Daniela says some church officials believe that Christians cannot be sexual abusers
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Daniela’s parents were evangelical Christians who spent long days working with homeless people.
This left Daniela frequently unsupervised and vulnerable to sexual abuse by church members and hostel users.
Daniela’s parents were ministers in the Salvation Army. When she was growing up, her family resided in hostels for homeless men, many of whom had severe mental health problems.
Her parents worked long hours attending to the needs of the homeless. ‘They didn’t have time for children’ Daniela says. As a young child, she spent a lot of time with a long-term resident her parents trusted, called Phil.
Daniela thinks she was about seven years old when Phil started sexually abusing her. It began with him bathing her. She says her mum knew he was doing this, but she saw him as a babysitter, and ‘she was busy’.
Phil made Daniela look at pornography. She remembers a school teacher finding some sexually explicit material in her bag, but he did not question this or do anything about it.
The abuse by Phil involved touching and penetration, but not rape.
When Daniela was in her early teens, Phil put her in his bed and told her he was going ‘to have full sex’ with her.
She managed to run away and avoided him after that. He disappeared and she felt guilty she was responsible for this.
Daniela says her parents were taught by the Salvation Army that ‘God will look after your children while you do God’s work’. She doesn’t think the church teaches that now, but she believes older members still believe it, which puts children at risk.
When Daniela was in her mid-teens, a member of the church would grab her bottom and make lewd personal comments. She told an official in the church who responded that if they moved him on, ‘he’ll only do it at another church’. She also reported it to the police, but no action was taken.
The family often moved to reside and work in different hostels, and Daniela experienced more sexual abuse and harassment. She says ‘as soon as you're there there’d be one waiting’.
She made another report to a church elder about the predatory behaviour of someone in the church, but no action was taken.
Daniela believes that sexual abuse may be a recurring problem in hostels because often abusers are thrown out of their family homes and have nowhere to go. She says this is a danger for the children of ministers who reside in hostels.
She adds that a church safeguarding officer has told her that families no longer live in hostels.
Daniela has suffered with mental health issues, she has had suicidal thoughts and has self-harmed.
She is concerned that many senior figures in the church won’t take allegations of sexual abuse seriously, because they believe ‘if you're a Christian you can’t be a sex offender’. She says ‘The church has to take responsibility.’
She has recently gained a degree and says she has supportive friends.