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Hey Tabi!
Welcome to "Hey Tabi!" the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud, with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here & we are not "take-two-verses-and-call-me-in-the-morning."
I'm Tabitha Westbrook & I'm a licensed trauma therapist (but I'm not your trauma therapist). I'm an expert in domestic abuse & coercive control & how complex trauma impacts our health & well-being. Our focus here is knowledge & healing - trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope! Now, let's get going!
How to connect:
https://www.tabithawestbrook.com/
Therapy Website: (We are able to see clients in NC & TX)
https://thejourneyandtheprocess.com/
Instagram:
@tabithathecounselor
@_tjatp
Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy & is for informational purposes only. If you need therapy I encourage you to find an awesome therapist licensed where you are that can help you out!!
Hey Tabi!
Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Church: What No One Wants to Talk About with Dr. David Pooler
In this powerful episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with Dr. David Pooler—professor of social work, licensed clinical social worker, and director of the Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse Advocacy and Research Collaborative. Together, they tackle one of the most urgent yet under-discussed issues facing faith communities today: adult clergy sexual abuse.
From the psychology of abusive leaders to the church's mishandling of sexual misconduct, Tabitha and Dr. Pooler explore how trauma, theology, and power intersect in devastating ways—and how survivors can lead the way toward healing and justice. They discuss everything from the Me Too and Church Too movements, why so many church leaders are unequipped to deal with abuse, and what true restorative justice in religious spaces could look like.
If you're a survivor, a pastor, a therapist, or just someone who cares about the church being a place of healing, not harm—this conversation is a must-listen.
👉 Topics include:
- The hidden crisis of adult clergy sexual abuse
- Why survivors are the experts the church needs to hear
- The dangers of quick re-platforming and institutional silence
- EMDR and trauma-informed care for Christian leaders
- The role of shame, theology, and spiritual formation in abuse dynamics
- What a trauma-informed, safe church could look like
- Why real accountability isn’t punitive—it’s redemptive
🙏 This conversation contains sensitive content about sexual trauma and clergy misconduct. Please take care while listening.
Find Dr. Pooler's work at https://socialwork.web.baylor.edu/person/david-pooler
🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.
📩 Connect with Tabitha:
💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
📲 Tabitha's Instagram - www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor
🎙️ Podcast Homepage - https://heytabi.buzzsprout.com
💻 The Journey & The Process Website - www.thejourneyandtheprocess.com
📲 The Journey & The Process Instagram - www.instagram.com/_tjatp
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👍 If this episode resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and share to help others who need this information!
🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.
Need to know how to find a great therapist? Read this...
Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now let's get going.
Speaker 1:I am super excited to be here today with a very special guest. This is Dr David Pooler, and Dr Pooler is a licensed clinical social worker and professor of social work at Baylor University in Texas. Dr Pooler is also the director of the Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse Advocacy and Research Collaborative so important which aims to provide useful information to allies, advocates and leaders who want to make religious spaces more safe and transformative. He earned his Master of Science and his PhD in social work from the University of Louisville, and Dr Puller is an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse and serves on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Clergy Misconduct Task Force. He's also an EMDR-trained therapist and he includes insights from both the research and the clinical practice in speaking about interpersonal and institutional trauma in religious spaces. And, dr Pooler, I'm so glad that you're here.
Speaker 2:Thanks, tabitha, for having me. I'm always grateful to have an opportunity to share more and talk more about this research that I'm doing because I think it really does matter and it's helpful to people who've been injured deeply.
Speaker 1:It is so important and it happens more often than people think and realize, and the fact that they have a whole center at Baylor dedicated to it tells us that. So tell me, if you're comfortable, a little bit about how you got into this work to begin with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually rolls back about 20 years. For a number of years I myself was actually an ordained minister in the Church of God out of Cleveland, tennessee, which is a conservative Pentecostal denomination. I'm no longer a part of that, I'm no longer an ordained minister. But rolling all the way back, I remember as I was doing my social work, my master's in social work in the late 90s, I was in this strange space of I feel too secular to really do a great job in the religious world and sometimes I feel too religious to be super effective in social work, and I was in this weird space. Over time I've become very integrated. But I will just say this In the late 90s, when I first became a minister, I was paying attention to my own mental health.
Speaker 2:I was in therapy but a lot of my fellow ministers were not and were not talking about their mental health. Then that really got me curious, like why aren't ministers more attuned to this? Why does this not matter to people? Is there something wrong with me that I'm so weird that I struggle with anxiety and depression and shame and things you know? So that got me on a track.
Speaker 2:Then, when I decided to do my doctoral work, to study decided to do my doctoral work to study ministers whose ministry was impacted by a mental health problem or a substance use problem or sexual addiction or whatever. That was my first entree into thinking about the church, about healthy congregations, healthy ministers and ways that maybe ministers could be less than effective. But I wasn't really thinking about ministers really injuring people deeply. So let me move forward into my doctoral work. I wanted to actually do a survey of ministers and when I started my PhD program, this is 2002, 23 years ago my gosh. But if anyone's looking a little bit of modern church history, this is the same year that the Boston Globe broke a major story about priests abusing children and adolescents and how they moved the priests around and covered it up and silenced victims and that kind of got my brain going a little bit. But it also alerted my dissertation committee members and they were like hey, david, we don't think you should try to study ministers right now. We're not sure that you're going to get a sample of people who are interested in participating.
Speaker 2:Well, I pivoted and I began to really look at helping professionals more broadly and about well-being there and about peer support and frequency with which people do help seeking when you're a professional yourself. And that's opened me up to thinking about ethics and basically how professionals helping professionals in particular are regulated in particular self-regulated, but also, if you will, licensed professionals or board regulated. I got completely immersed in all of that and then I spent the first few years after I finished my doctoral work kind of publishing on social workers and other helping professionals and problem drinking and other kinds of things. So fast forward then. Basically my career started at the University of South Carolina. But partway through that I got an invitation from the dean at Baylor in the Garland School of Social Work. Diana Garland herself it wasn't called the Garland School of Social Work at the time Said hey, would you consider a job here? Long story short, I end up at Baylor and I start in 09. And for four years Diana Garland has already been doing work in this area.
