Healing from Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse

• Guest Bios
• Show Transcript

https://youtu.be/avV0ciCYqtg

Ten years ago, Sharon Clements’ world turned upside down. The pastor she trusted abused that trust and lured her into a sexual relationship. But when everything became public, her abuse was labeled an affair. And instead of receiving help, she received shame and rejection.

In this edition of The Roys Report, Sharon speaks out—not just about the abuse, but about her road to recovery.

The church where her abuse occurred—LexCity Church (formerly Quest Community Church) in Lexington, Kentucky—recently made headlines for another sex abuse scandal. And in the wake of that scandal, LexCity has closed.

It’s not often we see such a dramatic consequence to news like this. But then again, this is the second time LexCity has been rocked by scandal.

The first time was in 2014 when then-Pastor Pete Hise admitted to an “affair” with Sharon Clements. This not only rocked the church but led to years of confusion and pain for Sharon.

It wasn’t until about a year later that Sharon discovered what adult clergy sex abuse (ACSA) is. And suddenly, things began to make sense—and Sharon began to heal.

If you’re a victim of ACSA or another type of abuse, you’re going to really be encouraged by Sharon’s story.

Guests

Sharon Clements

Sharon Clements is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Way Home Ministries, a non-profit dedicated to helping people recover a life of thriving faith in the aftermath of spiritual abuse. She and her husband, Paul, live in Lexington, KY, along with their two golden retrievers, Sophie & Sadie Grace. Their adult children, Carolyne and Renner, live nearby, and family dinners together are one of their favorite nights of the week.

Show Transcript

[00:00:00] Julie Roys: Ten years ago, Sharon Clements’ world turned upside down. The pastor she trusted, abused that trust, and lured her into a sexual relationship. But when everything became public, her abuse was labeled an affair. And instead of receiving help, she received shame and rejection. Now she’s speaking out, not just about the abuse, but about her road to recovery.

[00:00:27] Julie Roys: Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And about two weeks ago, I became aware of Sharon’s story. That’s because the church where her abuse occurred, LexCity Church in Lexington, Kentucky, made headlines for another scandal. This time, it wasn’t the senior pastor involved in sexual misconduct, but the executive pastor, Zachary King.

[00:00:53] Julie Roys: King is facing six charges related to the alleged rape and sodomy of a minor. And in the wake of the charges against King, LexCity has closed. It’s not often that we see such a dramatic consequence to news like this. But then again, this is the second time that this church has been rocked by scandal.

[00:01:11] Julie Roys: The first time was in 2014, when then pastor Pete Hise stepped down after publicly admitting to what was labeled an affair. But as you’ll hear in this podcast, that’s what often happens with Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse, or ACSA. And that’s one of the reasons ACSA is so devastating to its victims. But as you’ll hear, healing is possible.

[00:01:33] Julie Roys: So if you’re a victim of ACSA or another type of abuse, I think you’ll really be encouraged by Sharon’s story. But before we dive in, I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington.

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[00:03:17] Julie Roys: Again, joining me is Sharon Clements and her husband, Paul. As I mentioned in the open, Sharon is a survivor of adult clergy sexual abuse. She’s also the co-founder of THE WAY HOME, a ministry helping people recover their faith in the wake of spiritual abuse. Prior to that, she was the director of programming and worship at Quest Community Church, which rebranded LexCity Church in 2018. And as I previously mentioned, LexCity Church recently ceased operations in the wake of a sexual scandal there involving its executive pastor, Zachary King. So Sharon and Paul, thank you so much for joining me and for your willingness to discuss what I know was a really difficult chapter in your life.

[00:03:59] Sharon Clements: Yeah. Thank you, Julie. It’s actually really an honor to be here. It’s not some of my favorite parts of my story, but it is beautiful what Jesus has done in our lives and the idea of getting to share it so that people find hope and get some light in a place in the church that is a little bit shady, a lot shady, but a little bit dark and shadowy. I’m really glad to get to do that

[00:04:27] Julie Roys: Again. Thank you for being willing to talk about your journey. And I really do want to emphasize and focus the healing part of your journey and the redemptive part. But to understand that we do need to get context of what happened there when you were at Quest Community Church and what happened with Pete Hise.

