Like many, I saw my professors as interpreters of the Kingdom of God. I held an M-Div and was a UM missionary when I divorced my husband in 2002. When I began a PhD program at the seminary, I continued in therapy with a professor of counseling and pastoral care because the sexually abusive relationship with my husband had begun when I was 14; I did not want to minister to others without having dealt with my past. My abusive past had begun as a child.

In my eyes, Dr. P. had saved me—I told him I trusted him with my life. That is when he began to tell me how other sexually traumatized clients found healing through being touched, hugged, and held by him “in a safe manner.”

In the isolation of his seminary office, Dr. P justified his free-lance psychology, stating that women were not understood by his colleagues, nor helped by standard practices—he gradually convinced me that his “willingness to bend the rules” was for the sake of our healing. He defined his actions in terms of the Kingdom of God, and promises to never shame, reject or hurt me. He told me he had “adopted me” as a daughter, transforming himself into a father/God figure who would heal my past and always defend me. I truly believed he represented Christ and salvation, for he had saved me from my abusive marriage.  I trusted him. I wanted healing.

He set ground rules in which touch was ok, except touching his genitals—I felt too uncomfortable to question that further for I had no intention of touching him sexually and was embarrassed to imagine his touching me at all. Yet he was already describing clients having needed to be held by him, unclothed in order to feel his “safe touch.” The seminary community respected and praised this man and I began to want to do all the right things for him, to please him as a daughter wishes to please her father, and trust the logic that he shaped:

• you seek healing
• this is how God can heal the hurting child in you
• this is the safe place where I can help you experience a father’s love
• I am safe. I will not reject you or shame you or hurt you because you are my special daughter and I am your father in the Kingdom of God and this is what is best for you—our secret.

Yes, I wanted him to know I trusted him to heal me. Yes, I would follow the “rules” that no longer seemed so shocking because I trusted him as my father—like God in the flesh—as he hugged me, sat me on his lap and pulled my shirt over my head to hold my breasts…

… there is no part of me that he did not touch—God in the flesh.

Only after reading the description of pastoral grooming which was posted on The Hope of Survivors, did I begin to understand how horribly my therapist—a seminary professor of pastoral care and former pastor—had violated me for 2 years. But the tragedy did not begin, nor end, with Dr. P.  In therapy with Dr. P., I had begun to have  flashbacks of situations that had taken place with another professor—Dr. W—of the seminary who was not only my advisor, but also the dean in charge of my area of study. The flashbacks created tremendous guilt, for I did not understand the vulnerability that previous sexual abuse creates in a woman. To the world around me, I was strong and intelligent, the mother of three beautiful children. I had been called “super mom” and my marriage appeared to be storybook-perfect to those around us—we kept up the image, but the image was tearing me apart.

You see, as a victim of sexual abuse for many years, I had become very dissociative. Dissociation is one of the body’s ways of enabling us to protect our minds and compartmentalize experiences too difficult—and often too horrific—to remember. As a professional therapist, Dr. P. was very aware of what the dissociation pointed to in my history—sexual abuse and therefore vulnerability to being manipulated and abused, again. During sessions of counseling, I had begun to dissociate very much, and recounted experiences which had taken place with Dr. W. These often came back to me through flashbacks. I felt extremely guilty about remembering some of these things, as they had taken place while I was still married. But Dr. W had taken on a pastoral role in my life, as he had with other students—he was the favorite professor. I had often witnessed his hugging and joking with other students, so when he began to hug me, I believed that was just “his way” with students, for no other professor or student seemed to question his gestures. I believed all the professors were truly godly.

