Why Social Media Is a Last Resort for Survivors of Clergy Abuse
The church shouldn’t need a hashtag to shame it into taking sexual violence seriously. Abuse survivors shouldn’t have to look to Twitter and Facebook and blogs to find a place to belong, to be believed, and to give voice to their trauma.
Mainstream media has played a crucial role in giving voice to survivors. As Christine Parker pointed out in a recent interview with Robert Downen: “Church leaders aren’t listening to survivors until the media tells their story for them.”
The rise of social media in the past decade has provided an additional — and no less significant — outlet for #ChurchToo survivors to tell their stories, though not without great cost.
In February of 2019, the Houston Chronicle dropped its bombshell investigation into hundreds of abusers in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who, like their Roman Catholic counterparts, had been protected for decades by people within the church. The “Abuse of Faith” series shined a much-needed spotlight on Protestant clergy sexual abuse and has sparked outrage and pushback across the evangelical spectrum.
