together that were fun and light-hearted. As a single woman beginning to feel suffocated by another unmarried woman on her team, Alyssa was highly averse to this metaphor.

Over the next several years, Alyssa’s body continued to try and process not only the stress management of life in a rural context of the Global South, but also the emotional co-dependency of her direct supervisor. Was her body retaining inflammation because of the salt content in her new diet, or because of relational stress? Was her throat closing up in shared bedrooms because of a lack of airflow, or because of a fear of unwanted physical touch? Perhaps there was a playbook for asking for help from Member Care, but Pam had already warned Alyssa of what could happen if their pastoral team sensed a conflict between them.

There was nowhere to breathe. Alyssa felt trapped in a relationship where she had lost her agency. Any conversations she attempted for reconciliation somehow folded into a narrative of Pam’s social rejection in childhood. Her former conflict with other teammates, mixed with a steady defense of her longevity on the field and authority on all matters of cross-cultural ambiguity. After multiple professional mediations, an excessive and unbalanced workload, and repeated physical convulsions at the slightest hint of Pam’s touch, Alyssa knew she was going to have to learn to live with this new elevated tension in her body. That was her assumption, however, until she experienced something terrifying in a small, shared hotel room with Pam on a work trip.

The women had shut down their work for the evening, and Alyssa was settling into her corner of the room when her mind began to play back moments of Pam’s brushed body against hers in spaces that were not crowded. Like a rush of connected dots, Alyssa recounted the way Pam talked of sharing beds with other females in college, noting that “all touch felt good to her” and that she was glad she had resisted advances from other women, as she could have easily turned homosexual. Alyssa’s throat began to close, and her chest was unbearably tight just breathing the same thick air in the unvented room with Pam, and she felt her body start to swell as if she were in anaphylactic shock.

The next day, Alyssa began documenting her experiences with Pam and felt a sincere sense of duty to report the uncomfortable nature of Pam’s leadership to her mission trainers. Because Alyssa had noted a consistent pattern of behavior between Pam and other young, single females who had resigned from the water project due to conflict, she planned to do all she could to protect anyone else from going through what she was trying to sort out in her mind and body. She initiated the repatriation process, gathered her memories in written form, and found the courage to be as honest as possible during her debriefing. While she hoped her care team and sending church could be a safe and welcoming place of relief for her story, she also realized she needed medical attention and began exploring her legal options related to the physiological side effects of her work with Pam.

Questions for discussion:

1. What are the biases that can inhibit accountability measures when veteran missionaries hold leadership positions on the field?
2. In scenarios where sexual misconduct is secondary to psychological and spiritual abuse, how can missionary care professionals be sure to make space for complex paths toward healing?
3. In light of how many in the United States increasingly settle interpersonal conflicts through legal processes, how should churches be thinking through their response to reports of personal injury or harm from fellow employees, even on the mission field?

Case Study 3: Long-term Missionary, Short-Term Visitor

Her favorite Sundays had always been the ones where missionaries came to report on the adventurous tales of exotic languages and spiritual awakening in faraway lands. Something in her soul came alive at the thought of journeying with God across mountains and oceans. There was not a hint of doubt when Hannah considered her ability to navigate all the unknowns of missionary life. The challenge of insurmountable obstacles and the hope of evangelistic witness shook her faith to life in a way nothing back home ever could, and now, as a college student, she was finally getting an entire summer to immerse herself in a cultural bath of eternal purpose fully.

Hannah had been raised in a pious, Christian home, with traditional gender roles and a “hush hush” posture when rumors of misconduct among church members were concerned. Well, rumors of sexual misconduct, that is. She could recall a case where a deacon from a neighboring church went to court for embezzling church funds into his bank account, which sparked considerable discussion. It appeared that gossip wasn’t a sin worth mentioning much. Spanking daughters well into their teenage years was acceptable behavior, and crude jokes told at the end of the potluck lines got a fair pass, too. But all of these social rules existed somewhere outside of Hannah’s theological guardrails and didn’t cross over into conversations of eternal salvation.

When she thought about her future, Hannah saw red horizons melting into landscapes of frangipani trees, her husband returning from a day of relationship evangelism, and her children running around barefoot outside their simple home. There was a surety of a future in missions that made Hannah feel safe. Could there be a more restful place for one’s soul than in the heart of the Great Commission?