During an organized mission trip, Dr. W. began to tell me that he loved me. After we returned to the states, his hands had begun to move around my body as he hugged me, and that is when my automatic responses were to dissociate. The only way my mind could cope with what was happening was to compartmentalize (in order to forget) the way he was treating me privately, so that I could continue to function as a student, wife and mother. This sort of compartmentalization is not intentional, but is an automatic survival response triggered by confusing and threatening situations which replicate former abuse in the mind of the victim. I was a moral and God-fearing woman who had never considered, nor desired an intimate relationship with any other man other than my husband. If anything, the way that my husband treated me sexually, only made me less desirous and trusting of anything sexual—this only heightened my confusion as I began to have flashbacks and memory recall of situations with Dr. W.

I was on a full academic scholarship, and this PhD was my dream. But when I began to remember situations in therapy, I repeatedly asked Dr. W. to leave me alone. He would e-mail me and expect me to spend time that I needed to study, in responding to his e-mails. He gave me details of his life that I did not want to know. As the dean, I was required to meet with him periodically, and he wanted to schedule me during lunch hour, or times when others would be out of his office. He began to send e-mails telling me he saw my car in various places and knew where I was—he was beginning to stalk me. When I avoided him and asked him to allow me to have another advisor, he made my life very difficult as a student. Everyone wanted to study with him as a mentor and he was determined that I should want that, as well. He was so respected in the seminary community that I was afraid to tell anyone. I really was a good student, and I only wanted to be treated like a student—but his actions towards me defined “student” differently than he seemed to be treating others.

Please understand that coming into seminary and still rather new to the church, I looked at my professors as if they were God’s messengers—they defined what was “godly”, what was O.K. and what was “sin.” With over 50% of the class population being second career Christians, I was not alone in idolizing my professors and mentors. We had left lifestyles defined by secular society, and entered into this place some jokingly referred to as “the holy city.” Being the victim of years of emotional and sexual abuse had added another aspect of vulnerability and even more of a need to be able to trust those in positions of authority. I know that I was not alone in this regard. A simple survey of students who enter the areas of mission and evangelism, pastoral care or counseling will reveal that most of these persons have encountered a sense of healing through their faith which they want to offer to others, through being Christian professionals. Many Christian professionals will go on to hurt others, whether unintentionally or intentionally, due to never having dealt with past hurts in their own lives. I did not want to be one of those professionals. That is why I remained in therapy after my divorce. I believed in Dr. P. I had heard him speak and teach, and I had taken two years to finally trust him.  I told him of that faith in him. I trusted him as a husband to his own wife, and a father to his own children. When he “adopted” me as a father, I finally let down the last barrier of any mistrust. He had me; his misconstrued form of therapy began to sound O.K., and where it didn’t, I trusted him and began to mistrust others, more and more, for he told me that I could ruin his career and his marriage if I told anyone of his form of therapy. My confusion heightened but I had taken years to trust him—when you finally break down and trust someone, inside your psyche cannot face that you trusted the wrong person—again. I was investing in healing, so how could I psychologically face that I was being abused—again?

But I had begun to learn and when you are seeking to learn and seeking to heal, God is relentless. Where we seek, God makes a way for us to find the answers and if we are really seeking, we will face the true answers, no matter how painful it is to see them. I was always seeking—in that I know that God knows and was leading me to find the truth even in the depth of such confusion.

I began to read on my own about addictions and those who are in authority and that need the approval of others in order to boost their own self-esteem. I recognized other professors who seemed to have “groupies”—students that they offered to meet with to mentor, or to whom they gave special attention. I began to recognize various forms of the same misuse of trust, where students were so enamored by various professors, so trusting of the godly community, and so in need to feel of value, that they would do most anything to remain in that professor's good favor. Even in my own confusion, I was seeing more and seeing myself, more. I believe I was seeking healing to such an extent, that in spite of the distorted, free-lance therapy of Dr. P, God was giving me eyes to see—eyes to escape both situations. There was no one to whom I could turn; for I loved Dr. P. as a father—how could I face that this father to me might hurt me? There was no one to whom I could turn, except God. It has cost me everything, but truly, truth sets one free, and only God’s truth is redemptive, in the end. The costs are great, but I would rather know the truth than live in an illusion that distorts and perverts all that is truly meant to be of the Kingdom of God.  In the end, each of us stands before God with our actions and with who we are.

