Hearing the stories of survivors of sexual abuse is never easy. I had the chance to do so just last week as part of this project. How do you console someone who not only was robbed of something so personal but was made to feel bad about it by those who should have protected them?
In their eyes, you can see how their life was completely changed by the event. An event that came upon them one day and caught them in the cold like unexpected rain. An event that for them scarred the image of intimacy that every human desires.
And yet, in them I see a unique strength. A strength that refuses to back down in the face of pain and danger. A strength that determines to see evil fall and good prevail. Because somehow, in the middle of all this, they choose to believe there is still good.
I also see a fresh perspective and unique open-mindedness in their spirits. They do not judge, because they remember how it felt when they were judged. They are open to new ideas because they had to fabricate new ideas themselves in order to survive their ordeals.
They are truly the definition of “survivors”. They have gone from wishing they would never have to wake up to rising in the morning ready to help others.
So if you are in the situation that my friend was in all those years ago, do not give up. There is hope, and it will get better. Keep fighting. Find your people. And believe in that soon coming dawn.
I love my grandmother. She is hardworking, sweet, resourceful, and easily one of the strongest women I know. Some of the sweetest memories of growing up come from making amateur “movies” with her, battling each other in a pillow fight, or tossing buckets of water at her for a summer water battle. And yet, as strong as our relationship is, there are many times that I struggle to understand her and her perspectives on life. If I’m honest, many times her opinions just seem stubborn and foolish to me. But I’m sure she thinks that of me as well.
But what does this tiny, silver-haired Puerto Rican woman in her late 70s have to do with sexual assault in the church, what I usually write about? Well, thankfully nothing, except to illustrate how bullheaded one generation may seem to another when the culture and generation they grew up in is not understood.
To be clear, this is NOT a defense for covering up sexual abuse in the church. But it may be helpful to understand why the older generations are known for sweeping these things under the rug.
I spoke with Tim Baumgarten, a corporate trainer with plenty of experience with intergenerational communication, who spoke to my Interactive Journalism class about why certain generations react the way they do to sexual assault.
This is evident especially in light of the generation many of our grandparents were born into, The Silent Generation, which spans the birth years of 1925 to 1945, roughly. According to Baumgarten: “The Silent Generation [was raised with the understanding] that the greater good always outweighed the individual need. Always. We look at it differently now. This individual person needs justice now, and so we can’t protect this institution over the top of this individual persons’ justice being served.”
Kaleb Eisele, producer of the Humans of Adventism project and Baumgarten’s stepson, elaborated on this.
“Something you talk about a lot [with regards to the distinction between generations] is institutional loyalty and how different generations relate to institutions,” he said. “So if you’re growing up in a generation that is strongly convicted of institutional loyalty, then you say this bad thing happened but I don’t want it to reflect bad on this institution that I love, you’re much more likely to say, ‘Yes, well that happened but let’s not tear down this great thing.’
“I know in [younger generations] what I’ve seen is kind of a flip of that, where…we need to be loyal to people,” Eisele continued. “We need to hold institutions accountable, and you really don’t have this all or nothing mentality. This is a specific issue that has to be addressed and will only be addressed if we talk about it. But there’s’ not really this worry that, like, “Oh, people are going to think terrible of this institution. That’s not in the forefront of somebody’s mind. It’s ‘This person was hurt, and they need justice. ‘”
Perhaps, as we learn to understand the differences in our generations, we will also learn how to better educate each other instead of vilifying. Because while yes, many of the cover- ups done by those who march to the drum of institutional loyalty have been horrific, it’s important to note where it’s coming from and how we can stop it from happening again. Let’s move redemptively in all aspects of this intense subject of sexual abuse.
How common is sexual abuse really? Most of us don’t hear too much about it. Of course, we know that this doesn’t mean it’s not happening. But we might just be shocked to hear exactly how common it is.
I spoke with Nicole Parker, who holds a degree in biblical counseling and pastoral ministry, and teaches a class on sexuality at Southern Adventist University. Mrs. Parker has extensive experience with victims of sexual abuse. So, when I asked her how prevalent the problem was, she had plenty of information to share.
“We don’t have any solid statistics from within the Adventist church, but we also don’t have any reason to think our statistics are less than the world’s,” she said. “Typically, research finds one in three or one in four women is sexually abused, but some research makes it clear it’s probably higher than that.”
Parker discussed the findings of Diana Russell and Gail Wyatt, as discussed in the book, Predators, by Ana Salter. They found 28% of girls were sexually abused or assaulted before the age of 14, and that number jumped to 38% when ages 14-17 were included. However, only 5% of those cases had been reported to authorities.
Parker continued:, “When I was going to church growing up as a kid over 50% of the girls in the church had been sexually abused or assaulted. It was a small church. We all knew each other, and all of us girls were close to each other, and I knew who had been sexually assaulted by whom. Some of the boys were as well. There was one young man in the church who was a year older than me who sexually abused several children in the church. That was just one of them, there were lots of different abusers. All in one little church.”
