#16: Where the Gospel Meets Sexual Abuse

#16: Where the Gospel Meets Sexual Abuse

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey guys, it’s Jesse. And before we get today’s episode started, we have this really exciting announcement. A community of donors have come together to put together a $50,000 matching grant. What that means is that every dollar that you donate between now and the end of the year will be matched all the way up to $50,000. So, we need your help. If you have appreciated these podcasts or you appreciate the ministry work that we do, please head over to lovethyneighborhood.org and head over to the donate page. Every dollar that you give between now and the end of the year will automatically be doubled. Thanks for your support. And now, onto the episode.

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RACHEL SZABO: This episode contains mature content that may not be suitable for young listeners. Content may be an emotional trigger for victims of abuse. Listener discretion is advised.

JESSE EUBANKS: Some names in our story have been changed to protect identity.

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JESSE EUBANKS: When you hear the term “sex offender,” what typically comes to mind? A creepy middle-aged man who spends his days lurking around school playgrounds? Or perhaps you think of someone who drives around in a shady white van, offering candy to children. And images like these do have some truth to them. It’s why we teach our children “stranger danger.” Because there are strangers out there who do abuse people. But most of the time — it’s not the strangers who pose the danger. In fact 90% of abuse happens from someone we already know. And sometimes — the people we know? They’re right within the walls of our church.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Every episode we hear stories of social justice and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: And today’s episode is where the gospel meets sexual abuse.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m just gonna be honest Jesse, this has got to be the hardest episode we’ve ever done. Like this topic is so heavy. 

JESSE EUBANKS: I totally agree. I mean talking about sexual abuse, it’s just really difficult. But it’s also really important. And today we’re going to see that sex offenders aren’t who we think they are, the real damages of abuse, and how we as God’s people can respond.

RACHEL SZABO: And we do want to note that, though abuse can happen at any age, our stories today are specifically about child sexual abuse. And also, there’s a couple scenes in our story that are disturbing. We’ll give you a heads up.

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Bill Cosby. Larry Nassar. Harvey Weinstein. Recently our news was dominated by sexual abuse allegations against recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, but it’s not just the news. You know, the church is full of these kinds of stories too. I mean, the Catholic church has been facing sex scandals in the public eye since 1985.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, but this isn’t just within the Catholic church either. I mean, even within the evangelical world, you’ve got Paige Patterson, you’ve got Bill Hybels, you’ve got Sovereign Grace Church, all of which have been accused of various forms of sexual misconduct. Now, an allegation is an allegation. It could be true or false. And only time will tell whether it is true or false. But when they are true, that’s really serious. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and what we’ve seen time and again when these stories come out in the church is that the church either tries to sweep the abuse under the rug or they just want the victims to be forgiving or they take a defensive posture, and y’know, they’re trying to just protect their leadership. And I’m wondering — is that the way God responds to abuse?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well you’re in luck because God is actually pretty clear about how he responds to those who abuse others. 

In the book of Ezekiel, God tells the prophet to speak judgment against the leaders of Israel.  And he’s judging them for being abusive. They were taking care of themselves and not taking care of the people like they were supposed to. And it’s clear God is angry, to the point where in chapter 34 verse 10 he says — ‘I now consider these shepherds my enemies. I will take away their right to feed the flock. The fat and the strong I will destroy.’

RACHEL SZABO: God’s not playing around, is he?

JESSE EUBANKS: No, he’s not. Another verse, uh, often cited in regards to abuse is Matthew 18 — ‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.’ God clearly does not take abusing and misleading people lightly.

RACHEL SZABO: But the thing is that when it comes to the church, so often we do take it lightly. I mean, let me, let me tell you a story about what I mean. And this story is about a woman named Meg Hostetter.

So Meg grew up in a small town, and this town didn’t have a lot. But one thing that it did have was several churches. So here’s Meg.

MEG HOSTETTER: A lot of people were in those churches. That was kind of the — that kinda set the social temperature for, for the community. In small towns, there’s not a whole lot to do. So my church in particular, um, had a pretty vibrant youth group. 

RACHEL SZABO: Now it’s important to note, like these churches were good churches. Like they taught Scripture, they loved one another. I mean even the youth group that Meg mentioned, it was a solid youth group. And since there wasn’t much else to do anyway, Meg spent most of her time at this youth group.

MEG HOSTETTER: Yeah we did it all. We had Bible study, we did a spring break trip to the beach, we would do lock-ins at the church.  

