Responding to Abuse: Past and Present — Roseanne Bauman — Ep. 182

Anabaptists, like most of society, are much more conscious of abuse than we were just a few decades ago. There have been improvements in how we respond, but there have also been changes in our response that are not necessarily for the better.

Rosanne Baumann has joined us again for a second episode in which we talk about sexual abuse. So, to begin this episode, um, I'd like to ask you to give us a historical perspective on common ways abuse was responded to in the past.

I think it would be fair to say that a few decades ago, in Anabaptist communities as well as in in other communities, abuse just wasn't talked about as openly as it is today. Uh, there were concerns about preserving marriages and families intact, uh, protecting the reputation of families, churches, and individuals, uh, concerns about keeping these things out of the hands of the law, the civil authorities, as much as possible. Anything pertaining to sexuality, like the expected birth of a child, uh, lots of other things were considered private, and people didn't talk about them in public. So, particularly, sexual abuse was one of those things nobody really talked about. Um, I personally felt like there was even a stratification, sort of, of what type of behavior could be excused as just being a bit inappropriate or things that we've all experienced, and what types of behavior constituted actual abuse.

And usually, the big one was, if intercourse didn't occur during a sexual encounter, then what was the fuss about? Like, what's the big deal? Maybe another thing that comes to mind is that when abuse was identified, you just couldn't get around excusing it or anything like that. There was often a heavy emphasis on rehabilitating the abuser quickly, helping the victim to forgive, and working on reconciliation, like sort of getting past this thing, maybe a bigger concern than, um, now when we're more concerned about helping victims and protecting them in the future and so on. How have things changed? When I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about my own experience, and I know that doesn't translate for everybody.

I think things have changed more in some communities than others inside and outside of the Anabaptist Church. I feel like in the past few years, since the unveiling of some of these high-profile cases of abuse, both in and out of the church, there seems to be more concern about not covering up abuse. We're more concerned not to be the church that sweeps it under the carpet than we are, um, maybe so much protecting our reputation.

There seems to be a greater willingness to report to the authorities and depend on them to investigate a matter. Again, that varies from group to group, I'm sure, community to community.

Topics that in previous eras were considered private are much more openly discussed, um, in different ways. Definitions of what constitutes abuse are more closely aligned with zero tolerance workplace policies. So, we have a much narrower definition of what is abusive behavior than we might have had several decades ago.

And when I think about the emphasis when abuse is identified, at least in some places, there's more emphasis on getting help for the victims, getting help for the offender, and making sure that the offender never has the opportunity to offend again. We're concerned about, um, preventing this. We were in the past, too. It's just a little different now. Can you compare and contrast the past and the present responses? What are the strengths and weaknesses of both? I might get myself in trouble here, but just doing a bit of sort of broad reflecting.

The overall focus when dealing with abuse, I mentioned that in the past, perhaps more so than now, the value of preserving families and reputation of individuals and churches over the cries of those being abused. That seems abhorrent to us today. It seems terrible that we would value reputation more than a person who's being hurt.

I think God agrees that that is not a good position to take. This kind of thing happens when someone is disclosing abuse and they're asked to not talk about it or maybe consider what it would do to that person's reputation to have these things revealed, or there's a popular line that goes, "Forgive and forget." When you say those sorts of things, it can seem as though you're valuing, um, the abuser's rights more than the victim's. We've been made more aware, I think, because of some of the cases that have been widely publicized of how evil abuse is, how damaging it is for individuals, homes, and churches.

However, in our efforts to never be a part of sweeping anything under the carpet, I think we might be prone to forget that any time abuse is made public, there can be a real danger to those being abused.

We need to be careful not to confront abusers until potential victims of their retaliation are safe, both physically and emotionally. This thing I mentioned of behaviors that today are considered abusive were perhaps considered just normal some time ago.

If such behaviors were unwelcome, people believed you didn't really talk about it. Unfortunately, then it was easy for abusers in that type of a culture to lead their victims to believe that they were asking for it in some way, that they were at fault in some way.

And I think I mentioned in an earlier episode, it can still be tempting to ask questions that imply responsibility on the part of the victim. You know, "Why did you dress that way? Why do you keep going back? What did you do to upset this person?"

That said, I do believe our standard today for what constitutes abuse has largely been set by society, not by the church. Um, not that that's wrong, but some of the expectations in the zero tolerance world could make it challenging for churches to function in the one big family model that they have in the past.

There are more stringent expectations now for when you're babysitting someone's children, when you're a Sunday school teacher, and so on. That has potential to protect, but also to perhaps distance children a little more from their church family than what we may have been used to in the past. I talked about how in the past it was more common for churches to attempt to investigate abuse allegations in-house and to deal with any abuse using church discipline rather than the law.