When I finally gained the strength to face Dr. W. and bring charges against him, the seminary provided him with a support group and required that the process be kept confidential. I vomited every night of the process, but I kept it confidential—to my detriment. Only Dr. P., my therapist, knew all the details that I brought up in therapy when in a dissociative state. Memories continued (and continue) to come as flashbacks—disgusting flashbacks. Dr. P urged me to bring charges against Dr. W., while continuing to induce periods of dissociation during my therapy—in order to help me, he told me.

At this time, my seminary work was deteriorating and I was a struggling single mother. I was dissociating regularly in my therapist’s office, and Dr. P. was seeing me daily. My teen-aged daughter later told me she thought I was brainwashed. I trusted Dr. P. more than anyone—he had helped me escape a sexually and emotionally abusive marriage; he had promised to help me through the process of bringing charges against my former advisor. Then everything changed.

The director of Human Resources offered to take my testimony against the professor over a weekend because I asked to get the process over quickly, as it was psychologically taxing me. Dr. P. offered to help me through the process of being interviewed by the HR director. But after the first Friday afternoon, he left the room in tears, supposedly because he could not bear to hear me recount the things which the professor had done with me. (I now believe that my words had somehow begun to make him face the guilt which he would recognize in his own actions towards me, while I was in a dissociative state. He was supposedly inducing dissociation so that I would continue to recount horrible things that happened to me, but I now recognize he only re-created the vulnerable states in which I was able to be mistreated and sexually abused by him. He told me I should not feel ashamed when I woke out of a state pressed against him on his sofa, both of us without various clothing, with his arms around me. He told me it would be healing to remain conscious as he removed my shirt and held my breasts, rather than to dissociate—he wanted me to look into his eyes as his eyes moved over me.)

Dr. P told me that he was the only one that really understood me. He told me that another counselor once questioned how often he was seeing me. (I paid him $90.00 for every visit) and he led me to believe that he was protecting me from insinuations by his colleagues, as well as from Dr. W. and my ex-husband who continued to treat me with contempt and vehemence. I felt no physical attraction to Dr. P—in my eyes, he was my adopted father and the language of our correspondence reveals the child-like state into which I had been reduced. He wrote e-mails to me, confessing his love for me as a daughter, telling me I held a special place in his life. He said that he, and he alone, really wanted to know me and teach me how to be truly loved by a father in he way that God intended. I was so caught up in the brainwashing that I could not step back from it long enough to see what my teen-aged daughter was recognizing. 

But after the first interview with the director of HR, I went home to see a documentary about high school coaches who “groom” their teen athletes in order to physically molest them. Their descriptions and methodology were identical to what Dr. W. had done to me. I was stunned. On the next day, I met with the director, alone, without my therapist (for he told me he could not bear to hear my descriptions another day). I told her of the documentary, and then I told her that after the documentary I had recognized that Dr. W. had used the same methods they had described. I had been groomed to be sexually abused.

That night, I went home and began to research the idea of “grooming.” I had heard the word used in reference to pedophiles, and now to these coaches, but I was shocked to have my search take me to the website of The Hope of Survivors where I found the description of “clergy abuse.”

This is where the veil dropped and the shock began. First, it was completely in reference to Dr. W. I met the following day with the HR director, having printed off the description of the clergy abuser—“This was Dr. W. to me!” I told her. Over and over I recounted memories that came forward, catalyzed by the description. I had believed he did not know what he had done to me—all along I had maintained he was negligent but not premeditating. But after reading this description, I knew he had known exactly what he was doing to me.

