By Anonymous

Editor: This is an account of an individual who, in the setting of a university Christian Union, encountered terrible spiritual abuse leading to serious trauma.  I do not intend here to draw out all the lessons to be learned in this story but the depth of cruelty exhibited in the mentoring by a female Christian leader is breath-taking.  To call such conservative teaching biblically faithful is a dishonouring of the Christian message.  Is it necessary to impose such grotesque suffering on an individual in the name of Christian Orthodoxy? Spiritual torture is strong language, but for this description of Anon’s experience it seems fully justified. 

This story begins in 2001 when I began medical school training to become a doctor.  From that year until 2023 I believed that the emotional and spiritual torture I was enduring was part of the cost of being a Christian trying to follow Jesus.  In summary I have now come to understand that my entire adult life has been destroyed by abuse within the part of the church that describes itself as conservative evangelical.

Looking back to the beginning of my medical training I can remember vividly the welcome given me by Christians as a young vulnerable woman of 19.  I was then desperately missing the close-knit rural community which was my home and my boyfriend of some years. The relationship we enjoyed was deep and committed and it was maintained during the first university years in spite of the inconveniences of distance and train travel.

My initial relationship with the Christian Union was unexceptionable and the group I mixed with were inclusive and non-judgmental, though I was aware from early on that something stricter reserved for those who made more spiritual commitment. For the first two years I was on the fringe but in my third year started to attend events more regularly. I was drawn by the clarity, certainty and earnestness of the Bible studies and gospel presentations.  Two of my best friends had committed to a large student C of E Church and I followed their lead.

I started to realise that my relationship was not approved of – it was sexual and he wasn’t a Christian. These issues around sex were a major focus of teaching among students at the time with the “Pure” course being promoted heavily by UCCF. The CU in my city had also split over doctrinal issues and only students from the four most Conservative Churches were attending. The inference was that if you could not sign the UCCF doctrinal basis of belief you were not a true Christian. Churches that did not teach these doctrines were considered not biblical and not true to Jesus.

I found myself in an irreconcilable bind.  On the one hand I believed Jesus had died for me and wanted to follow him. But I also loved my boyfriend of five years and we were totally committed to each other. He didn’t want to pursue a faith but was supportive of me doing that.

I felt under pressure to stop the sexual side of our relationship, and he still stood by me.

I was invited to join a six-week course with a group of girls from the Church, looking specifically at what the Bible had to say to female students. This was led by a full-time female staff member of the Church and a medical student, also female, who had taken a year out to work for the Church.

The course started with broad messages of forgiveness and acceptance through Christ. As the weeks went on the applications became more focused on analysing our thoughts and behaviours looking for areas where we weren’t living with Jesus as Lord. The last session wasn’t on university premises but at the home of the main leader. She delivered a blistering case for how having a non-Christian boyfriend was not consistent with a wholehearted commitment for Jesus. She said that marrying a non-Christian was unthinkable.

Hearing this caused me to break down in tears at the impossibility this presented.  The younger leader put her arm around me. The older leader looked disdainful, angry and pleased. Following the course, I tried to put this out of my mind and continued in my relationship with my boyfriend. I wanted to pursue my faith but in a way that was faithful and loving to my boyfriend.

Sometime later, I had the offer of a one-to-one Bible Study was made through the Church and I signed up. My friend had had two very good experiences of this with older women in the Church. Either of whom I now think would have been much better equipped to mentor me.

However, I was allocated (and I wonder if this was intentional to my circumstances) to the woman who had led the course which had caused my upset.

To start with, I was wowed by the way she explained Mark’s gospel and Jesus seemed to walk out of the pages. Jesus’ deity, authority and the stark call to follow him wholeheartedly, or not at all, seemed impossible to deny or resist.

This mentor also encouraged me to attempt to present my own evangelistic talks for her to critique. I tried to decline saying that I didn’t think I would ever do that in real life. She was stern and overrode me. Said it was important to “train for the harder thing”. She gave me clear pointers from the passage for the first talk and was full of praise for what I produced and my “gifts” and intelligence. The next session was a different matter. She did not guide me on what my main point should be that time. She slated me for my misinterpretation of the passage. I felt humiliated.

In our sessions, we would often talk about my boyfriend and his family.  I hoped that, as she realised the depth and quality of the relationship, she would see that the hard line, “you must not have a non-Christian boyfriend” didn’t apply in my situation. However, when we came to talk about it several months in, she indicated firmly that her view had not changed at all.  She added that none of the vicars at the Church would marry us as it would be against their conscience.

She took me on a tour of the Bible pointing out many passages that forbade a Christian to marry a non-Christian. She was persuasive, convinced and zealous on the issue.