Speaker 2:And then I reconnect with my initial interest in ministers, but what happens is it begins to morph. As I see her work I'm like, in all honesty, I think a bigger difference can be made, if you will, in the body of Christ by actually looking at people who are being injured and learning from people who've experienced harm. Because it just dawned on me early on because of my social work training, that wait a second. Survivors are the ones who have the insight. They know what is and isn't healthy. They know what would or wouldn't work. They are going to have the best ideas actually about what would make religious space more safe or healthy and what a healthy leader does or doesn't do. And so a decade ago I ended up, with Diana's support and with the support of a survivor who was very interested in doing research, the three of us got together and I put together a research package, a survey that was sent out a decade ago and that's where a lot of what I talk about comes from a study that's now a decade old. And, by the way, just so listeners will know, I'm planning this summer to launch another study with a lot of the same kinds of variables, just to see where we are a decade later.
Speaker 2:Because if you think of the timing of that study, 10 years ago, that's prior to Me Too and prior to Church Too, and we were not talking about the ways that leaders can sexually abuse and sexually assault and target and exploit people in close proximity, that they care for, that are in a relationship with them. But it was Diana Garland who really helped me frame this issue and understand it, and when she passed, I basically just carried the mantle on. This really became a passion of mine and something that I care deeply about, and I knew I was going to carry it on. I'll just say this Tabitha, I knew I was going to carry it on when I did that study, because part of what I did is I asked respondents hey, if you'd like to be interviewed and share more? And I was really naive at this point because I said, about ways that your church has been helpful and healing and did all the right thing I'm sure I'm going to get lots of examples of this the right thing. I'm sure I'm going to get lots of examples of this. Well, what people would basically say is well, the church responded horribly, but this one person or this one minister that I talked to on the side did say this one thing that actually was really helpful and it helped me move forward. Could I still be interviewed? Myself and my research assistants?
Speaker 2:At the time, we interviewed 27 survivors and I think that's when my clinical background as a social worker kind of my interest in trauma I had just recently at that point in 2014 become EMDR trained, and so it just all came together and I was like I get what's happening, why it's happening, how it's happening, and really am understanding, through the eyes of a survivor and through the voice of a survivor, the nature of these injuries that are occurring when this happens, and it really, and I was like I've got to do more work around prevention awareness, like we've got to grow in this, and so I'd written a book chapter in 2017. And so, when the kind of the church to movement right on the heels of the Me Too movement you know, journalists covering different kinds of things we're just looking around for someone that might be able to weigh in, who's done some work or has some knowledge on this, who might be considered an expert. And so that's where, I would say, in 2017, 2018, I just started getting really. It was journalists who were covering a story of a case and that then and I was also let me just say this I was an administrator also at the time, from 2014 to 2019 at Baylor and it kept me from actually engaging this research as much as I would have liked, so I came out of administration in 2019. So it took a couple of years to get back and going again. I've been publishing off of the data from 10 years ago and presenting on this a whole lot more than I have, and so now I'm.
Speaker 2:The work that I'm doing is now, I would say, informing, and it's a part of the conversation that's happening and, tabitha, I'm sure you're well aware of this. The conversations are really not happening at the top, with among leaders, about how to address this. It's happening at the grassroots. It's happening among survivors and allies and people who are starting support groups like Awake for Catholics or RVC for more for Protestants. Things are happening there and it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:I'm getting to speak in just about a month here at a conference. There's three different organizations that are coming together to do a conference, and the topic of it is adult clergy sexual abuse, and it wouldn't seem that that would be the center of it, but that's happening. So what I'm saying is we're now in 2025, right now, eight years plus post Me Too, and Church Too, we're now starting to see people care enough about it to say, hey, we're going to have a conference. That is the focus of this issue, and so we still have a lot of work to do, but I'm grateful to be a part of the conversation. I'm grateful that the research that I've done matters as an informing and bringing data points that people can actually look at and talk about.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And what stands out to me in this story in so many ways is how God ordered your steps and brought you from like hey, this I'm curious about how are leaders caring for themselves and not even thinking they could cause harm, but just they would be terrible leaders? And then a whole other diving into helping professionals and man, those of us who are licensed every single state, every single year. When you go to your ethics training, they always say the number one is sexual exploitation of clients, which is mind boggling to me because I cannot imagine. But just in Texas recently, somebody lost their marriage and family therapy license because of exactly that, and it was a pretty big news story that was out there. And so to look at like man okay, you've already got this understanding of harm from that perspective, and then to circle back around through getting the job at Baylor to someone who's already doing the work but the wisdom of talking to survivors and this is what I think is probably the most important thing. This is why in spaces that I'm in, we tell survivor stories when they're obviously with their complete consent or redacted heavily. We're always very careful, but the survivor's voice tells you so much and when we do listen, we get a lot of insight.
Speaker 1:In 2018, call to Peace Ministries did a study of domestic abuse and coercive control in the church, and 72% of respondents said that they went to their church first for help. Only four would ever go back, and that says, man, we've got something broken just there. And so that the leaders aren't having these conversations in churches stands out to me as well. It's the survivor's voice, and are we really paying good attention and do we really have humble enough leaders who are willing to say is the system the problem? Am I the problem? Where's my own heart? I don't think, and you tell me if I'm wrong, because you've done the research.
Speaker 1:You know that most pastors think I would really like to sexually exploit congregants and just have a terrible time. Most are not predators in that way. Most people slide into it through their own attachment wounds, failure to do their work, hiding sin, hiding brokenness, all of that stuff. Sexual addiction is a big one. I do see people go places as a sex addiction therapist that they never thought they would go. Is that your sense of it? I know we have some predators at the top who are truly wicked.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think it's Tabitha. It's honestly, I have I've not been able to tease out in a sense these different profiles of people who do this. I would say the behavior is indeed predatory. But I think if you interviewed someone engaging in that predatory behavior and said, are you a predator? They're like no, I'm not. I'm not trying to prey on people, I'm not. So I don't think there's a self-perception, but the behaviors they engage in become that and I agree with you. I think there's a lot of unmet needs, a lack of self-reflection and self-awareness. I've said this all. I read a book in the late nineties that talked about ordination as a shame reduction technique and as a.