[00:04:48] Julie Roys: So I appreciate you being willing to discuss that. And I believe we need to back up to 1996. This is when you were at a Christian and Missionary Alliance church there in Lexington. And as I understand it, some really exciting stuff started to happen in the church’s ability to reach the community. So would you discuss what happened and what that was like?

[00:05:08] Sharon Clements: Yeah, we had been married about three or four years at that point, and the church decided to have a seeker service along the model of Willow Creek Community Church to try to make church accessible for people who had given up on church.

[00:05:29] Sharon Clements: It was a Saturday night service .We dove into helping with that. At first I wasn’t sure about doing that. I was a new mom at the time. But I gave it six months, said, let’s see how this works. And we started to be a part of it and, honestly, we just started seeing people come to Christ. We saw the Lord using our gifts and we were really excited about what we saw God doing there.

[00:05:54] Julie Roys: And so what was it about 1999, then, the church decided to plant a new church kind of based on this seeker model and what was happening there, and Pete Hise ended up being the pastor of that church. Describe the first year or two and how that went and how you felt about it as a couple.

[00:06:16] Sharon Clements: It’s like you read in the book of Acts where people just would hear and respond. It was that kind of a live place. Somewhat in my life, church had been sometimes tepid, and this was anything but it was exciting. We saw a life change families. It was really irresistible. And after about a year, I was invited to join the staff.

[00:06:41] Julie Roys: So you’re on staff as a director of worship and programming. Paul, were you involved as well, I’m guessing, at least in a volunteer capacity?

[00:06:49] Paul Clements: I remember the day that we walked around in a gymnasium in our original church, where we put butcher paper pieces up describing the different ministries that you could be a part of, music and drama and technical stuff. And I’m like, I can’t do any of that stuff. But there was one that was the recording ministry. At the time it was the tape ministry. I’m like, I can push record with the best of them. So I sat in the booth for that entire first few years with headphones and just pushing record and duplicating cassette tapes of the services. Now, my involvement over the years has increased from there, but that’s where I started.

[00:07:36] Julie Roys: And my understanding is that while all this exciting stuff is happening, there’s also a culture being formed that had some toxicity to it and had some red flags. Would you talk about that culture and how that laid the groundwork for what happened later?

[00:07:54] Sharon Clements: Like I said, it was kind of intoxicating to be around. And we were all in, but we were trying to do the work of Jesus, but we were gradually drifting away from the ways of Jesus. We were elevating our pastor. We thought if he preaches then people hear the good news and they’ll be drawn to Jesus.

[00:08:15] Sharon Clements: So like that scripture that says, if Jesus is lifted up, all men will be drawn to him. We inserted like, if our pastor is preaching about Jesus, then people will be drawn to him. Like it was, there was an elevation and that was something he encouraged. There was an orbit around him. We were measuring fruit by the numbers, and we were seeing some pretty vibrant growth.

[00:08:40] Sharon Clements: But if you had looked at the measure of the fruit of the spirit, we were not growing in that. In fact there was getting less and less gentleness, patience, kindness. As time went on this wasn’t overnight. It’s more like a frog that’s been put into a pot of water and then the water slowly starts heating.

[00:09:02] Sharon Clements: It was more that way. Over time scripture was manipulated. We were encouraged to follow with our whole hearts. We were there was so much pressure. The pressure, like I’ve never been a part of a church that so much wanted people to come to Jesus, which was good, but the pressure that was on our shoulders to be out there, making sure people heard as if that was on our shoulders, as opposed to something that the Lord does.

[00:09:33] Sharon Clements: Like that we get to come alongside him and partner with him in. The pressure to be winning your family, winning your neighborhood. It got distorted. It got distorted really fast. And there was relational connectedness that was like too much relational intimacies that were accelerated constructing a level of relationship that hadn’t really been forged.

[00:10:02] Sharon Clements: So it was like this all in mentality. And a few years in, we started a leadership program, leadership training program called Accelerate and accelerate is exactly what happened. It accelerated the things that were broken. It accelerated some good things too, I’m sure. But I remember in one of the very first gatherings, it was an exclusive group you would vie to get in, pay big money to be taught by our pastor, put in hours of coming to sessions, then re-listening to all of the teaching again. But in one of the first accelerates our pastor told us to turn off our filter. Don’t filter what he says. just receive it like full blown as if it is straight from the Holy Spirit. Let’s cut out the middleman and know it’s me. When I speak, you can believe it.

