Our Church: A Safe Place
In 1992 , The Church Council of the ELCA adopted “An ELCA Strategy for Responding to Sexual Abuse in the Church.” Education, training and prevention are the primary goals of this strategy.
Education and training are helping the church to respond more sensitively and effectively to those who have been wounded by clergy sexual abuse. Bishops, synod and churchwide staff, pastors and other leaders in the church are learning about the consequences of this problem, about how to intervene and provide care, and to discipline perpetrators of such abuse. We continue to learn about how to be more helpful and responsive.
We are indebted to a multiple of persons for helping the church learn to address this problem, especially indebted to those victims of sexual abuse who have struggled to understand and report what happened to them in the course of sexual entanglement with their pastor. Their hard-won wisdom enriches us all and may help save someone else from experiencing similar suffering.