RACHEL SZABO: Any time there was a youth group event, like Meg was there. In fact, she was so involved that she even got invited to join this group within the youth group. It was kind of a student leadership position.

MEG HOSTETTER: And then there were more meetings to go to before events or after events, and so there were more planning times. 

RACHEL SZABO: Basically Meg lived and breathed youth group. And according to her, part of what made the youth group so attractive was the youth pastor.

MEG HOSTETTER: Very charismatic leader, um, that you just want to be with, that’s really fun, that attracts both young people and adults.

RACHEL SZABO: So Meg loves spending time with the youth pastor and his family. Like his wife was super sweet, and they had two young daughters that Meg loved to babysit.

MEG HOSTETTER: Because we lived in the same neighborhood, I would go early for youth events that were held at their house. I would stay late after helping clean up or whatever. So I was in their home quite frequently.

RACHEL SZABO: And, y’know, as Meg was telling me all this, it was sort of uncanny how much our experience was similar to my experience, like this sounds like my youth group. Like I was part of a student leadership council, I hung out with the youth pastor all the time, hung out with his wife all the time.  

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and I just have to say that I’m a little confused because I’m hearing all of this and like there’s nothing alarming in this. It doesn’t really sound like any kind of story of sexual abuse or anything. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah well, but you said it yourself at the top of the episode — 90% of abuse happens by people we already know. Which means that sexual abuse may not happen the way that we think it does. And just a note for our listeners, the scene that you’re about to hear does get disturbing.

So one day the youth pastor is dropping Meg off at her house, as he would frequently do. And as they’re driving, he looks over at Meg and he says ‘Hey, would you like to try driving the car?’

MEG HOSTETTER: And you’re like ‘Wow, you know, you’re 12 years old and that’s pretty cool to be able to drive someone’s car, y’know, on a back country road.’

RACHEL SZABO: Meg trusts her youth pastor. She thinks, y’know, he’s letting her do something really special. And so naturally she says yeah. 

MEG HOSTETTER: He would allow me to drive his car, but I sat in his lap.

RACHEL SZABO: And while Meg is sitting in her youth pastor’s lap, he begins touching her. Inappropriately.

MEG HOSTETTER: And I froze because it was shocking.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold, hold on. Can I — I’m not trying to be inappropriate, I’m just trying to clarify. Can you — can you help me understand exactly what’s happening. I mean, is he holding her hand? Like is he trying to fondle her? Like what’s happening right now?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah so when I asked Meg to clarify what she meant by inappropriate touch, she actually didn’t want to specify. So we don’t know the details of what happened, but what we do know is that it was so traumatic that she didn’t want to go into detail about it.

MEG HOSTETTER: I, I knew that I was incredibly uncomfortable. I was embarrassed. It completely caught me off guard. It was so out of place and so didn’t match everything else. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So what did Meg do?

RACHEL SZABO: Well I mean, she’s twelve. She goes home, and she tries not to think about it. And because Meg respects her youth pastor, everything got really confusing really fast.

MEG HOSTETTER: It’s so strange how a 12-year-old mind thinks because I wasn’t thinking about myself and I knew that I didn’t want to embarrass him, which was really weird that I wanted to protect him and I wasn’t thinking about protecting myself. And I think he knew he didn’t have to tell me not to tell because his reputation was so good with everyone, everyone loved him so much, he wouldn’t have to tell me not to tell. He knew I wouldn’t.

RACHEL SZABO: Now it’s hard to have stats on sexual abuse because most people don’t share it. But it is estimated that only about 30% of sexual abuse victims will ever tell anyone what happened. And it’s also estimated that the majority of those cases are by accident and not on purpose.  

MEG HOSTETTER: If I told, it would break his family. What would his daughters be like having — knowing that their father is like this? What would his wife be like knowing that her husband is like this? What would the church — like it would break the church. Just in my mind it was if I keep secret everything stays together, but if I say something everything gets broken. 

JESSE EUBANKS: You know it’s almost like the first critique, right? ‘Why didn’t you come forward earlier? I mean, if it was true, you would’ve come forward earlier.’ We put all of this skepticism on people that are potential victims because we don’t think they moved at the right pace. But I’m hearing Meg describe all of the internal pressures, and I’m going ‘I wouldn’t have come forward.’ 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah. So what she does is she tries to pretend like it never happened.