As she packed her bags for eight weeks in the rural area of a foreign country, Hannah called her boyfriend, Jon, to see how his packing was coming along. The two would be joining four other college students for a competitive internship with a renowned missionary couple who reported the most remarkable conversions each fall on their circuit through local Christian churches. If there was any couple who could prepare Hannah for a lifetime of successful cross-cultural ministry, it was Roger and Cheryl Reaves. And if there was any experience that could answer the question of a future marriage for Hannah and Jon, it was a summer on the mission field together.

As they stepped off the jet and onto the tarmac, the number of new sights and smells overwhelmed their senses immediately. Clean, crisp air with an occasional whiff of burning trash. Fresh fruit and raw waste. Briskly moving crowds with a large number of hospitable smiles. Hannah was a sponge, soaking up every new tonal sound she could mimic while making furious notes of Roger’s expectations for the small team of young adults that had just arrived. The three ladies were settled into two spare bedrooms in the Reaves’ home, as their daughters had recently graduated from college and settled into jobs back in the United States. Hannah felt a twinge of guilt as she was given a bedroom to herself–she was intending to suffer for the Gospel this summer, and the early privilege already made her uncomfortable.

The guys stayed in a nearby apartment, with the Reaves’ living room as headquarters each morning. Hannah made sure to be aware of anything she could do to help Cheryl in the kitchen, carefully preparing fresh dragon fruit and learning the proper techniques for a well-constructed bowl of congee. She placed herself under the tutelage of Roger’s vast knowledge of the local language, asking every question she could without appearing too eager. The honeymoon lasted about two weeks until the first conflict broke out in the Reaves home.

Hannah and her female colleagues were preparing for bed one night when they overheard an argument coming from the esteemed missionaries’ bedroom. It wasn’t clear what the fighting was about, but Roger’s voice boomed just loud enough for Hannah to think that maybe he wasn’t the fully righteous man she had assumed him to be. Everyone has their moments, she thought. Surely she had seen her parents argue to the point of losing their tempers many times, and here the Rogers had three strange students living under their roof for two whole months.

The next morning, Cheryl didn’t appear at breakfast. Hannah stepped in to help prepare food before the guys arrived, and felt appreciated when Roger voiced his gratitude for her willingness to serve. Jon was enjoying his summer very much and seemed convinced that foreign missions were indeed the vocation he had hoped it would be. He and Hannah would steal time together, sharing their journal entries whenever they could, and their relationship took on a more serious note as they processed their experience together.

As Hannah and Jon grew closer together, something was happening between Roger and Cheryl that made the college team uncomfortable. By their fifth week there, Cheryl became increasingly distant from the group and stopped attending shared meals. Roger kept pushing ahead, pretending as if all was normal. Still, the girls, especially, were whispering about their concern as they tried to navigate a shared living space with a missionary couple in conflict. One night, Hannah was struggling to sleep and decided to step out of her bedroom for a drink of water from the kitchen. She turned the corner in the hallway to find Roger alone in the living room, staring blankly at the wall.

Hannah tried to pretend she hadn’t seen him, but she already had his attention. He quickly acknowledged her and seemed genuinely interested in her well-being as he asked how she was enjoying her summer in China. Something about his eagerness to engage her in a one-on-one conversation alone late at night bothered Hannah, and she felt uncomfortable with the thought of Cheryl stepping out into the hall to find them there talking. Still, Hannah knew she was lucky to be chosen for this internship, and she had already learned so much from Roger as she watched him navigate the culture and people of his city. She decided it could be good for her and Jon if she had some time to ask Roger for some advice about marriage on the mission field.

Hannah’s question triggered a noticeable shift in Rogers’ eyes, and Hannah quickly regretted her naivety in asking a married man in clear conflict with his wife for marriage advice. Before she knew what was happening, Roger had taken one of her hands and had moved close to where his other hand rested on her hip. Hannah froze, her body paralyzed and confused by Roger’s comfort with this closeness. She tried to calm herself down by reminding herself that missionaries are upright and moral beings, the most trustworthy of anyone she could imagine. Roger was well-known and well-respected in the churches Hannah knew, so it was disorienting to be in a suddenly compromised position with a man of his notoriety. Still, the look in Roger’s eyes hadn’t softened. There was a cold glare shooting in Hannah’s direction to the point that she felt more like a commodity than a human being.

