To Whom It Should Concern:
The alleged offenders, the ones who offended against us, contacted us a great deal. Please see the legal record we have previously sent to you. The attached records are congruent with that legal claim. They contacted and connected with us through deceptive measures, using their personal cell to our personal phone lines, emails and private messages in clerical code, they invited us to public occasions and private engagements, took us on special trips, they each kept us, their victims, their “special secret.”
We were profoundly discouraged after our recent conversation and will remain so. We are certain you and your colleagues noticed that our spokesperson was overcome with weeping by the end of the dialogue and was unable at that time to adequately close the conversation verbally.
This was not then, and is not now, a power neutral conversation. The alleged offenders are esteemed members of your organization (church, ministry, para-church ministry, faith-based school, publishing company, non profit organization) and are allegedly Christian leaders.
Some of us are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, however all of us were specifically targeted, groomed, and exploited either as a minor or an adult. Some were preemptively sued and all were silenced. The alleged offenders conduct has been reprehensible, their collective capacity to cover their tracks formidable, while their impact on our personal wellbeing and professional lives has been nothing short of carnage.
These alleged offenders have conducted a well crafted private and public campaign against their victims. This alone, with their easily falsifiable claims is enough to dismiss and disqualify them from public ministry for the rest of their lives. In some cases, what they have done, is enough to place them in prison for the rest of their lives. We assure you without reservation that we are NOT a litigious people group who are “in it for the money.” We beg you to consider what our motives would be? For money we do not need and publicity we don’t want. If you wish to see our collective financials, you may contact our respective accountants.
Of the many things this situation is: abuse of power, clerical misconduct, clergy malfeasance, clerical malpractice; one thing it is most emphatically NOT is a “He said, She said” conversation or dialogue. We are devastated that you and your colleagues see it as such. While it is true that we have very little evidence, these alleged offenders conduct their deeds in the cover of darkness with no witnesses. We submit that we ARE the evidence.
Some of us are professional people in our own right. Many of us are part of professional organizations that assume we hold the power over the people that we serve. They rightly assume that consent can never be implied or given for a sexual relationship between us, the professionals, and any person we serve in our collective and individual professional capacities.
As a group of victims, but also a pack of professionals, we understand that we are responsible to guide and direct relationship of the people in our collective care. If any one of us had conducted ourselves as any one of these alleged offenders had, our individual licences would be revoked. These alleged offenders held the power and clearly still do. It appalls us that our secular professional organizations, have a mandate to protect the public, understand breech of sacred trust, the seriousness of sexual abuse, and a better understanding of fiduciary duty than the your current “sacred” oversight.
It appears to us that you and your learned colleagues assume that all these alleged offenders could plausibly be the victims they claim to be. This notions utterly astounds us. It removes from the dialogue and thus the ecclesiastical investigations, even the most rudimentary understanding of the sacred trust, the power differential, and seriousness of sexual abuse that you should hold as overseers.
At no point now or in the future could we ever support such a conscious, dare we say callous, clergy-centric approach. If you have NOT had the opportunity to acquaint yourselves with research on clergy malfeasance and abuse by religious leaders, we challenge you to do so.
Regards,
Survivors of Clerical Malfeasance Worldwide