Episcopal Press and News
Out of Bounds: The Church Faces Clergy Sexual Misconduct
Episcopal News Service. May 29, 1992 [92129]
Beth Rhea
Last September, when the dust from General Convention had barely settled, a district court jury in Colorado decided a lawsuit that sent a shiver of unease through the church. The jury found the Diocese of Colorado and its former diocesan -- Bishop William Frey, a prominent conservative bishop -- liable for psychological damage to a woman who consulted Frey after she had an affair with a priest who was counseling her.
The plaintiff, who had a lengthy history of psychological disorders, had claimed that the priest seduced her and that Frey's handling of the case exacerbated her psychiatric problems. Frey was negligent, the jury found, in his supervision of the priest and in his handling of the affair after he learned of it. Their decision -- to award the woman $1.2 million in damages -- spurred growing numbers of disclosures by victims and put bishops on their guard. Just weeks before the decision, Frey, whose case is being appealed, had been in the national spotlight as the sponsor of a General Convention resolution on sexuality, one that, ironically, would have explicitly required clergy to refrain from sexual activity outside marriage.
Among the clergy, as in all of the "helping" professions, defining the sexual boundaries between counselor and client can sometimes be as difficult as determining who's to blame when they've been crossed. With the Frey case, the issue of clergy sexual misconduct surged to the fore of the church's consciousness. Bishops and priests alike have begun to acknowledge that such exploitation can have profound repercussions for individual victims, for parishes, for priests who have violated their ordination vows and jeopardized their careers, and for the institutional church, which can wind up in court.
Sexual exploitation in the church is generally defined as any sexual contact between a priest and a person over whom he or she has power. It goes beyond sexual harassment, which is usually taken to mean sexual innuendoes such as risque jokes or pressure to have sex, but no physical contact.
In the vast majority of reported cases, a male priest has acted on a female parishioner. Bishop Harold Hopkins, director of the House of Bishops' Office of Pastoral Development, has led more than 20 diocesan conferences on sexual misconduct, and he noted that 85 to 90 percent of the cases he's seen have fit that profile, though he has also seen female-male, male-male, and female-female violations as well.
The causes of sexual exploitation run the gamut, ranging from "serious psychosocial disorder, to [priests] being unaware of their own needs, or being unaware of their spiritual power and authority," according to Hopkins, who added that "almost anybody is at risk if they're in personal stress, or if their marriage is in trouble."
No matter what the cause, the impact of such boundary violations in the church is intensified by the spiritual authority priests can wield, and the profound trust often placed in them by their parishioners. At its core, this kind of sexual misconduct is the misuse of power, according to the Rev. Margo Maris, canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Minnesota and a nationally known expert on clergy sexual exploitation. Maris has handled about 300 cases during the past six years, ranging across diocesan and denominational lines, and she has been instrumental in helping her diocese comply with a Minnesota state law -- the first of its kind in the country -- that makes sexual contact between a clergy person and a parishioner a felony. The priest-parishioner relationship is "a power balance," Maris said, "and the clergy person always has the position of power, mainly because he or she is seen as a holy person."
One young woman, whose priest used blackmail to force sex on her, agreed. "This person's giving you absolution," she said. "This person represents God." And when he violates the appropriate boundaries, she said, "it tampers with your belief system."
Because of the inherent inequality of power and the vulnerability of the parishioner, "it is always the clergy person who has to say no," Maris said. By taking the vows of ordination, "we agree to keep our people safe."
Sexual exploitation is nothing new, but for decades it was one of the church's best-kept secrets. "We've got quite a backlog of cases from the past," said Hopkins, "partly because we didn't know how to deal with them, and partly because of denial."
The church's prevailing attitude used to be, "clergy don't do things like that," or "it's the woman's fault; she seduced him," Hopkins said. That response was wrong, he asserted, and "is very clearly a violation of women's rights and human rights."
The true extent of clergy sexual exploitation today is difficult to determine because until recently, most victims were loath to come forward. But Gary Schoener, a clinical psychologist from Minneapolis who has handled cases of clergy sexual misconduct for nearly two decades, said that he believes the available figures are alarming enough even though they don't present the full picture. Schoener cited a 1984 survey of Wisconsin helping professionals who were asked how many clients they had interviewed during a three-year period who had sex with a professional counselor. Though only one-fourth of the surveys were returned, 653 cases were reported, and 11 percent of these were victims of clergy sexual exploitation. Because the issue was not publicly recognized even then, and because the "vast majority of victims didn't complain," Schoener said, "the potential numbers are really frightening."