MEG HOSTETTER: I think one of my coping mechanisms was just driving into so much and staying so busy that I didn’t have to reflect and I didn’t have to think. I have to keep this facade up that everything’s okay because if I say that it’s not then other things will fall apart.

RACHEL SZABO: But she’s now very wary of her youth pastor.

MEG HOSTETTER: I would try my best to get out of those circumstances in the future and try not to take rides or if he was like ‘Let’s, we can take this long way back to the house,’ I’d say ‘No, I really have homework to do. I have to…’ So I would find a way to not get in that situation again. but then he would find other situations.

JESSE EUBANKS: So it wasn’t just this one time? Like this kept happening?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah.

MEG HOSTETTER: When there’s lock-ins at the church and it’s — you play hide and seek and everything’s dark, you would find opportunities where it started as something fun, like we’re just playing this game, and then it turned into something awful. Um, um when I was babysitting was when it was the worst.

RACHEL SZABO: And just to note, this scene also gets disturbing, but this will be the last disturbing scene in this episode. So the abuse actually culminated with attempted rape. So one day Meg was babysitting the youth pastor’s daughters, and while they were taking a nap he came home. And he was on the verge of raping Meg in his home when the phone rang. And he had to stop what he was doing because if he didn’t answer the phone it would wake his daughters up. And that incident happened two years after the initial car ride in his lap. So Meg’s youth pastor abused her for two years. 

JESSE EUBANKS: How does a child endure something like that for two years? Like the level of evil and destruction — how does a kid deal with something like that for two years? And my other question is that how in the world is this going on for two years and no one knows anything about it? 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, like there was no suspicions about the youth pastor. Like no one thought like ‘This guy looks like a shady guy.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well I mean, I guess this is what people are talking about when they talk about the idea of grooming. 

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: The grooming process is ultimately the methodologies that offenders use to gain access to a child. 

JESSE EUBANKS: This is Boz Tchividjian. Boz is a former prosecutor, and he also happens to be a grandson of Billy Graham. And grooming is something pretty well known in the legal community.

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: A lot of times some will use the term testing rather than grooming. You know, they begin to do little things to test the family of a child to see if a family trusts that individual. Because that’s really critical. I mean, if you don’t have the trust of the family and guardians of that child, it becomes really difficult for that offender to access the child. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So gaining trust can take a lot of different shapes. Some people might hug a child more than necessary. Some people might buy gifts for a child. Some people might offer to take a child on a trip that their parents can’t afford. Some people might be really faithful servants in children’s ministry. According to Boz, really there’s no one way that grooming occurs.

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: You can look at certain behavioral patterns and say ‘Okay, here are common behavioral patterns.’ But these are just common ones. It doesn’t mean if somebody’s not doing this, they’re not offending.

JESSE EUBANKS: Grooming is a very calculated and thought out process. I mean in hindsight Meg’s youth pastor groomed her and her family. I mean one — he’s the youth pastor, so there’s a level of trust right there. But then he also lived in the same neighborhood. He gave Meg leadership roles. He had Meg babysit his kids. He gave her rides. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I think, y’know, had Meg’s church had some level of understanding about grooming, maybe there would have been some red flags. But you know when it comes to sin, and especially sexual sin within the church, oftentimes we just want to be ignorant and silent. And that’s why many churches just like Meg’s, y’know, they don’t have structures in place to help prevent something like this from happening in the first place. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Because if we don’t talk about it, then obviously we can’t put a plan in place to prevent it either.

RACHEL SZABO: And so the abuse went on for two years in silence. And then when Meg was 14 years old, that silence was suddenly broken. But it wasn’t broken by Meg. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey, Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets sexual abuse.

JESSE EUBANKS: We’re following the story of Meg, who’s been sexually abused by her youth pastor for two years. But now the abuse has been brought to light. But — not by Meg? Is that right, Rachel? So what happened then? 

MEG HOSTETTER: And then a couple of girls actually came forward and pressed charges. I had no idea that he was doing similar things to other girls. Had no idea.

RACHEL SZABO: So it turns out these other two girls in her youth group were also being abused. It wasn’t just Meg. Y’know, in fact some reports say that a male sex offender who prefers female victims will abuse an average of 52 girls. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh, that’s horrific. So because these other girls said something, did Meg finally come forward and say something too?

RACHEL SZABO: Well, so Meg’s dad is an elder at the church. And so when all this came out, he wanted to know if this had been happening to anyone else.

