Sexual abuse in Christianity is not a string of scandals. It is a system, and it runs on schedule. 944 children in three Massachusetts dioceses, in a report five weeks old. 703 abusers on a secret Southern Baptist list, kept for years while the denomination told the public that no list could exist. A Pennsylvania playbook for concealing the truth, written in euphemisms, carried out through transfers, and filed in a secret archive that canon law reserves for the bishop's eyes only. And when survivors spoke, the institutions did not ask what happened. They called the women satanic, opportunistic, and professional victims, and they protected the men. This episode lays out the numbers, walks through the investigations that dragged the machinery into daylight, and names DARVO, the deny, attack, and reverse routine that churches run on anyone who reports. By the end, you will know exactly how the system works, how to recognize it inside a church you trust, and why "not my church" is the first line of its defense.
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The reports from this episode
The DARVO research
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