During that same year, Richard Blackmon, a Ph.D. candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary, completed a dissertation on stress factors for clergy, surveying clergy across denominations including the Episcopal Church. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said that they had had some form of sexual contact with a church member, and when asked explicitly if they had ever had sexual intercourse with a parishioner, 13 percent of the clergy said that they had. Schoener said that those results were "the highest self-report figures ever attained of any professional group ever surveyed."
Despite efforts to deny its existence, sexual misconduct has occurred around the country, and during the past decade state laws, societal attitudes, and church recognition of the issue have given many victims courage to come forward.
What the victims seek, Hopkins said, is "to be taken seriously, to be told by the church that it was wrong for the priest to do this." They have also begun to realize that they can get "redress of grievances." He and Schoener agreed that lawsuits generally result from a victim's feeling that the church mishandled her case and discounted her concerns.
One victim's story confirms this. Struggling to deal with sexual abuse at the hands of her father, the victim sought counseling with her priest, who eventually threatened that if she did not have sex with him, he would reveal to her family the many secrets she had confided to him. "What I really want from the church is an apology," she said -- an apology from her priest and from her bishop, whom she believes did not take her seriously.
But just as much as an apology, the woman said that she wants restitution, something she had not sought "until they started to ignore me." Since she alerted her bishop to the situation, she said, the priest she accused has been made a canon of the diocesan cathedral, has had his expenses paid for a short stay at an alcoholic treatment center, and continues to receive his salary and benefits though he is not permitted to go to the church, pending an ecclesiastical hearing. "But no one has addressed my needs," the woman said, and now she seeks reimbursement for the cost of several years of therapy, for workshops on sexual exploitation she has attended, and for the travel and phone costs she has incurred during her efforts to deal with her exploitation.
After the decision in the Colorado case, Bishop Frey contended that bishops need more authority "if they are to be held responsible for the misbehavior of all individual clergy." In a more recent interview, he told the Virginia Episcopalian, "We have the structure that orders [priests'] official behavior, but we cannot control what a priest does with his zipper."
Maris disagreed with Frey's assertion. She said that she believes bishops have the necessary authority by virtue of the fact that "no priest can be in a bishop's diocese without his [or her] permission," and because, according to the rites of ordination to the priesthood, priests are required to "follow the orders of their bishop."
Maris continued, charging that some bishops are simply "ignoring" cases they see before their eyes. "I don't think they know how much power and authority they do have," she said. A bishop has the responsibility "to confront that [priest] and connect him with what is needed to make him well, a whole person."
While she conceded that confronting the problem "is an incredibly hard thing to do," Maris said that there are numerous ways to address the issue. She recommended conferences such as those she and Hopkins have led, designed for bishops and diocesan executive staff. Some bishops have also contacted her or Hopkins to help "walk them through" specific cases, and Maris said that she sometimes refers bishops to their peers who have successfully handled such cases.
Schoener is adamant about the message that is conveyed if the church does not respond to sexual misconduct. "You may feel badly when a [clergy] person has blown his life," he said, "but are we not going to have safety and accountability?"
Schoener observed, however, that even if diocesan leaders are vigilant about confronting and disciplining guilty priests, "the likelihood that you can get all the cases is virtually nil" because many victims -- due to shame, embarrassment, or a fear that the revelation will break up their marriages -- are still reluctant to come forward.
In evaluating pastors who are sent to him for treatment, Schoener said that he expects certain criteria to be met in order for psychological treatment to be effective. "We require an admission of guilt," he said, and, in comparing the incident as described by the accused and the accuser, "pretty good agreement on the key facts." He also observed that if the accused pastor exhibits "no remorse, or an openness to change," the chances of rehabilitating him or her are slim.
Schoener warned church leaders that if a priest has been proven guilty of sexual misconduct, the decision of whether to place him or her in a new church should not be taken lightly. Even if they base their decision on the advice of a professional psychotherapist, they are on shaky ground, Schoener said, because if such misbehavior recurs in the new church, all that can be said is that the professional's advice was wrong, and the church may find itself embroiled in a legal morass. Schoener advised any such priest pursuing a new position to "understand that the vestry is taking an incredible risk, and the bishop's taking an incredible risk."
Throughout the country, the church scrambles to make up for lost time. Gradually, victims come to know their rights, bishops grasp the gravity of their role, and priests discover that the power they hold must be handled with care. Together they strive to send an unequivocal message -- that, in the words of a General Convention resolution passed last summer, sexual exploitation is an "abuse of trust, a violation of the Baptismal covenant, contrary to Christian character, and therefore wrong."
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