Mercy Not Sacrifice
During the past week, there have been a lot of stories in the news about child molestation. There was Dylan Farrow’s open letter in the New York Times about what her adoptive father Woody Allen allegedly did to her. Yesterday allegations were raised about the sexual abuse of women by Christian homeschooling pioneer Bill Gothard. Last week I shared that my ordination was delayed partly because it came up in my Board interviews that I had driven a girl from our church to school in the morning during a tough time in her family’s life. In the United Methodist Church, we have something called a Safe Sanctuaries policy which says that children should never be alone with one adult from the church at any time. Over the last week, I’ve thought about the way that I violated this policy and that my blog post about my experience (which I took down) may have come across as disrespectful of Safe Sanctuaries. Two memories have haunted me: a time when I was a victim of sexual abuse and a time when I was falsely accused.
I played on the church basketball team for three years in late elementary and middle school. Our coach was also our seventh grade Sunday school teacher. He was a short man who was a very strict, theologically conservative Southern Baptist. He had one very long fingernail on his left index finger. He had kind of an old school approach to basketball that people from the church admired. He told me not to get those newfangled Reebok Pump high-tops because a pair of Converse Allstars would serve me just fine. I ended up getting blisters from the Converse Allstars but that wasn’t a big deal. He was very big on the fundamentals and very team-oriented. A great coach actually.
I didn’t really think anything about it when he would put his hand on my leg on the bench or slap me in the butt when it was time for me to go into the game. I guess I thought that’s just what old geezer coaches do. If that was all that happened, I would continue to think that. One night, we had an overnight basketball camp at the church. After we played and got really sweaty, he told us we needed to take showers before we went to bed.
There was only one shower. Each of us went one at a time. And he stood at the door and watched us. I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But he said, “That’s a fine piece of equipment you have there.” When I turned, he was pointing at my privates with his long fingernail. He never touched me, but that moment has come back into my mind a lot in the last two decades. I remember talking to another kid on the team who said, “That’s weird.” I said something about it to an adult from the church who was dismissive so I never brought it up again.
It’s certainly not anything compared to what other people have experienced. But I get really angry thinking that I was child pornography for this man who was revered as a huge role model for boys at our church. He was the scoutmaster of the scout troop there. Maybe he’s the reason I hate fundamentalists so much, but I don’t think I can blame it all on him. I didn’t hate him after that night. I still did whatever he told me to do when he blew his whistle. I still answered his questions in Sunday school. But I did feel dirty whenever I thought about it. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that for at least a little while, every time I looked down at myself in the bathroom, I thought that I was shrinking.
Many years later, I was in my first year teaching high school English in Graham, NC. I got called into the principal’s office. She told me that a girl who had been in my class but had recently transferred to another school had gone to the school cop and made an accusation against me. I honestly can’t remember exactly what she claimed I had done. I had made a phone call to her house once because she requested a different assignment when I gave the kids something from the Bible to read as literature. I do remember she said that she thought I was staring at her breasts.
It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I told the principal that I was completely at a loss over what could have possibly triggered her accusation. She told me not to make any contact with the girl, which of course I had never done other than that one assignment. It ended there. But after that, I was very paranoid about where my eyes went while I was teaching, so that no girl could say I was checking her out.
I guess the whole debate about whether to believe Dylan Farrow’s letter about Woody Allen kind of triggered this. I don’t know what to say about false accusations other than that I got falsely accused once and I was telling to truth once to someone who wouldn’t listen to me. I hate the thought that some look or gesture of mine caused that girl to feel violated. Thankfully, there wasn’t any unaccounted alone time with her that would have been “He said she said.” I hope that she has healed from whatever hurt her.
I can’t really exonerate my basketball coach and say it was just my misunderstanding because it’s sexual abuse to stand in the door of a shower and watch a seventh grade boy bathe and talk to him about his dick. It just is. I wouldn’t be mad if I saw him in heaven; I just hope he didn’t hurt anyone else worse.
I guess all I wanted to say is that Safe Sanctuaries really is important for keeping adults and children sexually safe. And I’m sorry I wasn’t more respectful of it. Please don’t tell me I’m brave to share this or anything like that. That’s not the point. If you think I’m showing “poor judgment” by sharing this on my blog, I don’t know how else I would have ever opened up about it other than typing it on a computer screen so I know that I’m not the only one who knows but I don’t have to be there when anyone reads it. I haven’t ever told any of my therapists over the course of my life.
Maybe you didn’t need to hear about this, but I hope that typing it and sending it out will help it not come up in my mind as much. It’s my personal reason why two adults need to be around anywhere that kids are in a church. If you see me in person, please do not talk to me about this because I’m not sure I could handle it. Please pray for me. I don’t know why I’m still hurt by something so minor that happened a long time ago, but apparently I am.
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