An Open Letter to the Church: Abuse is There

 **WARNING** This post addresses sexual abuse and may cause triggers. This isn't meant to be a scare tactic, it's a wake up call.

Dear Church,

I grew up in church.

Every Sunday, every Wednesday night dinner, every VBS. Every fundraiser function, children's event, or family retreat: we were there. I was raised this way, my parents were raised this way and I dare say most if not all of my grandparents were raised this way. I grew up in the epitome of Christian culture. Anyone on the outside looking in wouldn't ever know something was amiss. Truthfully, it took me a long time to know something was "amiss".

"Amiss" puts it too lightly: It took me years to learn enough about myself and the world around me to know that a piece of my childhood had gone horribly wrong. And not one person from the church would have known.

Why? Because the church at large is ignorant. I believe, by choice. WAKE UP CHURCH, abuse is happening within your walls!

The church is ignorant by choice? That's pretty harsh, isn't it? No. It isn't. In the weeks, months and years following my realization, and beginning piecing everything together, I was trying to work through a lot. I reached out for anything, I sought, I begged and I pleaded. I was grasping for anything to help me sort through this darkness I had just been thrust into. I wanted a hand to hold, to help me sort through the tragedies in my mind. I told many youth leaders and friends. I was shuffled off, or at best was "dealt with" in one, neat, tidy conversation. The rest of my family was working through things as well, and it all just, felt so dark. There was no one giving me light. I was just lost, and alone. A little girl, existing in my big, dark, and now abusive world.

All I wanted, needed, and begged for was someone to help me sort through the voices I had screaming in my head. Voices of guilt, shame, and darkness in general...they plagued me. At 15, I just needed someone to speak truth to me. I still need someone to speak truth to me. But when I looked, begged, and asked, there was no one.

The church was, and in so many ways still is, ill-equipped to deal with sexual abuse. Harder still was and is the fact that so often children in the church suffer abuse at the hands of people who's faces are regulars in the church.

I don't have an answer to the problem, but please start by recognizing that it is a problem. There are children in your churches, suffering abuse at the hands of someone they should be able to trust.

What are you doing for them? You have an opportunity to protect the least of these. Protect them.