[00:11:21] Sharon Clements: And for some people that was the red flag that they needed. I wish I had been so smart. What hubris, to say that to anyone. And honestly, just, what foolishness that we did it. But it accelerated the toxicity. It accelerated the pressure. It accelerated the control. We still were seeing people come to Christ, but like the closer you were into the inner, like the inner circles of things, the more the pressure was affecting all of us.

[00:11:33] Julie Roys: Don’t feel bad because what you’re telling me is things that I’ve heard. And so many different survivors that I’ve talked to. And when you say the thing about, it’s all about Jesus, right? That was a line of Mark Driscoll’s. It’s all about Jesus. But practically, if we put me up on stage and there’s more of me, I’m going to attract everybody to the church.

[00:12:04] Julie Roys: So it was a subtle idolatry. And I think too, that loyalty it’s funny. I was talking to somebody recently and they’re like, you don’t see loyalty as a positive thing? And I’m like, no, that’s a really loaded word loyalty among abuse survivors because the loyalty isn’t to Jesus. It’s to a leader, and yet when it’s happening, we don’t realize that it got flipped. That the loyalty, in fact, our loyalty to the leader is sometimes asking us to be disloyal to Jesus, but we’re not seeing it in the moment because we have so equated that loyalty to the leader with Jesus. Yeah.

[00:12:52] Julie Roys: So in the midst of this, there begins a grooming process between Pete Hise and yourself. This is a word that’s familiar to an awful lot of survivors. But there may be some listening that aren’t familiar with the grooming process and especially when it relates, when we talk about grooming, too often people think about it as someone who’s 20 to 30 years older than you. And it can be that. And it can be an adult to a child, but it also can be from adult to adult. So explain how that grooming works and what it did to you personally.

[00:13:03] Sharon Clements: First of all the things we’re describing are a spiritually abusive environment. Spiritually abusive. And that showed up in lots of ways for different people in different ways.

[00:13:16] Sharon Clements: Anytime a pastor or leader uses their power to manipulate or intimidate or control, it’s spiritual abuse. And we saw that happening in lots and lots of ways. It showed up for some people with the inordinate pressure, some people with performance, some people, there was like shaming, some people were elevated, and other people were excluded. There was an inside and an outside, and it was so unlike the kingdom.

[00:13:38] Sharon Clements: But the way that showed up for me, like you said, it was adult clergy sexual abuse. You’ve talked about it plenty, but the idea that anytime there’s a sexual relationship between a pastor and a congregant or a staff member, there’s a power differential, which makes consent impossible to have consent.

[00:14:04] Sharon Clements: To have consent, there has to be equal power. And I know that you understand this, but that is something that I think the secular world understands pretty well. Between a boss and an employee, between a therapist and a client. But for some reason, the church lags behind in their understanding of a lack of what happens with a lack of consent. And when there’s no consent, it’s an abuse, it’s abuse of power and abuse of their position. And I just wanted to just get that kind of just make sure that’s clear. And that is what happened to me.

[00:14:49] Sharon Clements:  And you ask about grooming. A better question would be how didn’t he groom me? It was from the very beginning; it was late nights. It was choosing me to come alongside him, sharing confidences with me. Like small kind of inappropriate confidences that I didn’t realize that at the time, kind of testing the waters, I think. Reading me to spot my vulnerabilities.

[00:15:11] Sharon Clements: He said that God gave him really great eyes to see into people. And I think he really did use his eyes to look and see where I was weak and then played that, manipulated it, whether it was, from my own childhood. Wounds of wanting to be chosen or to belong or to be seen or have my voice matter. So he cashed in on that. To be honest, I don’t know what he knew of what he was doing, but that actually isn’t my job.

[00:15:38] Sharon Clements: I know my experiences that the things he saw were then used to draw me in. He would promote me, elevate me, which made me, of course, super flattering, met a deep need in some ways in my life. And I now understand that was love bombing, that it was pouring on all of this attention and praise and value. And it made me feel valued and important and chosen. But also made me feel indebted to him and loyal to him and increasingly isolated. The best way to put it for me is that the ground under my feet was slowly and incrementally eroded away. Like the very ground I was standing on was eroded away.