Speaker 2:Basically, what these authors were pointing out is that people are drawn to ministry from a very wounded and broken place where there's a lot of shame radiating and emanating from them and getting set apart as a minister and I'm different and I'm better and I'm other than the congregant as a way of trying to reduce shame. While it might succeed in doing that, if the person hasn't really examined some of their whys. They're motivated to be in ministry because I think this whole idea of calling is much more complicated than we would like to see. In other words, there's a lot of other motivations at play and I sometimes think our denominations and our seminaries and places that train and develop ministers are not. We're focused more on theology than on psychology. People would probably accuse me of having a major bias toward having a focus on psychology and kind of what's going on with the person, not the theology. But I think my work really does point out the fact that you can have good theology and say the right stuff and yet be coercing and exploiting someone at the exact same time, and so there's something going on in the development spiritual formation, if you will of ministers that's inadequate in most spaces. Absolutely Right, I think you're right. There's a lot going on there that churches and denominations and the structures around them are just not even having the conversations. They're not talking about what we're talking about right now. And if they would, that might alert some people to say, oh my goodness, I really need to pay attention to this and get some help and do some prevention work. Right, I'm just going to be super vulnerable here.
Speaker 2:I think on some level that was me right.
Speaker 2:Without some reflection and awareness and taking stock of my own mental health, I could potentially have been a person out injuring others, right, I think that's the thing is, just because I'm ordained doesn't mean I'm impervious to having problems or somehow inoculated from harming people, right? Anyone who's working with people has the potential to harm others. That's why you as a marriage and family therapist, me as a clinical social worker it's like we have boards that actually can protect a client, where a client has a place to go to talk to someone about me and my behavior If it's inappropriate or unacceptable, and that board can step in and take some actions to deal with that. Worst case would be removing my license altogether, but it could be a lesser step of monitoring me and watching me and making sure I'm only practicing with certain clients, of monitoring me and watching me and making sure I'm only practicing with certain clients, but in other words, they got eyeballs on me. But that kind of regulation and oversight just does not happen in religious spaces at all.
Speaker 1:Most have. Either they're autonomous right, Like the Southern Baptist Convention, Church of God, Church of Christ they're autonomous churches. Then you have ones with more polity, like the Presbyterian Church of America, OPEC all of those. However, the way that plays out is often protect the system, not the victim, and that's deeply problematic, Also looks nothing like Jesus. So I have questions in general about that. Very interesting to me, as we're talking about how the system I think it might be inadvertently becomes insular.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you where my thoughts are going with that, Because I work with people in all spaces and places and all kinds of things. But I get a lot of seminary men and women and in seminary, in all of the seminaries from which I have ever had a client, they could not disclose what they are telling me in therapy or they will be put on academic probation and kicked out. Now some are disqualified, quite frankly. And you can love and serve Jesus this is a quote from my friend, Chris Moles, who is a pastor and better interventionist but you can serve Jesus at Best Buy. You don't have to do it in the pulpit, and so for some people I think that is the wisest place to go. Serve God, Do your work and don't lead people like that.
Speaker 1:But there are some that it is coming from their trauma, particularly for sex addiction. Not all sex addicts are abusers and exploiters in the way that we would say of a full-on, true abuser, and I know that some of my folks listening here are probably about to stroke out. I'm not saying addiction is not abusive. It is abusive and betrayal, trauma is brutal and it is harmful and awful. And so I am not minimizing their behaviors, their outcomes, the impact, none of that.
Speaker 1:But they're stuck and they a lot of times want to do something different once they come to terms, they just don't know how to do anything different. And so if we aren't letting men and women in seminary get real help, we're setting ourselves up and a lot of churches, when they ask questions or vet pastors will talk to the potential candidate and their wife's questions are often so how are you going to support your husband? Are you sleeping with him enough? Things like that, instead of what's it like in the bedroom? What's it like at home, what's happening for you, and really looking for those spaces where coercive control is showing up, and that's a failure. On how we assess right, we tend to gravitate toward charisma, ability to teach instead of character. I'd rather have a clunky sermon with a good guy than the most beautifully orated thing and a guy who's like sleeping with half the congregation and harming people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I wanted to piggyback on something because I'd actually written a little bit about this all the way back in 2011. I had written an article in Pastoral Psychology but it was entitled something like Pastors and Congregations at Risk, and I looked at role identity theory, about how pastors develop an identity of being other than congregants, but part of what goes on in that space, and it was also just a critique of the system, very similar to what you're saying, which is there's just not a lot of permission to talk about being human. Here's what I'm actually struggling with, because a lot of people feel like that would then keep them from ministry. Or if I'm already in ministry, I'm already out there doing it to talk about what's going on, or I'm vulnerable or hurting or overwhelmed, not coping well, like to actually admit that and be transparent and open with someone.
Speaker 2:I think there's an enormous amount of fear of punishment or losing one's job. It's really interesting, diana Garland, when she interviewed some people in one of her studies. She actually interviewed some ministers who had perpetrated clergy sexual abuse and their primary concern was about losing their job. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't about how they might have harmed somebody, but it was this sense of I'm in this role. So having and maintaining a job right for some folks is the most important thing, right, and maybe it's because their identity is wrapped up in that their sense of self is mediated through this role that I'm in.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of things going on that are very unhealthy my identity being mediated through a role, not being able to ask for help or seek help. That being punished right, and I think our religious institutions and how we educate, train spiritually, form. There's so much more work that can be done, but some spaces don't want to lean on, if you will, the clinical sector or the healthcare sector or the helping professional sector. But yet a beautiful integration could be there that would inform and help support a minister to be really healthy in what they do, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think there is in some spaces still a lot of fear of the licensed counselor or really well-trained biblical counselor who's trauma-informed. And it's interesting to me because we're all in the body of Christ together, we're all going to live together forever. We might as well get along. This is how I feel about it, but also it's a misunderstanding I think of. It's a fear-based response.
