Clergy
Sexual Misconduct
Evaluating a Complaint
by Gary Richard Schoener
Gary Schoener is a licensed psychologist and Executive Director of the Walk-In
Counseling Center in Minneapolis, MN. He is the senior author of "Psychotherapists'
Sexual Involvement with Clients: Intervention and Prevention", co-author of
"Assisting Impaired Psychologists", and has written many
articles on this topic. Schoener has consulted in more than 3000 cases of sexual
misconduct by professionals and was a member of the Task Force on Sexual Impropriety of the
American Psychological Association and its Advisory Committee on the Impaired
Psychologist. The Walk-In Counseling Center was the recipient of the 1977 Gold
Achievement Award in Hospital and Community Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric
Association.
This article has been reproduced with permission from the
Walk-In Counseling Center. Copyright © 1998 WICC.
Preface
Created as a presentation for the Church of Norway, Sola
Strandhotell, Stavanger, Norway -- 1-2 September 1997. Edited by AdvocateWeb,
with permission from the author.
Source of Complaint
Awareness of alleged sexual misconduct by clergy & church workers can come from
many sources, each one of which presents particular problems in terms of investigation.
While the first duty is to be supportive and helpful, at some point the details may be
quite important and have to be determined. THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY.
Stories always differ a bit because of people's perspectives, their assumptions, their
beliefs, and because they each have a somewhat different set of facts. In the area of
vision, depth perception depends on TWO eyes -- that is because each sees the scene
slightly differently, and it is the discrepancies which produce three - dimensional
vision. Each person's own memory may also change -- new details may be remembered in
response to questions, subsequent events, hearing someone else's version, etc.
Psychological defenses also color people's memory of events, as does fear as to how others
(e.g. a husband or wife) will react.
Potential sources of a complaint, or rumor are:
- The parishioner or counseling client: the subject of the complaint may come
forward because of personal hurt and injury, because of anger, in order to protect others,
upon learning of other victims, to attempt to save a marriage after the relationship has
been discovered, etc.
- Family of the alleged victim: a spouse or son or daughter or other relative may
complain; if there is a marital breakup involved, anger & resentment may color
judgment.
- The offending pastor or church leader: The offender may him or herself come
forward and self-report misconduct. This can be in the context of knowing that it has been
discovered or that a complaint is about to be filed, or due to guilt and remorse and a
desire for help.
- Family of the clergyperson or church leader: an angry spouse or child who has
discovered the relationship may complain, and again, anger & resentment can color the
picture
- Friend of parishioner or counseling client: someone in whom the victim has
confided, or who has discovered what is going on, may report
- Another parishioner or counnselee: This person could be friendly towards and
protective of the victim, or angry and jealous of the victim; they may have facts, or just
suspicions
- Church staff member or official: those who work with the clergy are often in a
position to note behavior which is atypical or unusual, and to suspect or discover
misconduct; their role as an employee or leader, however, may complicate their role in
dealing with the situation.
- Another clergy person or leader: such a report can come about when the clergy
person tells a colleague, asking for advice, or just to ventilate
- Rumor in the community: someone who is not a member of the church talks about a
pastor's alleged misconduct.or news account
- Police or Rape Center or other professional: this is where a complaint is made to
the authorities, or to a counselor, and that person undertakes an investigation or phones
with a complaint;
Note that with either 9 or 10 above it is possible that you will learn of the complaint
from the news media. For example, there may be a charge of improper sexual behavior in the
community in which you later learn the victim was a parishioner. Furthermore, a charge of
child sexual abuse in the community would have obvious implications for the church, even
if the child was not a parishioner.
Complaint Investigation
The absolute cornerstone of complaint investigation is carefully gathering the details
of the alleged relationship and misconduct. It is absolutely critical that you get a
detailed account of what happened, and the context in which it happened. The boundary
violation precursors to the misconduct are as important as the misconduct itself. "We
had sex" means absolutely nothing -- it can mean a look across a room, sexual talk,
some brief touching, or 30 years of sexual intercourse. At some point an investigator
needs to get the specifics.
We then compare stories detail by detail, even including things that are quite
simple such as: "Do you agree that she joined the church around March of
1997?" "Do you agree that at first she came to church irregularly....maybe once
a month?" "Do you recall that your first personal meeting was in relation to the
family's gift to the church?"
Where there is apparent disagreement, we attempt to find a middle ground. For example:
"She says you said you loved her, and you deny it....could you have said that you had
deep affection? Did you in fact feel, at least for a time, deep affection? Could you have
expressed this non-verbally? Are you really shocked that she would have gotten this idea
from you?" [Note: In the USA and Canada we have an additional problem in that the
word "love" is used for many types of "love': parent-child, friendship,
agape or Christian love, love for others, romantic love, etc. "I love you" thus
is far more ambiguous that I have been told it is in Norway.]
The most important guideline: DO NOT ACCEPT CONFESSIONS as being the whole story,
and DO NOT ACCEPT CATEGORICAL DENIALS (e.g. "None of that is true.") With a
confession I still need to check on the rest of the story. More importantly, a
"categorical" or complete denial is: (1) virtually never true; (2) often
constructed out of distortion. For example, here is a real interchange we have on
tape:
Q. Did you have sex with Mrs. G? A. Absolutely not! Q. Well, did you have oral
sex with Mrs. G? A. Well, yes, two or three times. Q. You don't call that "sex"?