[00:16:30] Sharon Clements: He would tell me how overwhelmed he was, how I was the only one who really understood, how the weight was so heavy, and I was the only one who got it. And bottom line, I was absolutely trained, led, and groomed to be loyal to him with my life.

[00:16:46] Julie Roys: And there’s a certain amount of flattery when we hear things like that. I remember just being in ministry and every now and then, people would tell me that and I’d almost just want to stop him right there. And I often did and just said I hope I’m trustworthy. I hope you’re sharing this with me because I am trustworthy, but I also want you to know that I’m not a hundred percent trustworthy and there’s a lot of people out there that are just as trustworthy as me.

[00:17:09] Julie Roys: So I’m not the only one, because I think once that only one idea gets into your head, it messes with you, it messes with them and it’s just unhealthy.

[00:17:27] Julie Roys: Paul, I’m curious, while this is happening to your wife, are you recognizing any of these things happening or is it like, this is normal? This has become the new normal and you really can’t see it when you’re in it.

[00:17:33] Paul Clements: Yeah. It was definitely more a slow and steady normalizing of all the hours at the church. To me, it was represented as Sharon’s job. She’s in ministry and, oh, it’s especially it’s, ministry is difficult and requires a lot. And we’re in a church plant just trying to get started. So that’s even triple harder. The amount of time that she needed to spend working on church things, again, there was some bit of pushback in me in the first few years. And then by probably year three, it was like, just turned to resignation. Nothing I can say is going to change this

[00:18:14] Paul Clements:. And so it was just an acceptance of, she’s going to be at church a lot and I think I chose some of the things that I did as a volunteer, partially out of just a desire to be close to her and be a part of what she was doing. But the interpersonal things she’s describing. Yeah, I didn’t have viability to most of it.

[00:18:40] Julie Roys: Did you feel like at that time, like she was married to her job?

[00:18:45] Paul Clements: Definitely by the end I felt that way. I’m not sure that I felt that at the beginning as much as I did toward the end.

[00:18:53] Sharon Clements: Just so you know what this culture was like living a boundary-less life was lauded. Pulling an all-nighter. Giving and living beyond our means, sacrificing time with our families and our kids, the practice of making the impossible happen. Because with God, all things are possible. So it should be all things should be possible for us too. That’s what true devotion looked like. That’s what it was lauded as. This is what a true follower of Jesus looks like.

[00:19:20] Sharon Clements: So that was called out more, expected more. And my sister Connie, who was a part of this community as well she calls it the creep, like it’s just slowly more is expected, slowly the hours get later. It’ll just be for a season until it’s not. It’s just kept on and kept on.

[00:19:48] Julie Roys: And I get that because I went to Willow Creek Community Church when I was in my twenties. And one of the things I loved about it was that we were fully devoted followers. And there’s a part of me, I’ve never been like halfhearted about anything I’ve ever done. Like I’m a hundred percent about things. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that healthy means you have boundaries and the family; you draw boundaries around your family and around that time. But at the time I thought that was really, that’s what we’re called to be, right? We’re supposed to take up our cross and follow Christ.

[00:20:23] Julie Roys: But again, it wasn’t about following Christ per se. It could often get mixed up with ministry and ministry almost becoming an idol. So I totally get what you’re talking about. And I come from a missionary family too. There was an element of that in the family I grew up in where talking about personal things or about problems and things like that, you just didn’t do that because ministry was important.

[00:20:45] Julie Roys: God was important. Spiritual things were important. And we miss the people that it’s all about people, right? And it’s about being healthy and being in relationship with Jesus and with others. Again, I think there’s probably a lot of people listening who can relate to what you’re talking about.

[00:21:02] Julie Roys: And then for you, it crossed over that physical boundary from this emotional relationship with Pete to a physical one. And we don’t need to hear details about that, but I am wondering for the person who’s listening who just doesn’t get like adult clergy sexual abuse, how does that work for someone?

[00:21:25] Julie Roys: You’re obviously an adult and I know that I’m going to get asked this because every single time we do a podcast about adult clergy sexual abuse, people bring it up and they’re like, okay, how can this happen to an adult? If it’s abuse is this just a way of absolving them of responsibility? Address that issue because I know there are people listening right now that this is going to be the issue for them. And I would love for you to speak to that.