“Would you like some marriage advice, Hannah? Do you want to know how to keep Jon happy and keep him coming back home to you for the rest of your life?” Roger’s voice had turned tempered and gruff, and he forced his hand over Hannah’s mouth as he pushed her down the hall into the bedroom she had to herself. She had no idea what was happening. Jon had always treated her with such care and respect, and in the modest culture Hannah had been raised in, her nervous system was shocked by the realization that an unfamiliar man seemed to know more about her own body than she did. She willed her mind to float to a distant space for the next few minutes, dissociating from the reality of an attack she never saw coming. As Roger pressed Hannah’s face into a pillow, he reminded her of his status within their shared community and threatened to tell both his wife and Jon that she had pulled him into her bedroom against his will, that her persistent questions and advances were the reason for his marital discord over the summer.

“No one will believe you,” he said.

“It’s my word against yours,” he said.

“If you ever want to be a missionary, remember who sits around the tables at our churches making the decisions of who gets funding. If you ever speak of this, I’ll make sure you never get to do the work you are so eager to do.”

Now, thirty years later, Roger remains on the missions committee of a Christian church in their local state. He is still married to Cheryl, though he often travels alone as a visiting speaker at churches across the Southeast.

Hannah made her way to the mission field, but not with Jon. She could never bring herself to tell him what happened to her on that night, and she slowly drifted away from him, consumed with shame. It was unbearable to think of hurting him with the truth of her violated body, and Hannah knew that if Jon felt compelled to speak of her attack, his defense of her could also hurt his chances of doing the job he hoped to do, as well.

Hannah continued to dance in and out of unstable relationships through adulthood, feeling unworthy of safe men but desperate for companionship. She spent her adult life in the heart of a country in another part of the world, where she would be safe from ever facing Roger again. She felt like a lonely shell of herself, with her traumatic secret being the only thing left to hold.

Questions for discussion:

1. What were the unwritten social laws around Hannah’s church culture that increased her risk of sexual assault?
2. How should Christian communities think about the contrasting consequences of sexual assault for the perpetrator and the victim in this case study?
3. What is the church’s role in communicating procedures related to reporting abuse involving fellow congregants?

Discussion

There are several implications to draw from these graphic but true narratives. First, the long-term effects of sexual violence have a significant impact not only on the psychosocial functioning of victims, but are also deeply connected to the way they construct faith after abuse. Lisa Rudolfsson and Inga Tidefors studied the ways victims of sexual abuse describe their relationships with God and with other congregants, finding a significant wavering in their faith along with feelings of betrayal and abandonment by God.12 It is important that their interviews were with survivors of abuse that took place outside of religious congregations. Still, those who experienced abuse felt othered and separated from their church community while also feeling a need to be protected by those same people. If churches are eager to invest in foreign missions, one can easily make the case that there is a mission field among victims of abuse in established churches desperate to have their stories and their traumas shepherded well.

As the first two case studies reveal, North American culture is only moving closer to litigating personal injury, and perhaps much of the world is following in the same direction. This article presents evidence that, while independent churches have traditionally self-governed their congregants, younger generations are more knowledgeable about their rights and are more willing to assert those rights in court. Legal implications for sexual assault on foreign soil would most certainly involve human trafficking charges, which hold some of the longest sentencing punishments in the U.S. legal system. In the following paragraphs, I will outline a foundation of best practices for churches to consider as they develop child protection policies and systems of reporting abuse.

Background checks. In 2010, a civil court case involved a Church of Christ minister in Saginaw County, Michigan, the family of a 12-year-old victim who sued Freed-Hardeman University, as well as the Center Road Church of Christ, for neglecting to disclose a former record of abuse adequately. The perpetrator was convicted of federal charges related to manufacturing child sexual abuse material after it was found that he had videoed himself “fondling and molesting” a boy who attended his church. Jordan had formerly been convicted of abuse in a 1987 court case in Montgomery, Tennessee. The victim’s family alleged that negligence of their church leadership and the university in failing to check his criminal history before presenting him as someone “fit to assume the duties of a minister” had harmed their child.13 Smaller churches may have limited resources, but establishing standard procedures for protecting congregants also protects the church from legal trouble. At a minimum, we must expect employers to run background checks on those they have chosen to fill seats of religious authority.