Speaker 1:Frankly, I'm afraid that you have been educated in such a way that will take you away from Jesus and I think that's poppycock personally. But I understand the fear right, and in some ways it is a good fear to wrestle through, to say we want to maintain good orthodox theology, we don't want to have a drift because we don't drift toward holiness. We tend to drift toward unholiness, honestly, and so I hear that and I feel that. But I feel like there are more conversations to be had about. Well, like what does it look like? Right, like? So both you and I are trained in EMDR. I will say that the negative cognition that we speak of is this is what I believe about myself in a situation that looks nothing like what God says. And the positive cognition that we're moving toward and that we're helping integrate through dealing with the trauma is this is who God says I I am and this is where I want to put my feet. And so that really is the essence of a faith-based version of EMDR that still follows the standard eight phases and all of that stuff. And when you add in things like the somatic elements of it knowing what's happening in your body, right.
Speaker 1:So if you have a pastor or clergy member who was sexually harmed as a child and then we see them acting out as an adult, my question as a therapist besides, let's make sure that other people are safe is what makes this make sense, what happened to you? And finding out some of that? And if they have a soft enough heart and they're willing to go there, then going like, oh, this is an enactment, you are trying to put back together the pieces from the pastor that harmed you and inadvertently you're going and doing the same thing, trying to fix it. And now you're in like neck deep here. Buddy, you know, and look, I'm happy for good therapy that doesn't negate for me also legal consequences when they're appropriate. When you have committed a crime, you need to answer that, and I also think that that is also part of the Bible when I look at Scripture right, david raped Bathsheba and then murdered her husband.
Speaker 1:I'm not even going to call it a fair, because I don't think so and I can absolutely make a very I can make a factual argument on that one, but David took the consequences Right when he was confronted. First he repented because Nathan was like you know that lamb story yeah, yeah, that's you buddy. And David went dang and he repented. And when God said, how do you want to handle it, david said I want to fall in your mercy, you choose. And it ended up with a significant consequence. It would have been similar to jail in a lot of ways and David took it.
Speaker 1:And I feel like if the church was willing to do the right thing and if the consequences are there, it's there. If you lose an entire denomination structurally because you follow the consequences, then you do. But at the end of the day, you're not a goat and you're holy and you stand before a living God who says I own everything anyway and everything's going to be okay. And I feel like if we're reading the same Bible and I feel like we should be then that's where we all should land. What is your sense? Just having talked to survivors and talked at conferences and I know you've met lots of people what is your sense on how other people feel about that and their willingness to? I know survivors are like, please let that be. And what's your sense from talking to other leaders?
Speaker 2:About the fear piece and that concern about integrating and going more with insights from that might feel like secular insights. Well, I have several thoughts on this. One of the interesting things that I know came up when I interviewed the 27 survivors and I've heard this in various ways through the years since is one is that survivors want a more human church, and by human I don't mean like loosey-goosey morally or ethically, but acknowledging more around vulnerability, being more transparent, moving away from creating images and demands of people that we have to show up and look a certain way and be a certain way. It's just not possible, and so that's one thing I know about. Going back to the fear piece, it's like I'm with you, tabitha, on some level and I'm not sure why people are so afraid. But I'm going to not to be a little cynical here, but I sometimes think that making a real, clear, sacred secular divide gives the religious institution more power. It doesn't allow another voice in the mix. That could be. In other words, if I allow David Pooler's voice or Tabitha Westbrook's voice into this, I've diluted my ability to speak forcefully and directly and clearly and have my directive followed. In other words, it weakens, it dilutes, but I think that's the fear. My perspective is it adds, it integrates, it adds layers and it actually starts to deal with clericalism, which is this elevation of our leaders to the exclusion of congregants. It begins to flatten out power structures. It empowers congregants to have a voice in the mix and share what they want and need in congregational life, which I think would help prevent. So I honestly think again, this is David Pooler talking, but at the end of the day, the fear is really about losing influence and power by allowing other voices and perspectives to inform what we're doing with people. So that's really, I think, currently what I think that could change over time as I get more information. I think currently what I think that could change over time as I get more information. But that's the current assessment of why I think there's fear in spaces of having more conversations about just trauma-informed care, a trauma-informed congregation right, what would that look like?
Speaker 2:I think that trauma language is very, very helpful. It's not diluting anything. Trauma language is very, very helpful. It's not diluting anything, it's not a problem. It's adding additional layers of information so that we don't over-spiritualize very human kinds of challenges and problems and we correctly have language for that. 50 years from now will we still use the language of trauma. I don't know, maybe, but I'm assuming, in 50 years, whatever language is being used is going to be helpful and useful. I'm just one of these people who, as a social scientist and a professor it's like I include insights and data points from the science. Where is it taking us, the questions that we ask, and we get answers. They're not complete and total answers, but they're moving us along a pathway of examining reality, what's actually happening. And I don't think theology alone is adequate to explain all of reality. It just isn't. It just isn't.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, one of my friends who's a biblical counselor says it this way Scripture is sufficient, but it is not exhaustive, and that is a true statement. Right, we know there are tons of things that we have to reckon with that is not explicitly stated in Scripture and we have to figure some things out. And that is where, the Spirit being the ultimate counselor, which he's named in the Bible as the counselor. So I don't think God has a problem with counseling as being indwelling in us when we are believers. And so if we have that and James says if you lack wisdom, ask for it and it will be given to you liberally and without reproach, which means God's like yes and amen. Let me give you more of that that we have such a beautiful basis to have discernment, which I feel like in some ways, the church has lost the vibe on, it's like. But we can do that, we can discern, we can trust that the Lord can tell us things If he's actually God, then he can do this and to be humble and sensitive to what is actually happening instead of delusional and not wanting to give up power. And it's such an interesting thing because Jesus speaks specifically to power. And it's such an interesting thing because Jesus speaks specifically to power and he says to the disciples, as he is washing their feet you will not be like the Gentiles and Lord over others, and I know from the domestic abuse and coercive control space that I walk in very often that it is power over that causes lots of problems. But when you are, power under which is lifting another up for their good and God's glory, and power with where you're accomplishing things together, we see the church flourishing and we see that especially when we have a healthy relationship between men and women, whether they're married to each other or not, and you have the right outlook on things. And I think about those things and, like gosh man, there's this whole beautiful space and I feel like the world is looking people who have no faith at all at Christians and saying like y'all could really do this better. And I feel like when people are like, oh, but we could, what will people think of the name of Jesus if we say all these things? And actually they think it looks like Jesus instead of like hypocrisy. And when people are saying, oh, man, people are leaving the church, it's just because they're being wooed by the world. No, I think many are sick of the lies, they're sick of seeing these kinds of things and no one addressing it. And people are looking at the scriptures for themselves. I know deconstruction can be a four-letter word with more than four letters, but I also call it sanctification. Right, we are becoming more like Jesus and looking at these things and studying scripture, and so some folks now there are like there's bad eggs everywhere, you know. But some folks who are deconstructing are really just saying you know, what was told to me is not what scripture says, and I'm not going to walk there in this place anymore.