[00:21:52] Sharon Clements: Yeah, I had come into ministry with a heart for Jesus and a strong moral compass, but I have rigid boundaries. And part of what my pastor did was he led me into a deeper understanding of grace with looser, more gracious boundaries, which I had felt like was a good thing.

[00:22:15] Sharon Clements: Like I was understanding grace in a way. And so when he began to incrementally draw me into questionable territory, crash joking. physical affection, increasing relational intimacy, I was uncomfortable with that, but it was in the same vein of wider, looser boundaries that I had resisted originally.

[00:22:39] Sharon Clements: And he has led me to override what had seemed right to me and follow what he said was right. Like he said, you need to trust the way that I’m leading you because you’ve gotten this wrong. And so my practice of trusting his read over my own was well established. One of the verses that we memorized in Accelerate was in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 17.

[00:23:04] Sharon Clements: It says, obey your spiritual leaders and do what they say. And we memorized that like in a, you need to trust and follow your leaders because they will lead you to the right place. And when I said I was all in, I believed that, but we didn’t memorize Ezekiel 34 that talks about shepherds who feed on the sheep, the shepherds who harass and who harm. We didn’t memorize those things.

[00:23:36] Sharon Clements: We didn’t have the counsel of scripture to balance all that out. I was coerced to take incremental step by incremental step over a very long period of time. This was the frog in the pot of water. And honestly, like I was super naive. I didn’t have much experience in any way sexually before we got married.

[00:24:01] Sharon Clements: There was like, I was so naive. So when he would urge me to take a little tiny baby step that I was uncomfortable with, he would just say, oh no, you’ve just misunderstood that. No, he would say, you’re so naive. This is no big deal.

[00:24:21] Sharon Clements: And so it wasn’t in those moments. It was years earlier where I had been taught to override, override, override. That became like a way of living. And this was somebody who was supposed to point me to Jesus. This is somebody that was ordained to say, this man will point you into a life of following God.

[00:24:45] Sharon Clements: And my loyalty was played. My trust was abused. It was deep soul and moral injury that warps your moral compass. And it was it was dark. Julie, it was dark. Like the path that it was on, I was following somebody who was helping so many people come to Christ and that we were all in together and these subtle little steps.

[00:25:14] Sharon Clements: It did not happen overnight. It’s such a heartbreak that it happened at all. It’s such a heartbreak that it did. In the process of that I thought we were the same. Like I thought he was as heartbroken over all of it as I was, as desperate to get help as I was. And I don’t think that now. I don’t.

[00:25:41] Sharon Clements: I asked him, and I asked him, who could we go to, to get help? I thought we kept making a mistake. I blessed the Lord Jesus that we never slept together, but there were a lot of lines that were crossed. And when I asked who we could go to, he said that no one could know. We could handle it, that no one could know that it would bring the church down.

[00:26:04] Sharon Clements: The message was clear, that secrecy was loyalty, and silence was honor. And to speak up would mean exposure, and exposure would mean shattering a movement of God like we had never seen like this. And it was, like, so much pressure, and so much secrecy. Like I was so trapped. So trapped.

[00:26:35] Sharon Clements: And I don’t know who’s listening who may have found themselves in a similar spot but let me say this: God would never, never ask you to live in shadows or secrecy or shame to protect his reputation or his kingdom or his name. Never.

[00:26:47] Julie Roys: I’m so so sorry. And I think you have described that in such a vivid way. It all makes sense. And I’m just so sorry that happened to you. And I think I’m even extra grieved that when this finally came out, it came out as an affair.

[00:27:08] Julie Roys: And so instead of you receiving help, you received condemnation, you received shame, and you probably already felt that in spades. I can imagine. So describe what that was like when that came out, and you’re I’m guessing both of you just had a great deal of confusion about what was going on. What was that experience like?

[00:27:37] Sharon Clements: I was just so I was so trapped. I was begging Jesus to rescue me, and I was actually praying that he would rescue us. Again, I thought we needed rescue. I didn’t understand I needed rescuing. And the Lord answered that prayer.

[00:27:58] Sharon Clements: I have a friend who had the courage to ask me something felt suspicious to her. And she had the courage to ask me about it. And I said, Oh no, everything’s fine. But I immediately texted my pastor and said, I want to tell her. I want to tell her what’s going on. And he said, she can never know.

