Читать книгу Clergy Sexual Misconduct - John Thoburn Thoburn - Страница 7

At the time of this writing, it has been twenty-three years since the landmark Leadership Journal survey of clergy sexual practices and it is the twentieth anniversary of the first comprehensive research study on clergy sexual misconduct (Muck, 1988; Thoburn, 1991). While over two dozen research articles have been written since 1991 on the subject of clergy sexual misconduct, the problem still stubbornly persists as a thorn in the side of the Church. Following the sensational stories profiling the sexual misdeeds of several prominent evangelical pastors in the 1980s and 1990s, the 1991 Thoburn study was one of many books and research studies exposing what had been swept under the rug for ages. Clergy sexual misconduct has greatly impacted clergy marriages and the local Church (Benyei, 1988; Blackmon, 1984; Johnston, 1996; Thoburn, 1991). There are around 600,000 ministers in the United States, meeting the needs of 300,000 Protestant congregations.

Did you know? 1.Between 10 and 14 percent of pastors have sexual contact with someone other than a spouse while in the ministry . 2.More than 30 percent of ministers engage in sexual behavior that they consider inappropriate . 3.More than 15 percent of ministers qualify as functionally addicted to Internet pornography . 4.There is an average number of seven women victims of clergy sexual misconduct per affected congregation . This number is significant and disturbing considering that the average size of most congregations is between 100 and 700 members (Chaves & Garland, 2010).

Just to give some perspective, parallel studies in other helping professions indicate the statistics for sexual contact between the professional and those he is helping are far lower than those for clergy. Of those surveyed, 71/10 percent of male psychiatrists acknowledged sexual contact with patients, 5 to 7 percent of psychologists acknowledged sex with their clients/patients, and 10 percent of physicians acknowledged sex with their patients (Bouhoutsos, Holroyd, Lerman, Forer, & Greenberg, 1983; Gartrell, Herman, Olartes, Feldstein, & Localio, 1986; Kardener, Fuller, & Mensh, 1973; Pope, Keith-Spiegel, & Tebachnik, 1986). Note that female therapists and physicians had sex with their patients less than 1 percent. The problem of professional helpers acting out sexually seems to be primarily a male issue. Butler and Zelen (1977) found the mean age of therapists at the time of sexual intimacy to be 43.5 years. The main reasons for the initiation of sexual intimacy by the therapist were neediness and/or loneliness—very much akin to the factors that lead ministers to act out.

Definitions of sexual misconduct include, “the overt or covert expression by the clergy person toward the congregational member of erotic or romantic thoughts, feelings or gestures that are sexual or may be reasonably construed by the congregant as sexual” (Irons and Roberts, 1995, p. 33). Emotional and sexual infidelity, a closely associated feature of sexual misconduct, “occurs when a relationship with a person other than one’s spouse is characterized by emotional intimacy, sexual chemistry, and some degree of secrecy” (Thoburn and Whitman, 2004, p. 493). Compulsive or addictive behavior, often part of the clergy misconduct complex, is defined as a pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience; it is a dysfunctional adaptation and survival mechanism for dealing with early life trauma and/or dysfunctional dynamics in the family of origin (Carnes, 1991).