Season 2, Episode 8: Sherrie-Lee Petrie - Part 1

Hagar's Voice

Thank you for joining us and tracking with this conversation describing ten ways to engage with someone who has been sexually violated in a religious setting:
The first three relate to PRE ENGAGEMENT: we can be doing these things before we engage with someone who has been abused in order to be ready to be a safe ally when called upon.
1. Do your own work: spiritual transformation and mental, emotional, and embodied healing practices and routines…not as “duty” but as holy medicine in response to Creator’s invitation.
2. Inform and educate yourself: trauma-informed training and practice is the BARE minimum; proactively educate yourself, your community, everyone you know – advocate all the time. For example, DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender = Jennifer J. Freyd, PhD is a psychology researcher, educator, and author. Her theories of betrayal trauma, DARVO, institutional betrayal, and institutional courage™ have revolutionized the field of trauma psychology and the practice of institutional community-building.
LINK to more information about DARVO: https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html
3. Act and advocate for change in your church or spiritual community: doing nothing is
equal to complicity – strong words but in the current climate of disclosures of clergy sexual abuse they may not be strong enough! NOTE it is up to those who have been sexually violated whether they allow you to advocate and stand in ally ship with them – this is not the ally’s decision.
ENGAGEMENT:
4. Believe the person who has been sexually violated and posture yourself accordingly –
we encourage a decolonized approach here – don’t take charge as we are trained to do in church cultures. Respond to their expressed needs and take action in your relationships with the person they are accusing and their supporters. This is not a time for “waiting and seeing.”
5. Resist the compulsion to ‘theodicize’ the person, their story, or the context: resist
moralizing, offering tropes or empty reassurances, or references to the “strong” survivor narrative (i.e..”I don’t know how you can be so strong.” Etc.)