(RNS) — Last month, former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell and his wife, Becki, returned to the campus (where I served on faculty for a number of years) for the first time since sex- and alcohol-ridden scandals surrounding the couple came to light in 2020, causing Jerry Falwell’s eventual resignation. The episode led to Falwell and the university suing each other and the couple being banned from campus. But a settlement was reached this summer and both lawsuits were dropped, along with the ban.
Yet, there has been no public confession of, repentance for or even an acknowledgment of the betrayal of trust the Falwells’ misconduct incurred upon so many. Indeed, Falwell has said he’d not been back on campus all this time because of illness: “I really was just 100% focused on that 24/7, so I really didn’t have time to come back before now,” he said.
All that matters, apparently, is that Falwell and school officials have kissed and made up. The empire goes on.
Never mind that the couple was embroiled for years in a relationship with a young man they lured with promises of business partnerships and real estate dealings, but ended in a sexual liaison. It’s settled.
Never mind that Becki Falwell has been credibly accused of sexually predatory behavior with a student. It’s settled.
Never mind that Jerry Falwell has a long, documented history of posting inappropriate comments, videos and photographs, often involving students and other young people. It’s settled.
Settling is more important than keeping students safe from alleged sexual predators. Indeed, it’s increasingly difficult to deny that this is simply business as usual for too many Christian institutions. Liberty University is simply one example — if a notable one.
Court documents from Falwell’s dropped lawsuit point to other sexual libertines who were welcomed back on campus after brief timeouts. Arguing that he should not be held to a different (higher) moral standard, Falwell said “several high-ranking University officials (including a former President, a former Dean, a former Provost, and a current Executive Committee member) who the Board of Trustees or Executive Committee believed had affairs or related misconduct but, consistent with Dr. Falwell’s belief in forgiveness, were embraced by Liberty.” Now the tradition continues.
Fallwell wasn’t just allowed back on campus but was given a sort of hero’s welcome. With his return taking place during homecoming festivities, numerous photos of the family circulated that were taken in prime seating during that weekend’s big football game. A letter sent by the current president admonished staff that it would be “unhelpful to discuss, speculate, or gossip about details” that aren’t public.
Notably, no such letters, care or considerations were offered to those who were hurt and harmed by the university’s violations of federal law regarding campus safety laws, including victims of sexual assault. Only one person publicly apologized to the Liberty University community following the scandal. That was former campus pastor David Nasser who quietly resigned later that school year.
This approach to “forgiveness” — one that protects predators in power but sacrifices the victims — is not owing solely to bad decisions by individuals but is perpetrated and cultivated by institutions and networks of power and influence.
“For Our Daughters” film poster. (Courtesy image)
The newly released documentary “For Our Daughters” demonstrates exactly how this happens.
“For Our Daughters” features several stories of women whose pastors not only sexually assaulted them but then went on to be lauded, applauded and promoted — after these assaults were known.
In some cases, the film shows, the applause was literal. The assailants were commended while the victims were chastised, demonized and harassed. Many survivors of sexual abuse within the church report this kind of response can be as hard or worse than the initial assault.
But as abuse survivor, advocate and attorney Rachael Denhollander says in the film:
” … when you see the congregation standing up and applauding an abuser, which happens over and over, it’s very emotionally satisfying to accept ‘repentance,’ to emotionally identify with the abuser. Because what it gives you is this very neat, tidy story of restoration, allegedly. It gives you this pretty little package with a bow on top where you can say, ‘Look how beautiful it is.’ God redeems and it costs you nothing. It costs you something to side with the vulnerable and the weak and the oppressed. It costs you nothing to side with the one who’s in power.”
The film documents how after one teenage victim, Tiffany Thigpen, came to her pastor and immediately reported that her youth pastor had assaulted her, the abuser was brought to the front of a church gathering and fawned over by Paige Patterson, who would later become president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Patterson announced that the youth pastor would be placed on a “path to restoration” that would be engineered by Patterson, Jerry Vines (Thigpen’s own pastor) and Falwell. That youth pastor would later be convicted and imprisoned for sex crimes against children, and eventually accused of sexual assault by 44 women.
At times the discussion around sexual abuse in the church — and the Southern Baptist Convention in particular — centers on how prevalent or frequent the abuse is. It’s not an unimportant question.
But the most important answer to this question is that that number would be far, far less if the abusers weren’t appeased, protected and allowed to move up and on as though it’s all settled — simply because the men in charge decided it was.
What’s harder and harder not to see, as Kristen Kobes du Mez in “For Our Daughters” states — and what these assault victims couldn’t have known when they first reported to their churches — “was that the men who claimed to be their guides and protectors cared far less about them than about their own power, their power over women and their power over the country.”
I want nothing more than for this assessment to be wrong. But it’s up to these pastors and leaders to show that it is.
That question has not yet been settled.