Speaker 1:And you and I were at a conference together it's been a few months now and one of the most powerful moments was of lament and there were some clergy sexual abuse survivors sharing their story on the stage and we were invited to pray with those who had been harmed in the audience, who were participants there were about 500, I think had been harmed in the audience who were participants there were about 500, I think. And I will never forget what that moment felt like in my body, in my spirit. To hear people wailing and lamenting and crying out to God while people laid hands on them was stunning. I know I cried my makeup completely off. I know you probably weren't wearing any, or you would have cried yours off too, but it was stunning and I remember thinking if we did this as the big c church, what could it look like?
Speaker 2:I'm with you there and one of the things I would say and I appreciate that was done in that space too is, I think any survivor they could walk out if that was uncomfortable or felt too churchy for them, but if you wanted to stay, I think for survivor, they could walk out if that was uncomfortable or felt too churchy for them, but if you wanted to stay, I think for many people that was a profound healing moment of being seen and acknowledged and validated in a kind of a structured setting where there's a gathering of many, many people. I think that was probably a first time experience for many survivors to have that acknowledged and named out loud. It's like we see you, we hear you, we're with you, we want to support you. Yeah, that was a helpful use of power.
Speaker 2:I was going to add something to what you were saying earlier about power, because Diana Garland and I had several conversations about power and I realized power's not a bad word. It's power can be used in very constructive and helpful ways to protect people, to lift people, to help heal people, to elevate someone on the margins. Name an experience that more people need to hear about, whatever it can be used very, very powerfully for that. But unfortunately power can be misused in ways where the power then takes from right. That's really what I've noticed. The person with power is saying I have an unmet need and I'm going to impose that in some way on another person and take from them, rather than engaging in healthy communication and boundaries as a way to appropriately express needs and get needs met.
Speaker 2:So we're talking about how do we make churches healthier, really, on some level level, when we're having this conversation and what we're actually looking at is an artifact of when churches are least healthy and when human beings and individuals in that system are not healthy, what things happen in those spaces. I was thinking of something else and I don't know where your thinking is on this. I was thinking of something else and I don't know where your thinking is on this, and I mentioned it in my talk at that conference, but I ended by saying we don't have much room. We're not doing much in the area of justice, right? So why do we not have much room or space for really great examples of when an injury has happened by a leader, of what it looks like to make it right? Yes, agreed.
Speaker 2:We don't have many models of that. We don't have. Oh, look at this church. When this issue happened there, it was really tragic. There were some real injuries, but the way that was handled is a model where maybe the survivor's voice was believed and if the survivor wanted their story to be told or whatever details of that to be known to that accountability, and they acknowledged the wrongdoing, A real path was set forward where that person who had done the injuring actually made it right.
Speaker 2:And then you alluded to this earlier there's accountability. Well, maybe that minister no longer has the ability to minister I mean whatever it is but people accept it instead of saying, no, I need to be back in ministry. There's just stuff that's coming out in the news right away where people are continuing to be too quickly platformed again, without appropriate consequences or adequate reckoning with what actually happened. But I'm just saying that's the model is too quickly replatforming someone, minimizing all the damage and dismissing some pieces of what the person who's been harmed has said. That's just going nowhere.
Speaker 2:And to your point earlier, if you will, people outside of the religious spaces looking at church life they're no dummies and they're going. That's not okay. That's awful. I don't want to be a part of that. I don't want to be a part of a system that does that when a leader harms somebody, Because unfortunately, Tabitha, many of our secular businesses and not religious spaces that are organized, our organizations actually do a better job of holding people accountable. When there's sexual abuse or misconduct in the workplace, the church, in my opinion, is in last place and it ought not to be that way.
Speaker 1:I agree with you completely. I know there's a recent news story the former football player who I believe was an ESPN analyst who was accused of sexual abuse and was resigned from their position. Now will they resurface somewhere? Do I know the whole story? I don't, but just even that is like a very immediate, and there will be people who are listening to this or who come across this somehow and say, oh well, what if it's not true? And all this. What I'll say is that it is very rare that someone discloses something falsely.