Reporting structures. Victims are typically responsible for providing the burden of proof that outlines their abuse. Unfortunately, sexual trauma has a significant impact on emotional and psychological functioning, adding layers of challenge when bringing a story of abuse forward. The clearer the reporting structure and the more normalized the process, the more familiar survivors will feel with how they can discuss something traumatic they experienced at the hands of a perpetrator. As Kristin du Mez, the author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne and creator of the recently released film For Our Daughters, notes, “Abuse within the evangelical community starkly contradicts Jesus’ teachings about women, which emphasize love, respect, and honor.”14

Many churches have utilized the services of GRACE, an organization committed to a “Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.”15 Although GRACE does not identify with Restoration churches, the organization is willing to work with any church that is committed to an open, authentic, and accountable investigation into allegations of abuse within a congregation. It is essential for church leaders to openly and effectively communicate the processes by which victims of abuse can share their experiences in a safe and supportive way. The more these processes are shared, the more victims can expect to be believed and protected.

Accountability. After several reports of abuse surfaced among United Methodist missionary children, a committee was formed to execute a system of vetting the reports. They documented evidence, procedure, findings, and decisions in an open-source website that allowed for transparency in the process.16 Accusations of misconduct can lead to numerous conflicts within a once cohesive group of people, and transparency is a crucial part of eliminating assumptions and rumors concerning the parties involved in the accusations. Accountability, especially in an open-source format, does not mean that personal identifiers have to be named. Anonymity may still be essential to protect the dignity of victims. Still, detailed reports of a church’s investigation and findings (even with names and places removed or changed) can validate the church’s willingness to dig in and advocate for victims.

Addressing the theology of gender and forgiveness. When faith leaders lean heavily into Biblical concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation before validating the pain and trauma of a victim’s abuse, there can be long-lasting impacts on a person’s walk with God. Interestingly, one study found that the more dominant a person’s social orientation, the less likely they were to believe the allegations of a child’s sexual abuse reporting.17 Another study found that “mothers from cultural backgrounds that adhere to rigid patriarchal norms” struggled greatly to prioritize their values of family preservation, loyalty to a perpetrating partner, and worries of being alienated by their extended family or ethnic community.18 Gendered norms within faith institutions can easily lead to othering, often placing expectations of conformity on females while excusing abusive behaviors of dominance from men. These are generalizations, of course, but generalizations that are still very much experienced by men and women in Restoration churches across the globe.

Survivors sometimes refer to “love bombing” victims, encouraging forgiveness while simultaneously refusing space for their traumatic experiences.19 When women believe that good, Christian behavior is passive, the biblical teaching of words like “turn the other cheek” can lead to a significant failure of healthy boundaries in abusive relationships. As one author described her mother, “She lived her life so passively that she permitted her husband to kill my cats and to rape me. She always taught me to forgive, no matter what people did to me. The truth is, my mother had little self-worth. She never felt herself worthy enough to say, ‘You cannot do this to me, nor can you do this to my daughter.’”20

Conclusion

Sexual abuse within mission contexts, especially in independent Restoration churches, remains a deeply underreported issue. Without a central governing body, these churches may knowingly or unknowingly allow perpetrators to exploit trust and avoid accountability. The case studies in this article illustrate how social isolation, honor-based reputations, and inadequate oversight contribute to the concealment of abuse within foreign missions. Moving forward, churches must prioritize child protection, transparent reporting, and accountability. By adopting clear systems, Restoration faith communities can protect the vulnerable and align with Christian values, ensuring safer environments for the family of God to thrive and flourish.

