Gospel of Denial: How Churches Continue to Fail Clergy Abuse Survivors
International Policy Digest
May 22, 2025
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Today, I’m joined by Katherine Archer, Father Bojan Jovanović, Dr. Hermina Nedelescu, and Dorothy Small for a wide-ranging discussion on clergy abuse—its psychological toll, institutional roots, and pathways to reform.
Katherine Archer is the co-founder of Prosopon Healing and a graduate student in Theological Studies. She will begin a Master’s in Counseling Psychology in the fall. Her work focuses on clergy abuse within the Eastern Orthodox Church, blending academic research with nonprofit advocacy. Archer champions policy reform addressing adult clergy exploitation, advancing a vision of healing grounded in justice, accountability, and survivor support.
Father Bojan Jovanović, a Serbian Orthodox priest and Secretary of the Union of Christians of Croatia is known for his searing critiques of institutional failings within the Church. His book Confession: How We Killed God and his work with the Alliance of Christians of Croatia underscore a commitment to ethical reform and moral reckoning. Jovanović advocates for transparency and internal dialogue as essential steps toward restoring trust in religious life.
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu is a neuroscientist at Scripps Research in San Diego whose research probes the neurobiological underpinnings of human behavior, particularly in the context of substance use and trauma. Her current work explores how trauma, including sexual abuse, is encoded in the brain’s circuitry and how community-based interventions can address PTSD and addiction in survivors of clergy abuse.
Dorothy Small is a retired registered nurse and longtime survivor advocate with SNAP. A survivor of both childhood and adult clergy abuse, Small began speaking out long before the #MeToo movement gave such voices a broader platform. A cancer survivor and grandmother, she now writes about recovery, resilience, and personal freedom, amplifying the strength of survivors and the urgency of institutional accountability.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In 2024, journalists faced unprecedented threats, with at least 124 killed—the highest number recorded to date—though some sources report 122. The violence in Gaza accounted for a significant share of these deaths. Beyond physical danger, journalists today confront a host of pressures: online harassment, legal intimidation, surveillance, the erosion of press freedoms, and increasing self-censorship. I’ve experienced several of these realities myself. That is the nature of this work.
Each of you here has encountered similar challenges through very different lenses: as a distinguished member of the Serbian Orthodox clergy, a young adult woman within the Orthodox community, a Catholic youth, and a neuroscientist. These identities frame the most critical points of contact within each of your narratives. You all chose to speak out—something most people never do. So let me ask: Once someone breaks that silence and becomes outspoken—whether about their own experience or on behalf of others—what happens? What shifts and consequences follow when the truth is no longer kept quiet?
Katherine Archer: When I was 21, I came forward and reported a clergyperson for what I experienced as a violation of trust and an abuse of pastoral authority. If I had to choose one word to describe how I felt in the aftermath, it would be annihilation. The Orthodox Church upholds the use of icons in worship and annually celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy–a commemoration of the end of iconoclasm, or the historical period when people smashed and destroyed icons.
I have often felt a deep dissonance between the reverence given to painted wood as the representation of the human person and my own experience, as a living person, coming forward with a painful and vulnerable account of harm involving a priest. Over the years, I have spoken with many survivors who shared similar feelings after trying to report experiences of abuse within Orthodox Christian communities—whether through conversations with fellow parishioners, clergy, or through official channels.
It is a beautiful and moving tradition to process around the church holding icons on that particular Sunday in Lent. Yet it is profoundly more difficult to carry the weight of someone’s story, confront painful realities, and respond compassionately to a living human reporting such things.
Father Bojan Jovanović: When I first spoke the truth, my truth experienced a paradox: liberation and humiliation in the same breath. I talked about the attempted sexual abuse I survived within the Serbian Orthodox Church and about an even more harrowing reality — the knowledge that a child had been raped and murdered in a monastery. The facts were clear, but the world I spoke them into could not receive them.
Instead of being a space of light and confession of sin, the Church became a prison of denial. Some immediately tried to silence my voice, to “protect the Church,” as if the truth were the threat and not the crime. Others looked at me with discomfort, as if I were the one disrupting the order. Theologically, I felt like a prophet bringing truth, only to be met with stones. Psychologically, it was only the beginning of confronting the deep trauma I had suppressed and wrapped in silence for years.
Hermina Nedelescu: I received supportive responses from most individuals and institutions. In contrast, the response I experienced from the Greek Orthodox Church of America was, in my view, deeply disappointing and lacking in basic compassion. From my experience, their response felt—and continues to feel—fundamentally inhumane.
Dorothy Small: Reporting the sexual assault by my grandfather, just shy of age six, resulted in a slap across the cheek by my grandmother and a swear in French. Ultimately, it resulted in no further abuse by my grandfather. However, almost a year later, living under the same roof as the predator, my grandmother brought me to a Catholic orphanage to be adopted. At the last minute, I was adopted by an aunt and uncle. They were abusive. I feared them. But they were familiar. I feared the orphanage far more. It was unknown. Plus, I feared nuns.
Reporting the schoolteacher helped to stop the harassment my best friend was receiving. It also caused me to be blamed and scorned by my parents. I only had one friend who stood beside me. Ultimately, I ended up moving across the country to escape a small town and the state where I lived. I could not recover from the emotional consequences of living in that state. It took about three or four years for the emotional pain to ease. My parents contacted the principal of the school, mandating that the teacher had until evening to reveal what he did with me to his wife, or my adoptive father would pay him a visit to his home. He had to tell his wife.
Reporting the priest led to a massive fallout. On a work visa from a foreign country, he was pulled from the ministry in the diocese here and remanded to his bishop, where he returned to active ministry. I was banned by the pastor of the Church from all ministry for reporting him. If I had not, I could have continued ministry even though they knew what happened. Silence would have been rewarded. I lost a few close friends due to the publicity of the lawsuit and their discomfort being associated with me. I feared retaliation beyond being shunned, ostracized, and ridiculed, which led to my retreating at home for six weeks, afraid to leave. Some told me that I was hated and accused of seducing the priest.
Once loved and accepted by my church community, I fell sharply from grace. There was also a backlash from my adult son. I ended up walking away from the community that was like a family. It caused marked spiritual confusion and distress for well over five years.
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