Speaker 1:Now, does it happen? Yes, but you can usually figure it out over time. That's what investigations do, and the likelihood of it, though, is very low. It's between 2% and 10% that someone will make a false accusation. And think about what happens to the people that make an accusation and I think we saw it at that conference, because we got to hear from survivors and what their experience was in that and you're maligned, you're abused, your family's put on the internet, you're doxxed all this crap. Who's signing up for this right? And only 30% of, I think and I think this number is right, but it's very low, a very low percentage of people who are tried for crimes related to sex. So sexual assault, sexual abuse, are convicted and very rarely do they lose every employment and become sex offenders and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:And I think when we are talking about justice, sometimes these are not crimes. Now in Texas clergy, sexual abuse of an adult is a crime which makes me very happy, as it should be. It is not that everywhere, but in the places where something has gone wrong, terribly wrong, and someone's been harmed in whatever way, whether it's an abusive power structure, whether it's sexual assault or sexual abuse or any of those things. If we were to see real justice of the matter being handled like you're talking about, I think survivors would have a lot more faith in the church itself and also it would harm their relationship with God when these people that say they speak for God and we heard from the survivors of a place where that very much happened and then you say, well, if I go against this person, I'm going against God. And then when they have to disentangle that or deconstruct, then you know it's a whole thing and it can absolutely tank your faith. Whether that's happening publicly or privately, it happens for almost every survivor I've ever worked with.
Speaker 1:The other thing is in the justice paradigm. I'll throw this out, because most ministers are married, unless they're like a Catholic priest. What are we doing to help the wife and children? What are we doing? Because those are the ones I see just absolutely be ignored completely. So the person who harmed is maybe thrown out and then replatformed super fast, but the wife and children are devastated and no one is caring for them. So now we have extra victims and you and I talked a little bit about this at Restore, which was the collateral of clergy sexual abuse the family members, the spouses, the friends, the church community, all of the places affected.
Speaker 1:When this happens and I think justice must extend not only to the primary victim but to all of the victims, and the church needs to be humble enough. The Lord says if we humble ourselves and seek the Lord, then we will find him. And how many people have prayed? I think it's from Deuteronomy, the prayer that, like it, becomes a save our nation prayer, which is literally not what God intended. It's really come to alignment with me because he doesn't care about sacrifice and offering. It's our hearts, but we pray that over America.
Speaker 2:Why aren't we praying that over the church, right? Oh, I'm with you. Yeah, I think of a congregation where this may have happened. It's like a concerted effort would have to extend to the ministers, spouse, children and really everyone to have an adequate conversation about what has happened, what's being done to make it right, what needs to continue to be done to make it right, what wounds are now a present or exposed as a result of this that we need to address collectively. Right, we're just not having those conversations.
Speaker 2:It gets back to what I was saying earlier. We just don't have a model for a church doing this well. But to me, the church at its best could be a model to society and to culture about how you restore, how you work through injuries and failure and betrayal, but instead we're trying to protect our image so that we're not perceived as doing any of those things. But the church? Again, there's nothing unique that makes Christians incapable of harming. We're human beings. I would just hope that when we do it, we actually have the skills and the ability and the capacity to make wrongs right, and of course, it's not like I'm a complete expert on exactly what that needs to look like. You know who is the survivors Collectively. The wisdom is there on really what could be done to make restorative justice practices actually matter if you will, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I think there's another expert in the room as well. I would say survivors first, always. Their voice is the one that matters the most.
Speaker 1:They've been harmed, but all the caregivers that serve them, so people like my staff, because this is what we do all the time and other therapists and biblical counselors and coaches that are out there that are doing the on-the-ground work right, we hear, if the pastor would have just repented, stepped down, done the right thing, instead of everyone shoving it under the rug and giving me an NDA and all of the? And honestly, look, here's the thing. I worked in business for a very long time before becoming a therapist. Ndas were meant to protect intellectual property. The gospel is not intellectual property, nor is how you run your church. There should never be an NDA at a church period and maybe that's a hot take for some, but if you can tell me what would be proprietary about Jesus, then I would like to know because I'm confused. But if we really walked the path of healing, not only is it going to be good for the survivors, but it's going to be good for the perpetrators. And before we got started, I told you that one of my just hallmarks of belief is it is so unloving not to invite a perpetrator to repentance. If we're just letting them walk in their sin, what are we doing? We're being wicked, and I also think churches need to have less of a McDonald's mentality, which is what I mean here is that it is not a five-minute drive-through and everything is fixed Like here's your Big Mac with all of its pieces and everything's put back together and it's actually a sandwich that looks like the picture. It takes a long time to walk toward healing, repentance and all of that, and so restoration should not be quick and it should not be easy. It should not be hoop jumping, it should be heart level.
Speaker 1:And when I'm working with abusers which that's one of the things I do anybody can jump through hoops and do behavior modification for a season. They cannot do heart change forever. And so if we are waiting long enough and we are talking to collateral and we are really holding accountable, we're going to find out whether or not there's true change. I've seen many men go well, can't I have sex now with my spouse, Like why are we not here yet? And I'm like we are two sessions in. You shouldn't be thinking about sex with anybody. You should be grieving what are we doing? And that mentality should extend where it's like hey, we want to see real fruit. We don't want pretty words, we don't want platitudes, we want heart change because we love you enough to not let you walk in darkness anymore.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I'm going to. Oh, wow, that's so good. And one of the things I think I've realized, even from Judith Herman's work, is that some of the people who abuse are serial abusers. Yes, in part because they've learned how to get away with it and they've learned how to wiggle out from accountability, and so they know how to say a lot of things. So when we're talking about any kind of restoration or reconciliation, that you are absolutely right it would have to be a very measured, engaged, highly monitored process. That would literally take years right, it's not, and it's multi-layered. But that's messy, it's complicated, it's hard. It would involve bringing survivor voices to the table. It would involve bringing the therapeutic and health care communities to the table to bring insights. It would involve a really collective, integrative process.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't be easy, it would be messy, it would be complicated, it would be hard, it would require an enormous amount of investment, but that I don't see any other way forward other than something like that. And, tabitha, honestly, this is the first time I've ever had a podcast conversation about what these things could look like. So my imagination is turning. And again, I just want to be clear it's not like I have a 10 point plan of what this is supposed to look like. Part of what I'm saying is we're not talking about this enough. So this is one of the first times I've ever had a conversation about how complex and hard this would actually be. But I think, and I'm even compelled by your love, if you will, for the person who's done the harming and the abusing, because I do think that's right. We do need to love those folks.