Lauren Pinkston, Ph.D., is a writer, podcaster, and educator, offering expertise in business as mission and various fields of social justice. She is the founder of Kindred Exchange, bringing together her expertise in international community development, ethical enterprise, and cross-cultural Christian engagement. After living five years in Southeast Asia and launching multiple businesses that employed survivors of human trafficking, she now consults globally with anti-trafficking initiatives. Pinkston frequently speaks and writes on themes of faith, justice, and entrepreneurship, producing the podcast “Upwardly Dependent” (https://www.upwardlydependent.com) and exploring the intersection of business innovation and mission in both academic and real-world contexts.

1. 1 See comments on this blog post: https://velvetashes.com/allowing-our-hearts-to-be-shepherded-abroad.

2. 2 Borg, Kevin, Christina Snowdon, and Deborah Hodes. “A Resilience-Based Approach to the Recognition and Response of Child Sexual Abuse,” Paediatrics and Child Health 29, no. 1 (n.d.): 6–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paed.2018.11.006.

3. 3 Vega, Esti, and Rivka Tuval Mashiach. 2023. “Awareness, Incidence and Psychological Wellbeing of Childhood Sexual Abuse as Reported by Ultra-Orthodox Mothers,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 32 (5): 554–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2023.2222014.

4. 4 See the article by Harriet Hill on missionary shame. Harriet Hill, “Shame and Honor in Missionary Care,” Missio Dei Journal 11, no. 1 (2020), https://missiodeijournal.com/issues/md-11/authors/md-11-hill.

5. 5 Laurie Tone, “Exploring the Relationship between Attachment Style, Stress Perception, and Religious Coping in the Evangelical Missionary Population” (PhD diss., Liberty University, 2015), http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/1099.

6. 6 See the article on managing stress and burnout on the mission field, Will Walls, “Managing Stress and Burnout on the Mission Field,” Missio Dei Journal 6, no. 1 (2015), https://missiodeijournal.com/issues/md-6-1/authors/md-6-1-walls.

7. 7 See www.kindredexchange.org or www.seedint.org for more information on mutuality in missions. The author’s podcast, Upwardly Dependent (https://www.upwardlydependent.com/podcast), also addresses issues in ethical evangelism and reforming orphan care with greater care towards cross-cultural relationships.

8. 8 Visit https://rainn.org for more statistics on child abuse in the United States.

9. 9 Ruth Stout-Miller, Larry S. Miller, and Mary R. Langenbrunner, “Religiosity and Child Sexual Abuse: A Risk Factor Assessment,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 6, no. 4 (1998): 15–34, https://doi.org/10.1300/J070v06n04_02. In addition to the findings shared above, the authors also found that family involvement with church or religious activies was not a significant factor limiting the risk of sexual abuse for children. Rather, a family’s religiosity was positively correlated with higher risks of sexual abuse. In addition, sexual abuse from a family member was highest in religious families, where sexual abuse from a non-family member increased for liberal or non-religioius families.

10. 10 https://rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens.

11. 11 Dwight P. Baker and Robert J. Priest, eds., The Missionary Family: Witness, Concerns, Care (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2014).

12. 12 Lisa Rudolfsson and Inga Tidefors, “I Have Cried to Him a Thousand Times, but It Makes No Difference: Sexual Abuse, Faith, and Images of God,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 17, no. 9 (2014): 910–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2014.950953.

13. 13 https://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/2011/11/former_minister_at_saginaw_tow.html.

14. 14 https://www.forourdaughtersfilm.com/resources.

15. 15 https://www.netgrace.org.

16. 16 https://mksafetynet.org.

17. 17 Rebeca Alcantara, Kendahl M. Shortway, and Barbara A. Prempeh, “The Relationship between Social Dominance Orientation and Child Sexual Abuse Credibility Assessment,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 28, no. 4 (2019): 400–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2019.1592271.

18. 18 Ramona Alaggia, “Cultural and Religious Influences in Maternal Response to Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse: Charting New Territory for Research and Treatment,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 10, no. 2 (2002): 41–60, https://doi.org/10.1300/J070v10n02_03.

19. 19 The phrase “love bombing” was used in correspondence with the author as she explained how painful it was to discuss the abuse in her childhood while being immediately encouraged to forgive her perpetrator.

20. 20 Laura Hunt, “Missions in the Context of Recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse,” Missiology 38, no. 3 (July 1, 2010): 321–33, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=509f648e-c210-3b09-ad4f-18bdab70eaf4.