MEG HOSTETTER: He sat down with me and said ‘Hey, did any of this happen to you?’ and I was like (gasps) because the stories were almost identical, his grooming techniques were the same. And of course I lied to my parents. I kinda was waiting to see how it played out with the other, the other people that came forward.

JESSE EUBANKS: So what happened then?

RACHEL SZABO: Well, so these other two girls pressed charges. The youth pastor was put on leave. And then the court date arrives. And Meg is actually feeling pretty hopeful.

MEG HOSTETTER: I was so relieved that they came forward and I thought ‘It’s over. They will catch him, he will be gone, and I don’t have to tell anybody anything.’ Like I can just move on with my life.

RACHEL SZABO: But that wasn’t exactly the way things played out.

MEG HOSTETTER: They didn’t believe the girls, even though their stories were eerily similar to how they were groomed. It was their word against his, and the charges were dropped.

JESSE EUBANKS: I don’t understand. If you’ve got two girls and their facts are nearly identical and they’re both making this accusation, why is the judge not believing them?

RACHEL SZABO: Well like Meg said, it was the youth pastor’s word against these girls’ word. And when it comes down to either a teenage girl is lying or a youth pastor is lying? I mean, obviously you’re going to go with the teenage girl.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, well then that brings me to my next question, which is this verdict is saying that these children made up this accusation. And I wanted to know — what’s the reality of that happening? What’s the likelihood that these kids are making it up? So again, here’s former prosecutor Boz Tchividjian.

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: Y’know, the research that’s been done on this will demonstrate that false allegations of child sexual abuse occur anywhere between 1% and 7% of the time. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so here’s what that means. That means that the idea of a false report being filed by a kid, that is slim to none. It virtually doesn’t exist. It’s a statistical anomaly. So I asked Boz why so often people don’t believe a child when they report.

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: Uh, it’s much more comfortable in most churches to gravitate towards a narrative that this child is either mistaken or is making something up, rather than ‘Oh my goodness, this person who I’ve always loved and admired I’m discovering is not that person at all and is somebody actually who has abused and harmed a child.’ He’s a criminal. We don’t like that. So if there’s anything we can do to gravitate towards the narrative that we prefer and are more comfortable with, we will do, and that is to me what happens so oftentimes in the church. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and the crazy thing is okay, not only did the church not believe these girls that came forward, but actually once it was, y’know, decided that the youth pastor was innocent, they all went out and celebrated. So one of the church members owned a restaurant that Meg actually worked at occasionally, and so once everything was cleared and all of the charges were dropped and everything, they were like ‘Hey, let’s go have a party and celebrate our youth pastor.’ So they all go to this restaurant, and Meg actually ends up serving her abuser at his victory party. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Like the level of injustice in that is terrible. This man who is secretly abusing young girls and then Meg has to sit there and pretend to have a smile on her face and serve the guy? And that he would go along like ‘Let’s go eat at this restaurant’ knowing that one of the girls that he’s abused is going to be serving? That is just evil. That’s terrible.

RACHEL SZABO: Yes it is. But the reality is, I don’t actually know what the attitude of the church was because Meg requested that everyone in this story remain anonymous. So I don’t even know the name of this church. I was not able to contact them to ask them about this event. But at the time for Meg, any hope that she had that this guy would be caught is gone.

MEG HOSTETTER: I thought, ‘Well if they’re not gonna believe them and they were amazing girls, then surely nobody would believe me.’

RACHEL SZABO: And so, Meg continues to be silent.

COLLEEN RAMSER: One, at her age, who does she go to? 

RACHEL SZABO: So this is Colleen Ramser. Colleen is a therapist who specializes in caring for victims of trauma and abuse.

COLLEEN RAMSER: And if this person is in a position of power, it’s not uncommon for someone to feel like they don’t have any resources or options and if they speak out what that’s going to do to the overall community.

RACHEL SZABO: So Meg just continues pretending like everything’s okay. She just keeps herself busy so she doesn’t have to think about it. But even though she’s doing a really good job of hiding it, the reality is the abuse is still affecting her.

COLLEEN RAMSER: Our brains and our bodies were meant to go through these things, and so when we do, um, there’s a lot of a shame, a lot of emotion, a lot of confusion, um, some detachment that can feel very anxious.

RACHEL SZABO: And y’know, the other reality that Meg was facing was the fact that her abuse happened by a spiritual leader. And according to Colleen, I mean that adds a whole other layer. 

