Submission theology actively pressured abuse victims to reconcile with their abusers

Evidence

In 2012, a class-action suit was filed against Mahaney and SGM for cultivating an “environment conducive to and protective of physical and sexual abuse of children,” and the details of the case threw into stark relief the dynamics of abuse within authoritarian, patriarchal communities. Plaintiffs described how women and children were “threatened and ostracized if they resisted efforts to ‘restore’ their abusive husbands and fathers to a position of ‘leadership’ in the family,” and according to a former member of a Sovereign Grace church, victims’ families were compelled or misled into not pursuing legal action. If charges were brought, church leaders wrote letters requesting leniency, or urged victims’ families to do so. Families were pressured to forgive perpetrators, and “even children as young as three were forced to meet their abusers for ‘reconciliation.’” One woman was informed by church leaders that her husband’s urge to molest their ten-year-old daughter could be attributed to her own failure to meet his sexual needs; she was told to take her husband back, lock her daughter’s bedroom, and have sex with him regularly. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 631

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to institutional ‘trust’ scholarship — guardians of order protecting abusers over victims, and to the broader pattern in Milgrom’s work on how reputation systems protect insiders.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece’s logic that devotional hierarchy privileges dominant members’ interests.