After scathing sex punishment report, Bob Jones calls it self ‘very safe’
The president called the college’s guidance “solid,” leaving abuse victims doubting that the college can change
The blistering report how Bob Jones University has managed intimate abuse reports is still warm off the presses and some victims are usually skeptical that the university is ready to acknowledge the severity of exactly just just what it revealed. They do say BJU’s reaction reeks of harm control.
The nonprofit Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment found that sex abuse victims on the Greenville, South Carolina, campus were often urged to find the sin behind their rapes, pushed to repent for any pleasure they might have experienced during their assaults, and encouraged to reach out to their abusers and express forgiveness or ask forgiveness from them in its two-year independent investigation. The college’s counselors had been unlicensed and had no training that is formal therapy.
Some students, the GRACE report discovered, had been penalized for reporting their punishment. Very nearly half stated these people were encouraged to not ever get law enforcement. The 301-page dossier additionally paints a campus tradition where sex abuse victims were built to feel just like “damaged products.” When you look at the year that is past America Tonight has interviewed five previous Bob Jones pupils whom reported their punishment to school officials and all sorts of say they usually have yet to recuperate from just just how BJU managed them.
Report: Bob Jones University shamed victims of intimate attack
A self-described fundamentalist Christian college, has urged sexual abuse victims not to go to the police and counseled them to repent for the blame it said they share, according to an extensive independent investigation published last week for decades, Bob Jones University.
BJU President Steve Pettit is appointing a committee to examine the report within the next 3 months in which he publicly apologized to those that “felt they failed to get from us genuine love, compassion, understanding, and help after putting up with intimate punishment or attack.” However in a chapel solution Monday, leaked into the BJU that is website News he told pupils that the report wasn’t a precise representation for the college today.
“In appropriate viewpoint, i would like you to understand that many of those situations were items that took place to people you were a child,” he said, before urging students to reassure their families when they’re home over the holidays that the school is safe before you were even born or when.
“I happened to be a rather current graduate and I happened to be quoted at size within the report. Plus the tradition from the time I became a learning pupil have not changed,” said one rape target whom graduated within the last 3 years and asked to keep anonymous away from a anxiety about retaliation. “seriously, i am simply actually saddened. It results in like they will haven’t also see the report, as the report very plainly states that it has happened recently.”
Another previous Bob Jones pupil told America Tonight year that is last whenever she reported her rape to administrators during 2009, she ended up being accused of lying after which expelled in the exact middle of the night time.
Recent graduate that is BJU punishment victim
Katie Landry, whom reported her matchbox sign in rape that is alleged to college, additionally discovered Pettit’s feedback offensive.
“we have always been a ten years eliminated, from the chronological-time point, but from the discomfort standpoint, that guidance nevertheless affects me today,” she stated. “It had been the counseling that is first received. It absolutely was the only guidance We received for over seven years. All we thought was that we’d done a thing that caused my rape. for over seven years”
GRACE reported numerous occasions whenever BJU neglected to inform police force of abuse, in breach of mandatory reporting legislation. But inaddition it notes that the college has enhanced on that front side within the last couple of years. Jim Berg, who was simply dean of pupils and main therapist for three years, told GRACE detectives that their failure to report intercourse crimes to police in past times ended up being centered on “pure lack of knowledge.”
But BJU’s guidance philosophy just isn’t one thing associated with the remote past and Berg stays a faculty user. GRACE urged BJU to ban Berg from counseling completely and also to strip the campus bookstore of any such thing associated with him and lots of other leading thinkers that are BJU. In addition recommended the college to mention all punishment victims to licensed experts with injury expertise.
In their current chapel message, Pettit said the institution possessed a “solid approach toward counseling people.” The college recently hired a women that are new therapist, but she isn’t certified, is not formally competed in therapy and methods Bob Jones’ make of biblical guidance. She had been additionally trained by Berg.