I felt utterly trapped with no right course of action ahead of me. Both my boyfriend and my parents thought this teaching was bizarre and wrong, but their opinion was dismissed by my mentor because they were not Christians. The same thing was said about the opinion of believers from other denominations.  It was decried on the basis of it not being biblical and coming from a lack of submission to the authority of Scripture.

My boyfriend went on a Christianity Explored course and started to attend Church. He even made a profession of faith and begged me to marry him. I desperately wanted to but had been made to feel that to do so without certainty he was a Christian was unwise. My mentor advised me that if I couldn’t marry him then I should end the relationship to reduce the damage to each other and so my boyfriend had more chance of meeting someone else.

I was beside myself.

I went on my elective placement in West Africa for six weeks. As soon as I got back I went to see my boyfriend. I was delighted and relieved to be reunited with him. It had been very difficult to communicate while I was abroad. We did not talk about matters of faith until later in the day.      But, when we did, he told me that he hadn’t been to church while I was away. He wanted us to stay together but he couldn’t pretend that he could live the conservative evangelical lifestyle.

A guttural sound of pain came from out of my chest. I felt that I had no choice but to end our relationship, that it was what Jesus required of me. But nothing in me wanted to do it.

We said an agonized goodbye and I was utterly distraught. We had been together for nearly seven years. I had never known adult life without him. I went back to university in a dreadful state. My mentor met with me but was harsh. She said that my pain was the consequence of sex outside of marriage. She suggested I ask the Holy Spirit to show me more of my sin.

That night I prayed and came to think that I was so selfish I hadn’t wanted my boyfriend to become a Christian. That I had selfishly wanted the relationship to meet my own needs but that I hadn’t put God or him first. A couple in the Church noticed my distress and tried to support me, though they still kept to the party line that I couldn’t marry him. I had done the right thing.

I went to speak to a Church staff member who was known to offer grief counselling.  He was also desperately cruel, told me to put my grief in a box, stop wallowing and that I was going around trying to find people to tell me what I wanted to hear. Chillingly, he also said if I continued in that way, I was in danger of never getting over my boyfriend.

The couple continued to support me but stopped me from phoning my boyfriend or from contacting him when I went home for Christmas. They primed me not to listen to my parents who were begging me to reconsider and worried I was in a cult. The couple said they couldn’t understand as they weren’t Christians.  Over this time, the husband gradually groomed me into a sexual relationship with himself. He told me it was good for me to realise I could fall in love and have sex with someone else.

He knew that I was suicidal and hearing voices. He and his wife set themselves up as the only people who could support me through my trial.

The earlier coercive control by the Church leaders and the couple rendered me additionally vulnerable to the sexual abuse from a predator.

Eventually I escaped them and tried to build a life. I had convinced myself that I had followed the only biblical course of action, that I could not have married my boyfriend. Though I never understood why God would put me through all of that.

I became a GP, married a Christian, had three children. I thought I was perfectly happy.

Then my ex-boyfriend’s Dad died. My life imploded, I was hit with a wave of dreadful realisation that what I had believed to be conviction by the Holy Spirit 18 years previously had in fact been coercion.

This triggered an unravelling in my life akin to coming out as gay. I realised that I had suppressed an exclusive lifelong love for my ex-boyfriend because of the pressure from my Church community. That suppression was only ever going to be temporary and time had run out.

I have had extensive counselling and fantastic support from friends (mostly outside the Church) and family. I believe the best outcome from here is for me to get through each day as best I can for the sake of my children.  I fight for admission of wrongdoing and apology from those involved but (apart from one person who has apologised repeatedly and supported me hugely) this has not been given.

To return to my title, what about the women?

Attempts were and have been made to achieve justice in some form for John Smyth’s and Jonathan Fletcher’s male victims during the lifetime of the abusers.

David Fletcher’s female victims were not acknowledged until after his death.

Does the Church find it even easier to discredit, blame and discard the testimony of women abused while under their “care”?

Does this make it unsafe for women to disclose until much later in life?

Carrying the shame and blame that belongs to their abusers for them.  Potentially twenty years longer than their male counterparts?

This misogyny provides a greater protection for those who abuse women. They may never have to face up to the consequences of their actions in their life.

I believe research is being carried out into what happens to women when they speak out about their abuse in faith settings.

My experience suggests this is greatly needed.

The psychological, spiritual and relational scars I bear are lifelong and debilitating.

Not all abuse is visible – or provable.

Not all torture involves physical injury.

Coercive control in a spiritual setting removes meaningful choice and invalidates consent as much for women as for men.

The effects wreak havoc and destruction at the deepest level of your being, regardless.