COLLEEN RAMSER: I mean the amount of evil that is in the abuse from a spiritual leader — it’s one thing to look at, say a dad, my dad who is abusive throughout my childhood who may not be a believer. It’s another thing to look at someone who we see as a gateway to our only hope in Christ being someone who abuses me. So then God becomes this sort of detached figure who doesn’t care.

RACHEL SZABO: And even at just 14 years old, I mean this is what Meg was experiencing.

MEG HOSTETTER: It completely wrecked my spiritual life. Huge issues with trust, but the bigger issue of trusting God. I remember thinking ‘When I get old enough, I am going to get as far away from this town as I can and as far away from the church as I can because the church isn’t a safe place and people who say that they follow God are hypocrites and are not safe people and the people that should be the safest aren’t.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, y’know what’s really sad in this situation is that it has become so common to turn on the news and hear reports of religious leaders sexually abusing people that they’re supposed to be caring for. And I think that for a lot of us, we just fail to realize the very real impact that those events are going to have on someone’s faith in God. How is it possible that God is good? Why didn’t he show up and care for me? If the abuser was the one who taught me these things that are supposed to be true but the abuser treated me the way that they did, well then maybe all these things aren’t true at all. I just think that we fail to realize the lifelong implications of what happens when someone who is a spiritual authority to us abuses us.

RACHEL SZABO: Well, true to her word, y’know, once Meg was old enough, she left. She graduated high school, and she moved away to college. And honestly at this point, thinking about her abuse isn’t really part of her everyday life. I mean, y’know, the more that you practice something the better you get at it, and Meg had had a lot of practice of hiding her pain. But according to Colleen Ramser,  the hiding isn’t going to work forever.

COLLEEN RAMSER: Disassociating from it, where the pain kind of gets put aside — it’s still there, it still gets stored in the body, but it gets put aside in order to survive. And that particular skill is helpful in the moment by masking it and pretending like everything’s okay. You’re able to go to school, you’re able to get your degree, and you’re able to, y’know, move on, but at some point in your life the body begins to present these symptoms that we can no longer avoid.

JESSE EUBANKS: So when Colleen talks about your body presenting symptoms, it’s helpful to think of it like this. When you’re stressed out, those symptoms, they turn inward. So maybe your thoughts are racing or you find yourself emotionally overreactive. But also when you’re stressed out, those symptoms go outward into your body. It’s gonna show up in things like maybe your heart races or you have a headache. So the idea is that stress has both an inward expression and an outward expression. It shows up emotionally, and it also shows up physically. And all of the same is true with abuse. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so it’s now been at least five years since Meg was abused. In fact, some victims won’t begin processing their pain until decades later. But eventually, there comes a point where our bodies can’t hold our trauma anymore and we fall apart. And for Meg, that was happening now.

MEG HOSTETTER: So I was kinda falling apart in college because I wasn’t taking care of myself at all, um, because I wanted to lose myself. I didn’t think I was worthy of care. I didn’t think that I was worthy of attention. I knew I was broken. And when I talked to other people just about their lives, I was like ‘Holy cow, that is not my experience in life. I lost so much — I lost my childhood. There’s a lot of memories I can’t remember because I think I just deadened myself.

RACHEL SZABO: So in college Meg became depressed. She became isolated. And she wasn’t going to be able to pretend anymore. Meg was gonna have to tell somebody. But who could she tell? Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome back to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets sexual abuse. 

JESSE EUBANKS: We’ve been following the story of Meg. She was abused by her youth pastor, she’s now in college, and the effects of that abuse are hitting her hard.

RACHEL SZABO: So in order to get help, she first is gonna have to tell someone about her abuse. And one of the people she tells is a guy named Jake. 

So Jake and Meg went to the same college. That’s where they met. And they had actually started dating. And in fact, Jake was pretty sure at this point that Meg was the woman he was going to marry. Like he was head over heels for Meg.

JAKE HOSTETTER: Y’know, there’s just a charisma about her. She’s a, she’s just got so much — I recognized that she had so much strength and so much passion.  

RACHEL SZABO: So one night they’re talking, and Jake brings up his ex-girlfriend. And he had actually broken up with her to start going out with Meg. And it turns out that his old girlfriend also had a history of sexual abuse. In a different city. In a different church.  By a different youth pastor. And Jake expressed his feelings about that toward Meg.

