The president called the college’s guidance “solid,” leaving abuse victims doubting that the institution will alter
The blistering report on what Bob Jones University has managed intimate punishment reports is still warm off the presses and some victims are actually skeptical that the college is prepared to acknowledge the severity of just exactly what it revealed. They do say BJU’s reaction reeks of harm control.
With its two-year separate research, the nonprofit Godly a reaction to Abuse when you look at the Christian Environment unearthed that intercourse abuse victims from the Greenville, sc, campus had been frequently advised to obtain the sin behind their rapes, forced to repent for almost any pleasure they may have observed throughout their assaults, and encouraged to attain off to their abusers and show forgiveness or ask forgiveness from their website. The college’s counselors had been unlicensed and had no training that is formal therapy.
Some pupils, the GRACE report discovered, had been penalized for reporting their punishment. Very nearly half stated these were encouraged never to get the authorities. The 301-page dossier additionally paints a campus culture where intercourse abuse victims had been built to feel “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 college officials and all sorts of state they will have yet to recuperate from 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 throughout the next ninety days and then he publicly apologized to those that “felt they would not get from us genuine love, compassion, understanding, and help after putting up with sexual punishment or attack.” However in a chapel solution Monday, leaked to your BJU that is website News he told pupils that the report was not a detailed representation associated with college today.
“In appropriate viewpoint, i really want you to comprehend that many of the situations were items that occurred to individuals just before had been also created or once you had been a young child,” he said, before urging pupils to reassure their loved ones once they’re house on the holiday breaks that the college is safe.
“I happened to be an extremely current graduate and I happened to be quoted at size when you look at the report. Plus the tradition from the time I happened to be a learning pupil have not changed,” stated one rape target whom graduated within the last few 36 months and asked to keep anonymous away from a concern with retaliation. “truthfully, i am simply actually saddened. It results in like they will haven’t also see the report, since the report very obviously states that it has occurred recently.”
Another previous Bob Jones pupil told America Tonight this past year that whenever she reported her rape to administrators last year, she ended up being accused of lying after which expelled in the exact middle of the night time.
Recent BJU graduate and punishment target
Katie Landry, whom reported her alleged rape to your school, additionally found Pettit’s feedback offensive.
“we have always been a ten years eliminated, from the chronological-time point, but from a discomfort standpoint, that guidance nevertheless affects me today,” she stated. “It ended up being the very first guidance we received. It had been the counseling that is only received for more than seven years. For more than seven years, all I was thinking ended up being chatroulette dating that we’d done a thing that caused my rape.”
GRACE reported numerous occasions whenever BJU did not inform police force of punishment, in breach of mandatory reporting rules. But it addittionally notes that the institution has enhanced on that front side within the last years that are few. Jim Berg, who was simply dean of pupils and main therapist for three decades, told GRACE detectives that their failure to report intercourse crimes to police into the past had been according to “pure ignorance.”
But BJU’s guidance philosophy is certainly not one thing associated with past that is distant Berg stays a faculty user. GRACE urged BJU to ban Berg from counseling totally and also to remove the campus bookstore of such a thing associated with him and many other leading BJU thinkers. In addition recommended the college to refer all punishment victims to licensed experts with upheaval expertise.
In the current chapel message, Pettit said the institution had a “solid approach toward counseling people.” The college recently hired a women that are new therapist, but she is alson’t certified, is not formally competed in therapy and techniques Bob Jones’ model of biblical guidance. She had been additionally trained by Berg.
