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When churches call clergy sexual abuse “moral failings” or “affairs,” they obscure the truth: Predatory pastors groom adult congregants using tactics that mirror coercive control and intimate partner violence.

Counselor and researcher Jaime Simpson joins us to dismantle myths about consent in faith settings, drawing from her study Broken, Shattered & Spiritually Battered: Groom Pastors Who Prey on Adult Congregation Members. Focusing on evangelical and Pentecostal communities in Australia, her findings reveal systemic grooming—romantic, therapeutic, and spiritual deception—layered with isolation, boundary violations, and theology-based coercion and systematic collusion with perpetrators to hide their criminal behaviours and shield them from accountability with the use of spiritually based forgiveness rituals. 

Simpson shows how purity culture, male authority, and loyalty to leadership prime congregations for collusion, silence, and exploitation, while institutions minimize sexual violence but act swiftly on financial crimes. Her message to survivors: “You weren’t complicit. What happened to you was not your fault.”

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

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