JAKE HOSTETTER: I essentially said, ‘Yeah, well it’s good I’m not in that relationship anymore anyway because of all that history, carries a lot of baggage.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh, did he just say that basically people who suffer sexual abuse, like they’re just baggage to deal with?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, essentially that’s what he’s saying. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, Jake. Oh, what are you thinking?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, well in Jake’s not-so-great defense, he actually was just repeating words that he had heard from his mom.

JAKE HOSTETTER: I just parroted what my mom had said to me, having no idea that that was her story.

JESSE EUBANKS: Wait, so he had no idea that the same thing had happened to Meg?

RACHEL SZABO: No, and y’know of course, Meg is absolutely devastated.

MEG HOSTETTER: And I remember walking away from that conversation crushed because I thought this was the man I was going to marry and all of a sudden I was like ‘He can’t marry me. Once he finds out about my baggage, he’ll just think it’s baggage. Like he has already labeled the stuff in my life as baggage.’

RACHEL SZABO: Well after that conversation, Meg decided that one thing she was not going to be anymore was silent. 

MEG HOSTETTER: I marched right back to him, and I said ‘Listen, this is what happened to me and you need to know it because if you wanna be with me this comes with me and it’s not my fault that I have it.’ And for me, handing over the weight of that secret was humiliating. It was the scariest thing I ever did, and holding my breath until his reaction was the longest like — it was probably a second, but it felt like 10 years seeing if he would still accept me or not.

JESSE EUBANKS: So what did Jake say?

JAKE HOSTETTER: I was just — felt like the biggest idiot. I had just repeated what my mom had said without ever really thinking through it or processing it myself in a meaningful way, and um, and so just the weight of that just rested in me. I felt sick to my stomach, and I was just like, and I just told her ‘I am so sorry.’ 

RACHEL SZABO: A response which Meg was not expecting at all.

MEG HOSTETTER: He was the first person in my life to look me in the eyes with this strength and this anger and this gentleness all rolled into one and said ‘I’m sorry.’ And coming from a man, saying that he was sorry, that was such a part of my healing process, that he understood — no one told him to do it, but he understood I needed to hear that.

RACHEL SZABO: Everybody’s healing process looks a little different, but for Meg, this moment was pivotal. 

MEG HOSTETTER: And I started going to counseling and really understanding the depth of those cuts — it’s like a million paper cuts — and realizing the depth of influence and brokenness that the abuse brought into my life. 

RACHEL SZABO: So not long after that, Jake and Meg did get married. And so Jake was committed to walking with Meg through this healing process. But Jake didn’t realize that walking with someone through their healing process of abuse — it wasn’t gonna look the way he thought it would.

JAKE HOSTETTER: First of all, there was confusion on my part because she would be so upset sometimes, she would be so checked out. I didn’t know if I had done something or not. Did I disappoint her? Have I hurt her? Have I done something inappropriate? Have I — y’know, what have I done? There was a light that was gone from her eyes, um, for months. Just kinda sucked into a black hole of emotional pain. I don’t know if it was depression or just absolute grief.

RACHEL SZABO: And honestly for the first several years of their marriage, all Jake could really do was just be there and listen.

JAKE HOSTETTER: There was a point where the lights came back on and then there would be a period of time and then the lights would go back off for a little bit and then they would come back on. 

RACHEL SZABO: So this process of, y’know, the lights going off for Meg and then the lights coming back on and then the lights going back off, this actually went on for three years. And then after three years, Jake finally noticed a shift in Meg. And it happened actually when Meg started telling her story to other abuse victims.

JAKE HOSTETTER: But also when she began to share it publicly and uh, began to help walk other people who were further behind in the journey that she was in, to speak hope to them, to console them, and to let them know that they’re not alone. And so that is when she was transitioning from being a victim to being an overcomer.

RACHEL SZABO: In fact, therapist Colleen Ramser says that having the space and the safety to talk about their story is incredibly healing for victims.

COLLEEN RAMSER: As soon as you speak it and you say it, there’s something — there’s a shift that happens in the body where it’s not real. You know, I often consider like taking my shoes off, I’m on holy ground, I’m incredibly privileged because this person has chosen to take a risk.

RACHEL SZABO: And Jake feels privileged too. You know, not only to see Meg get better, but also because he’s learned a lot from her.