[00:28:22] Sharon Clements: And so my friend, she had the courage to ask me again. The Lord woke her up and had her ask me again. And it led to just so much heartbreak. It was shattering. When you say how it all came out, it was shattering, but I hold her in high regard for being somebody who could be a part of our rescue.

[00:28:50] Sharon Clements: It was so shattering, Julie. Like you said, nobody understood. It was reported as an emotional affair that had crossed physical lines. And I was like, that doesn’t seem right. Like those weren’t the right words, but also I was so confused. And the church had no idea what had happened to me.

[00:29:12] Sharon Clements: I had no idea what had happened to me. So I have compassion for that. But that’s why we need people to understand what this is. We need people to understand so that they can come in and help leaders. They were walking around, and they were devastated. When I said we were all in, we were all in. And so something like this, like just shatters your hearts.

[00:29:35] Sharon Clements: It shattered their hearts, and they were having to lead. through their own heartbreak. It’s like when a tornado hits a town, they call in the National Guard to come help because the first responders in the town, their own house may have been lost. They may have lost a child. Their family may be at harm’s way.

[00:29:54] Sharon Clements: So you bring outside people to come and help because it is so devastating. But because they didn’t understand, I was shunned. People were told not to talk to me. And I felt utterly alone. It was so devastating.

[00:30:14] Julie Roys: Wow. You lost your church, your family in one day. Boy, everything you describe, I just can’t even imagine because I’ve been in systems like that but not had it ripped apart so dramatically in one day like it did for you. And so I’m just putting myself in that situation and just know that would have been absolutely devastating.

[00:30:44] Julie Roys: Paul, let me ask you, how did you process this? Your wife, who you know to be a godly woman, I’m guessing never expected anything like this to ever happen. How did you process what you heard?

[00:30:56] Paul Clements: And there was a very surreal mixture of grief and sadness, and shock, but also again, relief. I just had something deep inside me that knew that, as painful as this is,  this is a good thing that she’s has gotten out of whatever this was.

[00:31:22] Paul Clements:  And we went through the journey, the process of understanding what it was and being able to have the right terminology for it together. So she would begin to understand things. She would point me to, Hey, read this or so it was we walked that journey of understanding together.

[00:31:43] Julie Roys: How did you become aware, Sharon, that what had happened to you wasn’t just an affair, that this was abuse?

[00:31:50] Sharon Clements: I was reading anything I could read to try to make sense of what had happened. I read Boundaries so much, over, and over out loud. I would gather my children around and say, okay, next chapter. Like Boundaries had been a hated book in our culture; like it felt anti Acts 2, and now we were like, again, we must read it.

[00:32:14] Sharon Clements: That was bringing a life that was helping bring some clarity. I knew I loved Paul, so I was so confused by all the things that had happened. And I told you that my sister Connie was a part of this community as well. And she lost everything, of course, in the middle of this, too.

[00:32:33] Sharon Clements: She was torn. She was her sister is on one side and the community is on the other. And that was just such a ripping experience for her and her family. We live in different states now, but we were getting to heal together on some levels. And at some point Connie said maybe you need to talk to somebody who’s been through what you’ve been through.

[00:32:56] Sharon Clements: And I said, who in the world has been through what I’ve been through? Is there anyone who has been through what I’ve been through? I had no understanding that there could be anybody else. And she had found the website called The Hope of Survivors, which outlines and explains adult clergy sexual abuse. It starts to diagnose it a little bit.

[00:33:22] Sharon Clements: So I went to that site. I have the date that I went to the site on my calendar, like with a big heart on it because it was like light starting to pierce through the darkness. I was reading like you may have heard your pastor say this. He may have said, done this to you. He may have set you up in this way.

[00:33:42] Sharon Clements: And as I was reading it, I was like, this is like a playbook. Like, how would they know that he said that to me? How would they know? But I’m still like super conflicted. I did not want people to think I was just trying to get out of the blame. Like I was sticking my landing at the cross. Like I was like, nope, this is me.

[00:34:06] Sharon Clements: It was a real wrestling match to figure that out, to wrestle with the idea that I had been abused because I certainly did not want to have been abused. And one beautiful thing that we read was on The Hope of Survivors website, they have a letter to husbands. It just says, so your wife may have told you some really hard news.