Speaker 2:And sometimes the loving thing to do is to exclude them from ever ministering again, but there are times that might not be the case, and when it's not the case, what will that and should that and could that look like? That has to be explored.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think so. One of my theories is taking the principle of left of bang and applying it. So left of bang is a military term from the United States Marine Corps, and yes, I said the whole thing because I am the daughter of United States Marine and I know better right. So for all of my United States Marine Corps friends that are now listening, you know I hear you hoorah, here we are. But the left of bang idea is that we solve the problem before the explosion happens, because if you're left of the bang, it hasn't happened and you're not wearing shrapnel. If you're right of the bang, you have met Jesus face to face very quickly, and so I think there are so many places in the church we can get left of bang.
Speaker 1:And I honestly think there's some rootedness in purity culture when we talk about sexual abuse and we're telling boys, in the purity culture paradigm, you are nothing but your lust and your desire and your sexual conquest, and this is what makes you a man, as opposed to what God says, what makes you a man. And then we're telling girls well, you're the gatekeeper, and so we're diminishing image bearers of the living God on both sides to say that you are nothing more than sexual intercourse and that's a problem. And so we raise children to be in this place. So what if we started with healthy relational dynamics that look like Jesus from I don't know birth, but like for sure middle school, and we talk about things like pornography which sets up the other party, whether it is same sex pornography or heterosexual pornography. It sets up you as a dominant individual, so the aggressor, whether they, and there's always a weaker person. There's very rarely, if ever, true consent, and never mind the human trafficking of it all. But this is what people are drinking in, and Pure Desire Ministries commissioned Barna I think it was last year the study came out to do a study of pornography in the church and, holy Toledo, the numbers were epic, the number of pastors who engage in that.
Speaker 1:So if that's where your head is, sin doesn't stay stagnant. Right? You might be like this is a cute little lion. I have adopted a cub, he's adorable, it's so cute. And then you're like I'll just feed it steak, right? The next thing you know, it's an adolescent lion and you've lost an arm. And then we have an adult lion and it will consume you and you may be able to keep it at bay and make enough steaks that maybe it stays hidden, but at some point it won't.
Speaker 1:And even if it always does, god knows and you're harming people and God knows and he says he holds teachers to a higher standard. And if that doesn't terrify people, I don't know if you have the appropriate fear of God, if I'm being honest. And so if we really try to get left of bang in the church and say let's work on the brokenness, you know that we are seeing and teach people healthy relationships from jump. We're going to find less dissolution of marriage because we're going to have healthy marriages right. We're not going to stand for abuse because we're going to say this is not here, not on my watch, not with the lord, and we're going to hold those men and women who are abusers accountable and we're going to invite them to change and if they choose not to, we're going going to do what Jesus says turn them over to Satan and let's see what happens. That is what's in 1 Corinthians.
Speaker 1:And so when people are like, oh, matthew 18, I'm like maybe she's already done that Like probably 45 times, we have surpassed that part of church discipline. We are ready to move on now and the less exploitive an environment we make, is my contention that the less abusers will want to be there because it will no longer serve them, and so the ones that are truly wicked and not broken won't stick around. The ones who are broken and say I really regret my sin. I am broken Like David, I am like basically doing the backstroke in a pool of tears on my couch. Then those are the people that we enter in with and we do the long haul with and we do the messy with, but we got to be bold as believers and say no more, no more. This doesn't look like Christ. What are we doing? We are hurting our sons and our daughters.
Speaker 2:Wow, well said. Oh, my goodness, some of what you said there totally resonates with me, particularly around kind of positive models of what healthy sexuality is Like so many churches I've been around, not only do we not talk about sex. When we do, it's always prohibitions of don't do this, don't do that. It's not here's what a healthy sexual relationship can look like. We need models that are creating a backdrop of healthy power sharing and intimacy connection. What do these things look like instead of what do they not look like? Go to the positive, not the negative.
Speaker 2:I am agreeing with you also. I think I've learned that kind of purity, culture, dynamics and theology are a setup for blaming women and excusing men's inappropriate and unacceptable behavior. Right, it's just a real setup for those things. So I do think that and there are models, there are people out there trying to educate the church on the very things that we're talking about. There are plenty of models. It's not like I can think of them all off the top of my head, but it's not like it doesn't exist. It does. And I really like what you said too, that if we have healthier church spaces, I feel like magnets attract so unhealthy sort of congregations, attract unhealthy leaders and they flourish and feel comfortable in those spaces. So we have healthier spaces where clericalism and some of the other things that you're describing here just aren't present. That's a turnoff for the unhealthy person. They're going to part ways and move on and go somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of churches talk about being known and I do think that's essential, but for real being known, without exploitation, I think that would be the caveat that I add. And I've been blessed to be in spaces where I am deeply known by people, in churches I've been in and that has been beautiful because really healing does happen in community and we do need each other. And I think that there is real fear and it's right fear of how will my disclosures, how will my messy be handled. I do think that there are people who don't have a high tolerance for messy. I think that we could grow in that capacity. I think that we could increase some windows of tolerance, which would be beautiful, and really have such a more inviting place. What would it be like to go on a Sunday or Saturday, depending on when you attend church and feel like, even in a large church, I'm known here, I'm wanted, I belong, it's safe enough.
Speaker 1:Now, look, there are going to be things that happen regardless, because people be peoply and there will be things that happen, which is why we do have to have systems to handle that when it occurs. But it's safe enough in that I can be known, I can be safe enough. I know that if something comes up, the leadership is going to do its best because we are platforming. Men and women who have done the work are doing the work, are growing in sanctification to look like Jesus. Day by day I'm seeing that in their life they're marked by humility and not necessarily just charisma. Those are things that I hope that we see. I think that Jesus would have us see. I do think we're seeing a reckoning. I think the conference we were at was a bit of example of that, because there were a whole bunch of people talking about it, a bunch of people in attendance. But I think that there's so much more to be done and I know that the survivors listening to us are like yes.
Speaker 1:And they probably wouldn't want to be as nice to abusive individuals as maybe.