But the worst part did not end there. It took me 6 months of slowly facing the truth about what seemed to be taking place with my therapist. Finally, I confronted Dr. P. before a class—he had hired me as a teaching assistant, for I was no longer a client of his. I told him he had to face what he had done to me and what I believed he might be doing to other students. I remembered our conversations about my size—I am petite and was easily held by him like a child. I knew that he might be treating several other young, petite women in the same way. I knew that I could not let him continue to do to other vulnerable young women, what I had finally understood was not for my healing but an abuse of my history of abuse! I told him that if God was in his actions, than it must be ok to tell the truth about what he had been doing with me and with other women! Everything he had done, he had done in the name of the Kingdom of God!

Initially Dr. P cried and admitted that I was right. He begged me to forgive him and said that he would change. Three days later he made my life a literal—I don’t use the term “hell” lightly—but he brought my life to a literal hell. I lost friends, community and the church turned against me, for in order to protect himself, he used me as a scapegoat, calling me crazy, accusing me of seducing him and stealing records from his office. I lost custody of my son, my full scholarship for a PhD, and in the end, any money. I had paid him over $50,000.00 in fees and at one point had given him $10,000 in cash, for he had told me many problems he had in his family and I wanted to help. I had also given him antiques and paintings for his own possession, as well as a new computer. But in the end, I was being followed, threatened and finally driven from the community I’d loved. I lost a full scholarship and am no longer a PhD candidate. Because I was also employed as a teaching fellow by the seminary, I was fired in retaliation for my speaking out. I struggle from month to month to pay the rent, but worse, I was driven from the community that is raising my son in lies. I was in such a state of confusion and unable to face that my seminary community was abandoning me to his lies, was allowing me to be followed, harassed and even threatened, it took almost two years to step back and look at all that happened. But because the statute of limitations is only one year, I have no legal recourse before me, either.

The worst outcome is that I have FOUGHT to find trust, again, for this man betrayed the ultimate trust. He made himself my “adopted father” and took all that I have, but then denied all his actions and accused me before my community of seducing him. He represented me as extremely mentally ill and delusional. I have been recovering from what he did for two years, just trying to find life again. I trust God, but no church, hardly any persons. I lost my son to my sexually abusive ex-husband because of Dr. P. But he has not fully stolen my life. I never lost trust in God.  God has always seen the truth.

Dr. W. has moved on to an important position in his area of expertise as a missiologist in residence among a prominent United Methodist evangelical mission organization. And Dr. P? He continues to practice therapy with women who have experienced sexual trauma, on Main Street, in the same little “holy” town.

And in my evangelical seminary community—Asbury Seminary? Nothing changes.

I have learned that Dr. P. had been allowed to continue a clinical practice within Asbury Seminary, as a professor of pastoral counseling, even after confessing to his supervisor, the dean of theology and even the seminary president, that he had had sexual intercourse with a former client in his clinical office in another state. This confession had taken place two years before I was a client of his. Those same officials knew he was seeing me—a sexually abused and traumatized woman, newly divorced and vulnerable—5 times per week in his office for two years. I was the patient/client. As the patient/client/student, I could not be expected to know how to get myself out. Yet, I believe because no one in authority would face the truth, God helped me to finally realize and face that this was not right. At that point, though still in confusion about whom to trust and to whom I should turn, I was determined to get other young women out of his grip—but it cost me everything. Truly, this has cost me everything. Yet, in the end, I know that each of us stands before God who sees whether the ways that we live our lives reflect the persons that we say we are as Christians, and as professionals of moral and ethical character. Our lives send a message to the world—when those with Christian authority misuse their authority, they distort the gospel while Satan sits back and applauds.

A colleague/friend of Dr. P.’s confronted me after I began to speak out. With great animosity in her voice, she asked, “Where is God in this!?”

“God got me out.” I responded.

 Dr. W. had a history of being questioned about his conduct with young women, but no one ever challenged or stopped him. Seminary professors of pastoral counseling, the dean of theology, and even the seminary president did not question Dr. P, a man with a history of sexual misconduct in his professional career, about scheduling me and several other female clients so frequently—several times per week for 1-2 hour sessions.  Why?

The seminary keeps its secrets at home. Daddy’s little secret. Classic incest—in the Kingdom of God.