[00:34:34] Sharon Clements: And it was like a letter to try to help husbands understand that while your wife may not know what she’s gone through, this is an abusive situation. Try to have compassion for her, try to have mercy. Like it was coaching husbands in how to tend their wife and I read it and I like took it to Paul and I just said, read this because it was like the Lord had given Paul all that understanding, like everything they were trying to help a husband understand. It was like the Holy Spirit had given Paul that understanding from the first moment that I told him what had happened. And he just had tended to me with such kindness and compassion, like as if like he didn’t have the knowledge in his head, this is an abuse of power. My wife has been abused, but it was like the way he responded to me was with that kind of kindness.

[00:35:34] Sharon Clements: And I remember, I was sitting in a tzatziki’s restaurant really wrestling with the Lord about this idea of saying, was I abused? And I didn’t want that. It was a sad thought. It’s such cognitive dissonance to consider the idea that your pastor who is supposed to want good for you has done something destructive to you.

[00:36:02] Sharon Clements: But I remember it was like the Lord just got right down there with me. And it was like he said, will you just have an allegiance to the truth. We have an allegiance to the truth. And I was like, but what are people going to think? Are they thinking I’m trying to get out of it? Are they, what will he think, my loyalties?

[00:36:26] Sharon Clements: And it was like, the Lord just took my face in his hands so to speak, and just said, can you have an allegiance to me? Can you have an allegiance to the truth? And I was like that I can do. That I can do. And I surrendered to that loving voice and it was like I hit solid ground under my feet.

[00:36:48] Julie Roys: And what a wonderful thing that you responded so graciously, Paul. I’ve heard from some spouses that got very angry, which is understandable, very hurt, reactive. Those are all understandable, and I have had to work through those, but how beautiful that, it seems like on an intuitive level, you understood.

[00:37:09] Paul Clements: I think so.

[00:37:13] Sharon Clements: Yeah. Julie I can just say somewhere along this time when the Lord was starting to turn the lights on, it was like I remember being with him one day and again, it felt like he just whispered to my heart just said, do you want to see how I see all this? Would you like to know how I see all this?

[00:37:32] Sharon Clements: And I was like, with my journal pen in hand going, yes please tell me what is it you want to say? Yes, I want to know how you see this. Because it was such devastation for us and so many people. And the Lord said, at least my sense of what he said to me was, this is the day I rescued you.

[00:37:52] Sharon Clements: It was our rescue. He came in and he snatched me out of such harm’s way, like saved my life, saved my marriage, saved my family. And that’s how we refer to it. That’s how we’ve referred to it ever since. In fact, at the one-year anniversary of the rescue, Paul took our family away and just said, let’s celebrate that we made it, that God saw us through and that he has rescued us. And receiving that change, it turned the worst day into the best day, a little Good Friday-ish. It’s the worst day, but we call it good. He took a day of painful exposure and called it good. He called it rescue. And that is a treasure to my life.

[00:38:51] Julie Roys: And that is a spiritual principle. The truth will set you free that confessing our sins, bringing it all out into the open is when we begin healing. And I’m just thinking, as you’ve been talking, I wonder how many people, one who are listening, who this could be prevention for them. You can see you’re being led down this road and you can see that your church has these dynamics and get out to see the truth now rather than going through this.

[00:39:28] Julie Roys: But also, I’m thinking of when I interviewed Katie Roberts, this was a few years ago a podcast, great podcast, by the way. I encourage people to go back to listen to that one. That was one of the most instructive ones that I’ve done on adult clergy sexual abuse. And Katie said, until I understood it as abuse, there’s no way you could say that she was trying to get out of responsibility for it because she had confessed, and this is all my fault.

[00:39:47] Julie Roys: And she was there. But the problem was nothing made sense. Nothing made sense. And it was when you understand the abuse that it was like, Oh, now it’s starting to make sense. And now I can continue on this path of healing or really start on that path of healing.