JAKE HOSTETTER: One of the important things that I’ve learned through all this is that I’m broken too. You know, whatever our story is, because we all have different brands of brokenness. Everybody’s got baggage. Not listening to someone is one of the most damaging things that you can do. Not taking it seriously enough is one of the most damaging things that you can do. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Y’know, the unfortunate reality is there are so many people with stories like Meg’s. There are so many people who need us to just listen to them. But is it possible for us as the church to not just learn to listen to people’s stories but to learn to prevent them from happening in the first place? Uh, well remember Boz Tchividjian?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah. Prosecutor guy, Billy Graham’s grandson. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yep, yep. Well he seems to think so.

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: I really think I need to take what I learned on the frontlines of addressing this issue to go and train and educate and equip the church.

JESSE EUBANKS: So Boz is the founder of an organization called GRACE. And GRACE helps empower and train Christian communities to recognize, respond to, and prevent child abuse. They can help you know how to limit access to grooming. They can help you know what the reporting laws are. And they can give you counsel to help navigate this serious issue. 

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: There is a disconnect in many churches of understanding first and foremost that these types of offenses are extremely serious crimes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So if you’re listening to this episode, you’re an adult. And part of the responsibility of being an adult is that we take care of the children that we’re responsible for. If you’re part of a church, make sure that you know and you understand your church’s policies on how they’re going to protect the children in your life from sexual abuse. And if you don’t know that policy, go find it. Or if you find out that your church does not have one, then forcefully advocate that your church adopt one. And Boz can help with that.

BOZ TCHIVIDJIAN: Abuse survivors are for the very first time sitting with professing Christians who are actually listening to them, affirming them, not opening their Bible and preaching at ‘em, sometimes not even praying with them, just hearing them. The need for that, not only the need to get to the truth, but the need to dignify these, these amazing but wounded people by hearing their story, affirming it, and doing something about it.

JESSE EUBANKS: So Rachel, how is Meg doing today?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so Meg is doing well. Y’know, it’s amazing that Meg is actually still part of a church and she’s growing in her faith. 

MEG HOSTETTER: It took me a long time to love the church ‘cuz I just, I really hated the church proper for a long, long time. 

RACHEL SZABO: And in fact, she and her husband Jake actually now work in full-time ministry. And one of the things that they’re both able to do is help to educate and equip that ministry to prevent sexual abuse. Because Meg believes that God is doing something with her story.

MEG HOSTETTER: I’m not saying this was his plan at all, but I’m saying how he’s made beauty from ashes truly and how he’s used my story to help others. Hopefully my story to help prevent other young women and young men from having to have any kind of experience like that and hopefully using that as well to change the church into a place that can be safe. If there’s any place that should be safe, it should be our churches.

JESSE EUBANKS: Abuse of power is nothing new to religious institutions. Y’know, Jesus was betrayed and murdered and crucified by one of the greatest religious institutions of the first century. Jesus knows what it is to be taken advantage of, what it is to be beaten, to be naked, to be shamed publicly. Jesus identifies with victims. Jesus identifies with those that have felt the cruel, wicked hand of sin against them. He knows what that is like. And so God has great empathy for those that have been victimized. But the other thing is this — God, he will judge fairly. And a day of judgment will come for those who choose to abuse innocent people. In Ezekiel 34, God is against the shepherds who abuse the sheep. But later in the chapter, he says this to the sheep, to those who have been abused — ‘I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.  I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed. I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak. And I, I will feed them justice.’

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you would like to learn more from Boz Tchividjian and his organization GRACE, you can visit their website at netgrace.org. For even more resources on this topic or to hear past episodes of this podcast, visit our website at lovethyneighborhood.org/podcast.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode — Meg Hostetter, Jake Hostetter, Colleen Ramser, and Boz Tchividjian. Special thanks also to Ministry Safe. They also do fantastic work in training and equipping churches. You can check them out at ministrysafe.com. Also, I just want to make one quick correction from our last episode. Our last episode was called Where the Gospel Meets Foster Care. And we realize that we made a mistake, and one of the mistakes was that we frequently referred to children that are in foster care as orphans. And the truth is that many children in foster care are not orphans. In fact, many of them, their parents are alive and their parents are working hard to reunite the family. And we meant no disrespect. It was clearly just a mistake on our part, and so we do apologize for that mistake.

RACHEL SZABO: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Rachel Szabo, who is also our producer, technical director, editor, and Red Flags queen. Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Podington Bear, Blue Dot Sessions, and Murphy DX. Theme music and commercial music also by Murphy DX.

RACHEL SZABO: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. Grow in your faith and life skills.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’