Former Adventist Educator Urges Church to Improve Handling of Employees Who Sexually Abuse Minors

In a first-person essay published by Spectrum Magazine, the author, who says she was sexually assaulted at age 16 while attending Ozark Adventist Academy, writes that for about six years she has focused on improving how the Seventh-day Adventist Church handles employees who sexually abuse minors. She describes herself as a fourth-generation Adventist, says she loves the church, and states that her aims include improving responsibility around church-related abuse, ending the practice of shunning those who speak out, and preventing abuse and intervening immediately when it occurs.

The author writes that children and teenagers who are sexually abused can be harmed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and that when an abuser is a religious leader, a victim’s faith may also be damaged. She says abuse in church settings has contributed to suicides and that institutions suffer reputational and financial harm. She recalls a friend in academy who survived a suicide attempt and later told her that her father, a conservative Adventist minister, had sexually abused her. The author also asserts that child sexual abuse is more common among ultra-conservative pastors, a claim she presents as her own view.

The essay cites the August 15, 2022, conviction of Harold Dien, a pastor and prominent member of the Southern California Indonesian Adventist community. According to the author, Dien was found guilty in San Bernardino, California, of two misdemeanor counts of sexually touching and harassing an underage female. She writes that one victim had begun serving as his translator when she was just entering her teens, and she recounts that the victim remembered him saying he was perfect and did not remember sinning. The author describes this as the abuser’s denial, a characterization that is hers.

The author argues that institutional leaders too often delay action and leave questions of justice and restitution to secular courts, and she contends that school counselors at Adventist academies have a better record of taking appropriate action than administrators. She also says that reports and seminars on church-related sexual assault are accumulating evidence that such abuse is widespread across many churches, and that fundamentalist denominations rank high in cases. She further writes that where “chain of command theology” prevails, sexual assault appears to be more often present. These are her assertions and are not findings of the sources she cites.

The author says her own account appeared in the spring 2018 edition of Spectrum Magazine, and that an invitation in that article led to a private Facebook group, “Addressing Abuse in Adventism,” where she writes that more than 264 victims were sharing within a few days. She says many shared similar experiences: not being believed, being shamed for coming forward, wanting to die, and leaving the Adventist Church. She writes that people who spoke out were often labeled “troublemakers,” and that such employees, sometimes called whistleblowers, are generally not employed for long.

The author writes that her advocacy has affected her health. She says she has a heart condition known as broken-heart syndrome, or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, and that she was a patient in a cardiac care unit three times within the past year. She describes an episode during a trial, on the second day, when she was shown photographs of Dien in Indonesia, including images from a July 23, 2022, event where he was billed as a featured speaker, days before his criminal trial was scheduled to begin. She writes that she was taken by ambulance to Loma Linda University Medical Center and admitted for cardiac care.

The author also describes a 2018 phone call to a woman she identifies as Pat Shelton, whom she says sexually assaulted her when she was 16 at Ozark Academy. She writes that she wanted an apology and that Shelton responded by saying she had not done much to her and by ending the call. The author says she later learned from Jared Wright, who conducted the investigative reporting for the 2018 Spectrum article, that Shelton had finished her career as a counselor at College View Academy.

Source: Read the original report