Speaker 1:I am, but I also wouldn't call it nice. I'd call it kind and invitational, because walking in sin is a death sentence. I think that there's so much beauty and goodness and it's my hope that, as you do your next set of research I'm super curious about it. I'm very excited to hear about it that the church would go. Hey, this is an ally, these are allied places. We are all one body, regardless of our traditions.
Speaker 1:Like I am solid rock and roll and slightly heavy metal. I am Gen X and definitely feral on some days. So I'm going to be at a church that's like more of the jeans and t-shirt rock band kind. I mean there are going to be people who are more liturgy and hymns and all of us are so welcome in the kingdom. And if we, instead of looking at differences, looked at Jesus, I feel like things would be very, very different and that when we look at, like your research, and go, what can we do with this data? How can we make sure that this isn't descriptive of our church? We're going to see lots of goodness.
Speaker 2:It's interesting Everything you've just said. I'm like, yeah, I'm tracking, I'm hearing you. I think one of the things that I want to last things I want to get in here, is I and I don't know why this feels so compelling to me right this moment but when I think about some of the people that I work with clinically and I'm in sort of other conversations beyond that is that survivors as they heal their theology changes. Survivors as they heal their theology changes and what I'm learning, and so, whether we call it deconstruction or whatever, but they become more clear about I don't believe this anymore and I now see that this thing going on in my church is really unhealthy. So they have clarity, they have discernment, they have wisdom. They can't unsee what they've seen and that wisdom. There is a profound and deep wisdom that resides with people and it's and how should I say it's not just about what would make churches safer or healthier, but I honestly think that they have a better theology and it's strange where we think only our ministers and only our prophets and our leaders or whatever. No, I think our survivors have tremendous wisdom about how God is, what is God in the world and how.
Speaker 2:In an era where it was. Just I feel like I was invited to conform rather than be transformed in an ongoing process and basis. But being transformed is untamed. It can't be managed and controlled by others Like you're a force to be reckoned with, you're a force for change and I think I would love to see the church more embrace some of that more, rather than trying to fit people into molds and asking us or demanding our conformity Like transformative people. Right, they're human, they're messy, but yet they're alive and new things are happening. As much as we've been hitting some really heavy, hard, traumatic stuff that's full of lament and grief, I think I'm more excited about healing, like churches actually being healing spaces, than I've ever been in my entire existence. Right, and this is just another wave of the church being the church, but we're just a part of it and I think some of these conversations are a part of it's a catalyst, it brings light, it brings fire, it brings reform, it brings awareness and awakening all these things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think that that is the essence, right, the essence of I'm going to say it this way and it's from the Chronicles of Narnia, right, is he safe? No, but he's good, right, and really being sold out and I hate that in a way, because God bless America. That was so distorted in church for me, but being sold out for Jesus and all. I'm a child of the eighties and nineties but honestly, like really really being holy gods, you are going to have shifts in theology and the one I look at my own shifts in theology. I look at other survivors, shifts in theology and when it comes to salvific theology, like what goes to how we get to heaven and all that, for most people that doesn't change, right, because that is pretty straightforward. But how we walk with the weak and the broken, how we understand darkness, how we understand Jesus's goodness, even in the darkness, holy shifts, right and that is beautiful.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite experiences of all time I was serving in an Anabaptist so Mennonite, amish, german, baptist Women's Retreat for Survivors of Abuse and I was utterly changed during communion because these women had been excommunicated. And if you don't know anything about plain communities, when you are ostracized, like it's really severe because your whole world is your community and in some ways you haven't been out in the rest of the world in a lot of ways. When you are ostracized, it's really severe because your whole world is your community and in some ways you haven't been out in the rest of the world in a lot of ways. So you have to learn a lot of things, and financial control is a whole thing.
Speaker 1:But these women took communion with this liturgy and reverence I have never seen before and I remember just being undone and being like I have taken this for granted, the sacrifice of my Savior and the imagery that he calls us to at the Last Supper. I am wicked for that, because I'm not taking it seriously, and I just remember repenting, sitting in my seat and crying and saying Lord, let me never take your sacrifice for granted ever again, because this is what I stand on for life. This is what I stand on that says you are coming and one day all that is sad will be untrue and I can bank on it and bet my life on it. And I think from survivors, as we see them shift and change and grow, we can go. That's real faith. That's real faith. And so again, survivors' voices are so important in all of this.
Speaker 2:Voices are so important in all of this. Indeed, I couldn't have said it better yeah, survivors' voices as they are transformed and as they heal.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's one of the pieces that I really want to dig deep in, and it's what I wanted to dig deep in 10 years ago. But I think we have more people aware of their experiences. They have a name for what's happened, they have some processes available for healing, places and spaces where people can heal, and to capture the essence of how that's happening, why it's happening, what is happening would be so powerful.
Speaker 1:And I would really like one day the data to show survivors didn't heal in spite of the wickedness that happened to them. But survivors healed because people who cared decided there should be change and gave them space for it. Because I think that, I mean, God is so good, he's not going to leave anything wasted for us. He's going to heal us. He's so good, but we can heal with less trauma. That would be real fun, and so I would, just, as we close up here, invite the church. If you've been bold enough to listen to our conversation, I invite you. Ask yourself what could it be like in the space that I worship, Whether it's a home church, whether it's a big church, whether it's somewhere in between. What would it be like if we took these concepts and said once you see, you can't unsee, and let's do something different by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Dr Pooler, you are a delight. I am so grateful that you joined me today. Thank you for your time, Thank you for this conversation and thank you for your work. It's such important work and I'm so grateful for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm grateful to be a part of the community of people wanting to make change and wanting to see change and boldly stepping into and courageously stepping into a place, and I love how you said it we can heal with less trauma. I've never heard anyone say that quite like that, but that is so true. That's exactly what I'm really after. It's like we can do a better job of responding and healing. We don't have to create more problems and more hurt and more trauma. We can do it with much less trauma. In fact, we can have a whole different path forward, and so thanks for inviting the conversation and having me on here. I've immensely enjoyed it, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom. Forward slash hey Tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.