Victims might even have been asked to avoid talking to child protective services, the police, whomever.

I imagine that reluctance to report sort of came out of fear of children being removed from their homes and families broken up and so on. But again, that situation could be perceived as more concern for the institutions than for suffering individuals.

Abusers were encouraged to confess their sin, repent, ask forgiveness, and change their ways. Victims were counseled to forgive the abuser and work toward reconciliation.

Now, please understand, many of those things I just said are scriptural.

But if the abuse occurred over decades of time and victims lived in its shadow for that long, then the church deals with it and wants forgiveness and reconciliation to occur in 6 to 12 months, it's quite possible for victims to feel revictimized.

It seems like the church's agenda is to get this over with as quickly as possible, shut the victims up, move on. I think I mentioned earlier, it seems like the abuser's needs are more important than the victim's.

Now, at least in some groups, there's been a shift toward more willingness to report to civil authorities, and there's certainly a call out there to churches not to investigate abuse in-house.

I personally observe somewhat of a generational difference in this shift. The acceptance of investigation by police, social workers, or organizations that exist to help churches is greater among the millennial group and those in following generations. There seems to be more comfort with embracing the idea that the church is not equipped to handle these things, so we should hand them over to the experts.

We need to remember that legal organizations deal with crime as defined by societal laws. My concern is that the church is still responsible for sinful behavior beyond what society considers illegal. So, reporting to the authorities doesn't relieve the church of responsibility to confront its members about sinful behavior.

In terms of helping survivors cope, there seems to be a greater acceptance of professional counseling today than there might have been in the past. One caution that I have with that is that some of the professional institutions, while they're strong on protecting victims and naming and prosecuting offenses, may be weaker on biblical concepts like forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the past, it sometimes seemed that forgiveness meant the sin was forgotten and things should go back to the way they were. The downside of that is that things weren't good. So, going back to the way things were without significant changes in the system just paved the way for a sinner to sin again.

Today, I hear a lot more discussion about ongoing consequences and perhaps permanent restrictions on offenders, particularly sexual predators.

I think it's praiseworthy when an offender confesses sin, repents, and welcomes boundaries to help prevent them from sinning again. When that doesn't occur, there's often a debate about how best to protect potential victims from the abuser. Sometimes it can be tempting to allow the victim's feelings or the advice of psychology to be the deciding factor in what happens with an abuser rather than applying biblical principles.

Now, I thought about this a lot. There's a lot of things I could say about my personal opinion on these things, but instead, I'd like to suggest some topics of study for people who are keenly interested in the topic of how to deal with abuse.

A couple of suggestions. One would be to study the difference between an apology and a genuine confession of sin. North American culture has latched on to apologies as a way to deal with offenses. It's easy for a sincere-sounding apology to never name a sin that should be confessed.

In my world, confessions of sin do not contain the word "if" or the word "but." And I'll just leave that as something for you to ponder on should you choose to.

A second topic would be the conditions under which forgiveness should or should not be granted.

As a starting point for this study, I'd recommend a book by Jay Adams titled From Forgiven to Forgiving. It's an older book. It's maybe some more old-fashioned theology, but it has some interesting things to say. There's many ways people understand forgiveness, and I think it's good for us to define what we mean by forgiveness when we're conversing with another person about the topic. A third suggestion for study would be examples of consequences after sin was forgiven in scripture.

Look for places where someone was forgiven and whether or not there were consequences thereafter.

Consider that consequences may not be the same as punishment, nor are boundaries on behavior necessarily about unforgiveness.

A fourth one that came to mind as I was thinking about this is the difference between cheap grace and costly grace.

I'd recommend the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship for this one. It cost Jesus everything to offer us grace and forgiveness. Neither of those gifts should be cheap or easy for us to offer either.

And then just in wrapping up here, there's a fifth one that I have yet to study. So maybe some of the listeners can suggest resources. This would be the impact of feminism, both good and bad, on the changes in how we view abuse and deal with it today.

Because I think probably there is both good and bad impact coming out of that philosophy. Well, thank you so much for offering that list. There's much in there that deserves significant study.

Is there anything else that you would like to add before we end this episode? I think back to what I probably said at the end of the last episode, my passion is for Christian people to recognize abuse for what it is and for us to band together and try to get rid of this thing and to help those who've been affected by it. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode and the previous one. This is the second of two episodes that Roseanne has recorded with us about sexual abuse. So make sure to go and find the previous discussion on this channel. Roseanne has recommended several resources on this topic, so if you are interested in learning more, make sure to go and check those out.

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