Four minutes into this video, a young woman describes her experience in an Evangelical church where she, at age 16, was raped by a member of the church staff. She refused to go to law enforcement at her mothers encouragement and went to her pastor instead. Hoping to find someone who would be a caring shepherd, an advocate and a protector, her pastor told her to "keep her mouth shut."
She describes how she was found to be at fault for her own rape because she desired to have a boyfriend. (It sounds so reminiscent of the things that I heard Bill Gothard say and the types of immature arguements offered by those who followed Gothard's teachings.)
As I mentioned in a recent post, in my former cultic church, whenever there was an issue in a marriage, leadership percieved issues of sin in the lives of husbands to be a response to the wife's refusal of his authority or her lack of care for his needs. If there was a marital problem and a wife approached the elders to confront her husband, it was incumbent upon that woman to prove that she had not created a situation that caused her husband to sin.
I also recall Jen Epstein's account of her experience at Boerne Christian Assembly where it was always assumed that a wife was "the squeaky wheel" in the relationship. I know this to be sadly true based on my observations in my own, Gothard and Shepherding/Discipleship influenced church.
