Officials At Bob Jones University Told Rape Victims They Had Sinned

Rodeheaver Auditorium at Bob Jones University (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Rodeheaver Auditorium at Bob Jones University (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Bob Jones University is well known for its tight supervision over students’ lives. Students at the ultrafundamentalist Christian school in Greenville, South Carolina aren’t allowed to watch television in the dorms or attend movie theaters while school is in session. They also aren’t allowed to listen to most contemporary types of music, and nearly all forms of social life–on and off campus–are regulated to a degree that would seem almost unthinkable to most college students.

For these reasons, I had long believed that while BJU is only an hour and a half south of my home in Charlotte, you might as well be going back 20 years when you step on that campus. However, if a story that aired on Al Jazeera America on Tuesday night is any indication, even that estimate may be too low. Five former BJU students told “America Tonight’s” Sarah Hoye that when they went to faculty members for counseling after being raped, they were told that they had brought their ordeals on themselves as a result of sinning.

The manner in which BJU counsels victims of sexual abuse first exploded onto the national stage in February, when the school briefly fired the group that had spent two years reviewing this process, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE). Following a firestorm of criticism, BJU rehired GRACE later in February. However, since then, more details have emerged about BJU’s counseling approach that would shock the conscience of any fair-minded person.

BJU’s counseling philosophy is centered around the premise that at bottom, all mental problems are rooted in sin. This mentality has been in place for many years, but first appeared in print in “Becoming an Effective Christian Counselor,” a 1996 book written by longtime dean of education Walter Fremont, one of the pioneers of the Christian school movement. Fremont teaches that while the abuser is ultimately responsible, a victim has no business feeling any sort of discontent, hate, fear or bitterness; all these feelings are supposedly sinful. In particular, bitterness toward an abuser is considered to be “rebellion and bitterness against God.”

Katie Landry ran up against this mentality in her junior year at BJU, when she revealed that in 2004–just before starting her freshman year–she had been drugged and raped by a supervisor at her summer job in Ohio. She was referred to Jim Berg, then the dean of students. Incredibly, Berg began asking her if she had been smoking pot or drinking–suggestions that were news to a girl who grew up in a highly sheltered Mennonite environment. Berg then suggested that there was a “root sin” in Landry’s life that had somehow left her open to being raped. Landry ran out of the room in tears, later saying that hearing such a suggestion “confirmed my worst nightmare”–that she was to blame.

Berg’s wife, Pat, a counseling professorĀ at BJU, gave similar advice to “Sarah” when she revealed a male relative had molested her for several years as a child. Sarah says that Pat Berg told her to repent of any pleasure she may have felt during her ordeal, and even suggested the nightmare was her own fault. She even went as far as to tell Sarah to call her abuser and ask for forgiveness–otherwise, Pat Berg said, God wouldn’t be able to truly “use her.” She even sent Sarah an email suggesting what to say to him on the phone. Sarah took that advice–but felt that it only deepened her pain. She waited until after she graduated to report the rape to the police; the relative is now in prison.

Incredibly, BJU’s mentality toward sexual assault is such that it is willing to allow rapists to return. In the 1990s, “Julia” says she was raped by a fellow BJU student. She never reported it; having grown up in a fundamentalist ministry, she knew that she’d get blamed if she ever came forward. She also thought the rape was her punishment for an eating disorder she says came as a result of being assaulted as a child–thoughts that were due in part to Jim Berg telling her that disorder was “a lifestyle of sin.” While the man was expelled, he was allowed to return three semesters later. Julia was horrified, but when she expressed her concerns to an administrator, she was told that if she reported it, she’d be held responsible for preventing a “Godly man” from being allowed to “serve the Lord.”

None of this comes as any surprise to Camille Lewis, who spent most of the first two decades of her adult life as a student and faculty member at BJU. When the school initially fired GRACE, Lewis told The New York Times that when she was a senior, one of her friends told her that her father, the Sunday school superintendent at her church back home, had raped her. That friend went to an administrator–who told her that if she reported the rape, she’d be hurting the body of Christ. Later, as a faculty member, Lewis fell all over herself to help several victims, finally quitting in disgust when it was apparent that, as she put it, they were more concerned about “protecting the church and the university” than anything else.
I chatted with Lewis on Twitter about this story, and she told me about the lengths BJU appears to go to hide reports of sexual assault. She told me that all available evidence suggests that BJU has lied in at least one yearly report it makes to the federal government about its compliance with the Clery Act, a federal law requiring any school that takes part in the financial aid program to keep and disclose information about crime on and near their campuses. Back in 2010, graduate assistant Charles “Chipper” Snow was arrested for sexual assault on a minor. Although the story was widely reported in the press, BJU never mentioned it in its 2011 Clery Act report. Lewis blogged about this in 2011 after chancellor Bob Jones III declared that sexual molestation was always reported to the authorities. She told me that she has long wondered if BJU called GRACE in to stave off a federal investigation. The federal government takes Clery Act violations very seriously; violations can result in fines of up to $35,000 per violation, and in extreme cases could result in a school being kicked out of the financial aid program.

GRACE’s director,?Boz Tchividjian, the grandson of Billy Graham, says that as with any of his group’s investigations, his goal is to get BJU to demonstrate “authentic repentance.” Landry, who now runs a touring company in New Orleans, agrees, saying that BJU needs to “metanoia,” or completely change, its thinking about how it counsels rape victims. From the looks of it, more than repentance is needed here. Al Jazeera’s report reveals a situation that would never be tolerated at most colleges in this country, secular or religious, and nothing less than a full housecleaning will prove that BJU is truly willing to change. And hopefully it won’t take another assault, or a federal investigation, for those changes to be made.

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Edited/Published by JA


Darrell Lucus.jpg Darrell Lucus is a radical lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.