Parker recalled going to a sleepover once as a kid and hearing half the girls there recount that they had been sexually abused. On a mission trip she went to in Mexico, Parker shared a room with what she recalls were around seven girls total. It was revealed that most of them had also been sexually abused or assaulted.
“One of them was being abused at the time, and she was afraid to tell because she said her stepfather would then start abusing her sister,” Parker recalled. “And I told her as a 16-year-old, I said, ‘Look, your body is the temple of God. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that. You need to tell.’ So when she went home from the mission trip, she did tell. A and from what I heard later, it sounded like he had already been abusing her sister as well, and he did get prosecuted. She would have been 15, I think, at the time.”
Things didn’t seem to improve as Parker grew up, either. “In high school and college, the same thing: about 50% of my [female] friends had been sexually abused or assaulted.”
Parker also spoke about sexual abuse among boys.
“At the very least, about one in five or one in six boys get sexually abused or assaulted as well,” she said. “I think boys are abused a lot more than people know because boys have even more shame about reporting. And often women are their abusers, and if they do tell they’ll be ridiculed or told, ‘Wow, you scored.’”
Parker noted a particular challenge that males face when confronted by sexual abuse.
“Boys often experience some sort of arousal in sexual abuse even if they weren’t willing, even if they don’t want this to happen,” she said. “It’s a physical thing that happens, and then they’re confused, like, ‘I felt pleasure so I must have been complicit. Maybe I wanted this.’ So boys don’t report; that’s what we know.”
But is sexual assault and abuse really an Adventist problem? To take a deeper look into this question, I looked into the Clery reports of all 12 Adventist institutions in the United States. These reports are required by The Clery Act, which demands that institutions report statistics on certain crimes, including sex offenses. 1
Above are the statistics of the sexual offenses for each university in the last three reported years, which ranged from 2016 to 2019 depending on the institution. For more detailed information, simply visit the safety page of any of these institutions and look for their annual safety report.
Also, it should be noted that there are different ways to interpret these statistics. Just because one institution has higher rates of reporting does not necessarily mean that it is not happening just as much or more on other campuses. The institution may possibly have a better method of reporting, which may lead to more survivors coming forward.
It should also be noted that most sexual assaults go unreported, therefore it is likely that the rates are much higher. RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) reports with information from the Department of Justice that about three out of four cases of sexual assaults go unreported.2
These considerations should be maintained until more data can be collected.
I was reminded of this truth this week as I prepped for one of the most sobering interviews of my life. My friend and I are going to revisit a dark time in his life. A time when he says someone violated him physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A time when his suffering was silenced in the name of Jesus.
My heart aches at the thought of bringing back these painful times. As I seek to talk about the generational divide and how each generation handles taboo topics, the line is becoming increasingly more clear to me, even without any quantitative research.
Simply put, here I am, a member of the younger generation, seeking to shed light on some issues that the older generation tried to bury.
This is not a general condemnation of the older generation’s way of thinking. It is an observation of how taboo topics are generally handled between the two generations. Generations is also a broad term because not everyone in the older generations thinks that way.
So, what are some of the issues that need addressing?
Let’s take a deep breath. The waters may get murky from here on out.
Hi! My name is Josue Vega. I’m 22 years old and a third-generation Seventh-day Adventist Christian from Puerto Rico. I currently study mass communication with an emphasis in media production at Southern Adventist University. I love any sort of art that involves storytelling—films, books, dance, and music.
Here’s another thing about me: I’ve always relished a good secret. Whether it was for the power it made me feel like I had, or for the delicious feeling of being in the know, I was always intrigued to find out what happened behind the scenes of everyone’s life. Knowing what was going on behind the stiff, smiling masks of so many felt like an intimate connection, and I basked in that feeling whenever I got the chance.
It didn’t take me long to find out, however, that not everyone felt the same way about secrets.
“Keep that under wraps, you don’t want to ruin their reputation,” is a sentence that many of us heard growing up, and I was no exception.
It was the go-to warning statement from adults who knew they had said too much in front of little ears and wanted to keep the situation controlled. Of course, this was often hard for us younger ones because we longed to investigate the secret and announce our discoveries.
As we grew older, however, we realized that some secrets were not just disappointing to keep, but dangerous. And many of us felt like they had to be revealed.
But does this discrepancy between the generations extend to how the Seventh-day Adventist church handles its secrets? Is the old stereotype of the older saints desperately dragging secrets into the shadows in order to preserve the church’s reputation, while the younger generation claws them into the light, a true one?
And what happens behind closed doors, when shocking untold stories come to light or taboo topics are breached? Is there a difference in beliefs between the generations over how such matters should be handled? I’ve heard a great number of secrets in my time. I’ve also seen how they’ve been handled by different generations, either to their benefit or destruction.
So, let’s investigate some church taboo subjects together, and hopefully, we can learn a lot from them. At the very least, we can learn from the damages that have been caused to our denomination. Let’s do some detective work together, shall we?