A. Well, I didn't know what you called sex.
With most complete denials, the offender ends up admitting to about 90% of the
allegation, but is simply denying what he or she considers the worst part of the offense
-- e.g. whether the victim was attending the church actively at the time; whether sexual
intercourse occurred (as with the example up above). Based on a single disagreement with
the victim's account -- for example, the claim that he said he loved her -- we have had
people reject the entire story and deny it completely.
| Confirming a Complaint |
Disconfirming a Complaint |
| 1. Admission by the accused that he did
what is claimed, or that he or she did something quite similar to what is alleged |
1. Admission by the complainant that is is false,
with a convincing explanation as to why it was made -- "take backs" can be the
result of threats or a desire to protect the offender |
| 2. Witnesses to them having been together in an
appropriate place or time, or to some actual physical contact |
2. Witnesses to a situation in which comments or
touch occurred which was allegedly inappropriate but which witnesses dispute was
inappropriate |
| 3. Contemporaneous notes, diary, photos
which reveal an improper relationship. These are rarely proof, but can be quite useful as
confirmation |
3. Records of counseling & consultation which
reveal honest attempts to deal with what may be transference feelings as opposed to true
seduction |
| 4. Contemporaneous revelations -- telling
family, friends, counselors at the time the events occurred |
4. Consultations with colleagues or others for
help in dealing with infatuation which wasn't desired and which was not the pastor's fault |
| 5. Letters which reveal the closeness or
other personal details |
5. Letters admitting that it wasn't an intimate
relationship [see warning in (1) above] |
| 6. Audiotapes (videotapes): some have
made tapes of the sexual act, others have taped phone conversations |
6. Audiotapes of a conversation in which there is
an admission of this is a false complaint |
| 7. Knowledge of body: scars or unusual
features only visible when person is not clothed; if male, is he circumcised?; color of
the pubic hair [especially if it differs from the hair color on the head] |
7. Absence of knowledge does not disconfirm: we
have cases of acknowledged sexual contact where the victim, despite multiple sexual
contacts over many years, did not notice of a prominent scar |
| 8. Knowledge of inside of home: if sex
took place inside pastor's residence, ability to describe bedrooms which could not have
been casually observed. |
8. Grossly incorrect description of inside of the
pastor's home |
| 9. Knowledge of details of personal life
of the pastor including things which would generally be private or secret |
9. Absence of knowledge or incorrect information
does not disconfirm since misinformation could have been given to the person by the pastor |
Remember, you can always end up by listing what is agreed to or confirmed, and what is
not. You may not end up with a complete story that everybody agrees to.
Types of False & Misleading Complaints
Until recently, although one sees reference to allegedly false complaints from time to
time, there was virtually no literature on them. Our book Psychotherapists'
Sexual Involvement With Clients: Intervention and Prevention (Schoener, Milgrom,
Gonsiorek, Luepker, Conroe, 1989) had a chapter on this issue. More recently there are
articles about "false memory syndrome" and the focus has been on memories which
were "repressed" and then "recovered." The vast majority of cases do
NOT involve any sort of repressed memory.
- Misunderstanding by followup helper: This is the most common type we see. The
complainant says "we had sex" and the counselor assumes this means sexual
intercourse, and then makes a complaint of sexual intercourse.
- Mistaken identity: this occurs when the victim or some third party is hiding the
name of the alleged offender, but drops some sort of a clue -- e.g. a first name. The
followup helper believes they know who it really is and tells someone else, but is wrong.
- Misinterpretation of words or touch: while many offenders use this as a defense,
in our experience it is quite rare, but it can occur. In most instances where it does,
there has been a poor management of professional boundaries, but not necessarily sexual
ones.
- Exaggeration or distortion by parishioner or client: the complainant uses
inflammatory terms or language which exaggerates what happened until you clarify the
specifics. Examples are "he raped me" in a case where the pastor asked someone
out on a date. This does NOT invalidate the complaint, but it may cause you to evaluated
it differently, and certainly to describe the offense differently.
- Hostile & aggressive client or parishioner with an agenda: whether there is a
legitimate complaint of some type, this person collects information from many people and
presents it in an exaggerated and inflammatory fashion which makes it seem that the pastor
is a hard-core offender with a long history of misconduct when in fact this is not the
case. However, just because someone has a vendetta doesn't mean that parts of the story
aren't true.
- Personal rather than professional relationship: someone angry when a relationship
does not work out or when they feel used may imply that they were in a pastoral or
counseling relationship, whereas this is not true.
- Apparent fabrication: these are extremely rare, and we don't believe we've had
one involving a pastor, but we have had a few with psychotherapists. In one instance there
was no apparent reason, but in two there were revenge motives relating to limits-setting
- False "recovered" memory: while still a small subset of cases, in North
America there has been a growth in people remembering early abuse which was believed to be
totally outside of consciousness -- that is, repressed. Most of our cases involve people
not thinking about the abuse or not remembering it at first -- not true repression. Some
spontaneously remember -- some do so in therapy. If the memory was induced by hypnosis or
some other technique, like it or not, it is hard to evaluate. Some are subsequently proven
completely true, some are proved clearly false, and some appear to be a mixture of things
which are, or could be true, and things that can't be true. Investigation may not be
possible and "false memories" are just as vivid as "real memories."
Walk-In Counseling Center (WICC) grants permission for a printout to be made,
but asks that multiple reproductions for use as handouts be made known to them.
Please contact them, if you are considering this, to see if they have a more recent
handout or one even more suited to your intended purpose. Any use should properly
credit the sources -- WICC and the AdvocateWeb site
(http://www.advocateweb.org). For permission to reproduce more than one copy,
contact: Walk-In Counseling Center, 2421 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55404.
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