Carol’s Story Part 2: An Open Letter from Carol’s Parents to Church of the Resurrection
On September 16, 2021, we published the story of a survivor under the pseudonym Carol.
“Carol’s” parents also want to speak out and ask Church of the Resurrection how they plan to address Carol’s allegations. Here is the letter Carol’s parents asked us to post, with Carol’s permission.
We are the parents of Carol, who recently shared her painful story of sexual abuse from almost two decades ago, when she was a child at Church of the Resurrection.
When our daughter disclosed her childhood abuse to us earlier this year, we discovered she had believed falsely for years that my husband and I had known of her abuse and had chosen not to discuss it with her because we were ashamed of her or felt it had already been handled. We were absolutely horrified. It was heartbreaking to learn that our child had been subjected to violating and traumatic sexual abuse at such a young age and for such a long period of time.
Our heartbreak turned quickly to anger and outrage when my daughter further shared how her youth pastor had questioned her privately about her abuse (when she was barely 16 years old), and then instructed her to attend a meeting with her abuser, where she was required to apologize to and forgive him. As painful as it was to learn of our daughter’s abuse, it was almost as difficult to come to understand how the church chose to respond when they knew of a years-long abusive situation taking place between children within the Rez youth group.
Carol’s Mom: I felt like my world started moving in slow motion as my daughter told me about these traumatic experiences, not just of her abuse, but of the response by a leader from Church of the Resurrection, a person we trusted as a church family member. How could a church leader have known about this and not told my husband and me? After sharing her story with me, my daughter immediately called my husband at work to confirm that he also had not known about her abuse or the church’s response to it.
Carol’s Dad: When I first heard what had happened all those years ago, I was just shocked! I also felt that the church leader’s actions surrounding our daughter’s situation were criminal. For a church staff member to have found out about long term sexual abuse taking place, and then keep all of this from us as her parents, just defied our comprehension.
At the time our daughter’s sexual abuse was occurring, we were active and dedicated members of Church of the Resurrection. My husband and I volunteered in various roles at the church over the years and gave of ourselves physically, emotionally, and financially. After a decade of extending ourselves to participate in and help with weekly services, we realized that, despite our efforts, we were always kept at a distance by many of the Rez leaders and their spouses. Acceptance within Rez did not seem to correlate with genuine participation and dedication to the church and its people, but rather to some unspoken social hierarchy, under which our family seemed unworthy of the same level of inclusion as others. We eventually had enough and finally left the church, but not until years after our daughter had, unbeknownst to us, been through all of this already.
As the reality of our daughter’s experience began to fully sink in, we were overcome with weariness. We felt helpless and were not sure what to do. We questioned whether it was worth it to try to hold the church staff accountable for what happened to our daughter. At the time our daughter revealed her childhood abuse to us, we had left Church of the Resurrection over a decade before and had long ago given up on this church. In addition to our own painful experiences, we had watched the negative consequences fellow church members encountered when they tried to speak up about how they had been wronged by Rez leaders, and we knew that there was little point in us trying to address this directly with the church. We concluded that our only remaining avenue for demanding answers and accountability was to write about this experience and our ongoing concerns and share these publicly.
When our daughter was a child in the Church of the Resurrection youth group, the church was her first line of defense. Our daughter's youth pastor was likely the first adult to learn of her situation, at which point the church had the power to open a door of healing and recovery for her. Instead, Rez leaders treated our daughter’s abuse as consensual sexual activity between children, chose not to inform her parents, and left our daughter to continue suffering in shame and silence for so many years. Our concern is not just regarding what happened to our daughter, but what our daughter’s story means for the safety of other children attending Church of the Resurrection now and over the past 2 decades.
Their safety raises several urgent questions:
Do current Church of the Resurrection leaders support the decision not to inform us when a Rez leader became aware of our daughter’s abuse in the early 2000’s?
Do they approve of how this situation was handled by the former youth pastor, including our daughter being privately and intimately questioned and asked to meet with and apologize to her abuser at the tender age of 16?
Do Church of the Resurrection staff from back then still believe that not informing us was the right thing to do?
If not, are current Church of the Resurrection leaders seeking to understand how all of this was allowed to happen?
Is the church looking into which former or current Rez staff and clergy were aware of the youth pastor’s response and handling of our daughter’s abuse?
Is Church of the Resurrection prepared to hold all involved leaders accountable for how this was mishandled and for the additional trauma and suffering the mishandling inflicted on our daughter?
What assurance do parents of children currently at Church of the Resurrection have that they would be informed if their underage child is sexually abused and the church staff is made aware of it?
Children almost never disclose abusive sexual experiences like Carol’s as “abuse”, because they do not yet know what sexual abuse is, let alone the concept of consent. Since the current Illinois state laws on mandated reporting do not appear to legally require church leaders to disclose knowledge of sexual involvement with peers to a child’s parents, what guarantee do Rez parents have that they will be informed if a church leader becomes aware that their child has engaged sexually with another child, whether or not it seems to leaders to be consensual?
It is essential that proper training and protocol be in place to ensure that parents are immediately notified and outside professional help is enlisted to evaluate the situation should this ever occur again within the church. What (if any) changes has Church of the Resurrection made that would protect against this happening to another child/family in the future?
If there has not been intentional training and clear protocol established, then how can Rez parents know that their children are currently safe under the supervision of church staff, youth leaders, and childcare workers?
The fact that our child was left to believe we knew what happened to her and then chose not to discuss it or to get her help to find healing from this horrible situation is devastating to our entire family. We were not given the option of choosing differently. We were denied the ability to remove our child from a dangerous and traumatic situation. We were stripped of the right to seek justice and therapy for our daughter immediately following the discovery of her abuse, because the whole thing was covered up and hidden from us, her parents. The church’s decision not to inform us led to many years of additional trauma for our daughter that did not need to happen. This was a failure of massive proportions!
We want to know why a male Rez youth pastor, unqualified for trauma or psychological work, questioned our underage daughter in private about sexual activity between her and an older boy in the youth group.
We want to know why this same Rez leader was allowed to hold a closed-door, private meeting with minors, with no other adults present, and why he forced our daughter to apologize to her abuser, all without our knowledge or consent.
If we had been a part of these events and conversations, the truth of what had occurred could have become clear. Our daughter suffered through all of this alone, with no one to advocate for her.
As Carol's parents, our job was to love, protect, and be present in her healing process. The silence and secrecy of leadership resulted in us being aware of nothing, and Carol in turn interpreted our silence as judgment and shame.
This is devastating.
We want answers.