Why Women Don’t Win Abuse Cases in Presbyterian Churches
by Caroline McKuen
When I first began attending Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, I had grave misgivings about church membership. I had already experienced clergy abuse in Pentecostal churches, and I was uneasy about potential misuse of pastoral authority.
“What if something happens?” I asked the pastor. “What if you come to believe something bad about me that isn’t true, or what if you do something bad? Do I just get thrown out of the church?”
The pastor assured me that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church allows a voice to all members. Church members with grievances against a pastor, he explained, can take the matter to the Presbytery, the regional church governing body, and even ultimately appeal it to the General Assembly. I would have a voice if I ever needed one.
Still uncertain, I researched some cases that had previously come before the General Assembly. I discovered a surprising lack of cases brought by women. I pointed that out to the pastor, and even sent a question about it to someone in leadership at Willow Grove, but they shrugged it off. Perhaps women were just likely to have their concerns handled at the local level, they suggested—perhaps women were so well treated that they never felt a need to take their complaints to a higher church court.
The uneasiness in the back of my mind persisted, but I decided I was just overreacting. After all, the Book of Church Order allowed for a complaint system—surely that was enough. I joined the church.
Twenty years later, I recognize that uneasiness as a gut reaction to a number of red flags about my now-former pastor. Indeed, even at the time he was explaining to me how safe the church was for women, he was excommunicating another woman for separating from her abusive, unfaithful husband. Some years later, he refused to allow me to separate from my abusive, unfaithful husband as well, even after my then-husband admitted his infidelity in writing. When I fled to another church, the pastor pursued me with demands that I participate in an ecclesiastical trial. I knew that refusing would mean ex-communication for insubordination.
And when finally, after years of struggle, I joined with several other women to bring charges against this pastor, I found out exactly why women seldom bring abuse cases in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The ecclesiastical trial process set out in the Book of Church Order is a horrific, unwieldy monster that favors men (especially church leaders) at every turn and renders women almost completely voiceless. Here are just a few of the most egregious problems with the system as it currently stands:
The OPC system requires tremendous background knowledge of technical details to even file a grievance. Women are not permitted to serve in leadership positions in the OPC, which means they usually have very little exposure to the details of church processes. Women are often not even aware that they can bring any complaints or appeals to Presbytery. Even if they know theoretically that they can, they are likely unclear how to do it. Charges and appeals must be submitted in a particular form in writing to the clerk. Women rarely know how to do this, and they may not even know the identity of the clerk. Unless a woman is well-connected to OPC leadership in some capacity in which she will receive support, she will probably never discover how to frame and submit charges or appeals at all.
The OPC system requires that abusive clergy be tried within their own Presbytery. A woman attempting to bring charges against an abusive pastor will find that she must present her charges to his friends—men who have sat next to him in meetings for years and perceive him as a “good guy”—one of their own. This is the equivalent of loading a jury with a defendant’s friends and family. The trial is thus heavily biased against the accusers, and the accused pastor has ample opportunity to spread slander behind the scenes before the trial even begins.
The OPC system provides little practical protection. There is no mechanism for the Presbytery to investigate a situation quietly. A woman has to appear to give public testimony at an open meeting. There is no security at the meeting. There is also nothing to prevent the accused from recording excerpts of the hearing and possibly using it in court later. An abuser may try to get a restraining order lifted by claiming that his wife testifying in public against him shows that she is not truly afraid of him. He may try to use it to claim parental alienation and seek custody of children. There are no mechanisms in the OPC process for addressing any of these serious safety concerns.
The OPC system often makes it impossible for women to even be heard in a Presbytery meeting. A woman may speak only if the Presbytery grants it by a vote—something that is not always permitted. The accused pastor, as a member of Presbytery, is given free and open access to speak as much as he pleases, whereas a woman bringing a charge against him may be entirely voiceless in the proceeding. With only one side allowed to talk, the case is almost invariably lost or at least obstructed and delayed to the point that it cannot be continued.
The OPC system allows for almost unlimited obstruction. Every decision by the Presbytery is open to objection, complaint, and appeal, resulting in years-long processes that exhaust the complainants before they can even get to testimony. Women attempting to bring charges against an abuser must do so at their own expense, taking time off work and away from children to attend days-long meetings out of state. These are usually single mothers trying to provide for families. They often simply run out of vacation days and money before the case gets to trial.
The OPC system allows women to be viciously retraumatized. The only way a woman can currently bring a complaint of sexual abuse against a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is to stand up before an assembly of men to describe the sexual assault. All the men present are allowed to ask her questions. She may not even be permitted counsel to defend her against overly-invasive questions and slanderous accusations. In our own case, the women expected to testify in front of a crowd of men included two with hearing deficits, one with a learning disability, and one who was still a teenager. This process is potentially incredibly traumatizing, yet the General Assembly, by denying the use of third-party investigative reports in a church trial process, has made this the only avenue available.
The OPC system rarely takes action to stop abuse from occurring. In most organizations, credible allegations of abuse are reason to suspend someone from working with vulnerable populations until the conclusion of the investigation. However, pastors accused of abuse in the OPC are almost never restricted from preaching or counseling. They have unlimited access to the pulpit, from which they can persuade church members to follow them, and they continue to be allowed access to potential abuse victims. Since the process of bringing charges against abusive church leaders is open to endless stagnation, an abusive pastor may carry on his abuses indefinitely as long as he finds another objection, complaint, or appeal to file.
The church trial system in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is structured in such a way that women seeking justice find it nearly impossible to navigate. Almost invariably, they give up, sometimes after years of trying to even be heard.
