OH HI THERE, WERE YOU IN THE MOOD TO BE REALLY UPSET RIGHT NOW? ME, TOO, LET’S GO:
Raised in a conservative Mennonite home in rural Ohio, Katie Landry was a sheltered kid. She hadn’t even held hands with a boy when, at age 19, she says her supervisor at her summer job raped her. Two years later, and desperate for help, she reported the abuse to the dean of students at her college.
“He goes, ‘Well, there’s always a sin under other sin. There’s a root sin,’” Landry remembers. “And he said, ‘We have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape.’ And I just ran.”
Landry ended up dropping out of college, and didn’t tell anyone else for five years.
Her college was Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., the flagship campus of American fundamentalism, which teaches a literal interpretation of the Bible and separation from the world.
That is from a long, great Al Jazeera piece on BJU’s history of responding to sexual abuse and sexual assault allegations from students. It is a painful read, but if you can do it, go check it out. It is absolutely nonstop infuriating, especially when it covers a certain mode of religious thought that cannot possibly be healthy and helpful to humans:
Landry didn’t know the word rape; she only knew adultery, and liked the man’s wife, she said.
According to emails, Berg also advised Sarah to call her rapist and ask for forgiveness. Sarah said Berg told her that if she didn’t forgive, God wouldn’t be able to “use her.”
Berg said her eating disorder was “a lifestyle of sin,” and Julia graduated believing “God has spit me out,” she said. Seven months later, she says a co-worker and Bob Jones ministry student raped her. She thought of him as “the tool that God used to punish me.”
Thankfully, the one good thing is that this piece comes in the wake of BJU itself addressing the problem, by asking an outside Christian nonprofit to come investigate and analyze their past history and figure out how they can do better, which is an important step. But still, whoa that is a hard read.
Dear The World: This shit is not okay. Thanks, Everyone.