[00:40:10] Julie Roys: But one of the hardest things seems to be church people. Because again, this is just something we don’t have understanding for. And it is odd because you’re right. And in many professions, if you’re a doctor and you have a sexual relationship with your patient, we get, that’s really inappropriate. If you’re a counselor, who experiences this trust that you can share all this intimate stuff with someone, they’re going to help you. And you use that as a context to then get into a sexual relationship. We get that’s abuse, but for some reason, a pastor? The trust level for a pastor. I think back now for me, there’s a lot of skepticism about all of that. And a lot of red flags would go up, I think back when I was younger, How I would have viewed that relationship and there’s so much trust.

[00:40:55] Julie Roys: And yet we just don’t see how this is abuse and it needs to change. And what are there like 13 states, is it, where it’s now a crime for a clergy person to have: 14? Oh, praise the Lord. We got another one. So there’s 14 states, but that means we have an awful lot, a lot more that, that don’t get it.  Where it’s not illegal and it needs to be, and it needs to be really brought out in the open. But when you took this to your church leaders, and you tried to help them understand, what was their response to you and to your description of this as abuse?

[00:41:34] Sharon Clements: I sat down with several elders and did my best to describe and help them understand the framework that we had come to understand. I think that’s what Katie called it. Just a framework where it all makes sense, the principles of consent, the principles of abuse. And they listened, they seemed to listen with compassion to what I’d been through.

[00:42:05] Sharon Clements: But when I asked that they tell; I didn’t even ask them to tell the whole church. I just said, there’s these leaders, there’s 20 or so leaders, would you please help them understand? Because the truth will set them free. It helps, it will help all of us. And they chose not to do that. They refused and said they didn’t want to open up the wound for everyone again, and I  have compassion for that. There’s a problem when we don’t right name though. I get the draw to softening things up so that you don’t drag everyone through the ordeal. In their perspective, I think, it had been about a year. So maybe everybody was healing up and so let’s not reopen it with more information.

[00:42:44] Sharon Clements: But it’s like going to a doctor and he does tests and finds out that you have cancer, but he doesn’t want to make you feel bad. So he doesn’t tell you that you have cancer. So we treat something else. And meanwhile, the cancer is eating away at you. And it would be malpractice, a reason to lose your license as a doctor if you did that

Sharon Clements: And, Julie, I just think church leaders have to understand these dynamics like a doctor goes to med school to understand how to diagnose things, church leaders need to understand so that they can rightly name. My friend Jackie, who’s a partner at The Way Home, the ministry that we started, wrote an article about right naming and she put it really well. When we don’t rightly name something, we’re not protecting the victim or the church or the community or the spiritual leader.

[00:43:35] Sharon Clements: Like no one is getting protected. In fact, everyone is getting exponential harm. Like the victim is getting wrongfully blamed, like you said. Adding trauma to trauma. The church is unable to heal from the infection that’s there because unrepentant sin is continuing to spread. The community is unable to trust another institution who’s choosing the abuser over the victim.

[00:43:59] Sharon Clements: And a spiritual leader is actually unlikely to come clean themselves because they’re being protected from the very light that could propel them toward truly owning and repenting of their sin. I get the draw.  It is such cognitive dissonance for somebody to believe that their leader could do something like this.

[00:44:19] Sharon Clements: Nobody wants to believe a pastor could do it. Nobody wants to, but if you’re in the seat of leadership in a church, you’ve just got to be willing to tell the truth. And I think that’s something that’s missing. Again, I think, 10 years ago, it was a lot less known. But I think it’s had consequences that the church wasn’t told.

[00:44:41] Julie Roys: It’s really unfortunate that seminaries don’t teach about this. I know some are starting to, but that should be part of the regular curriculum, to understand adult clergy sexual abuse, to understand the power that you wield as a pastor, to understand the vulnerability of the people that are under you, because that’s really a weighty thing to be in that position. I think that’s why Jesus said if you lead one of these little ones astray, it’d be better to be drowned in the deepest sea and have a millstone hung around your neck. Jesus speaks very, very bold language to people who lead vulnerable ones astray. And we’re not doing a service to our pastors to not inform them about this.

[00:45:23] Julie Roys: And Pete Hise is pastoring a church again. And to your knowledge, are you aware that he has owned any of this or repented of what he did?

[00:45:37] Paul Clements: Big shrug. We just don’t know.

[00:45:39] Sharon Clements: Not that we know of. We don’t know.

[00:45:42] Paul Clements: So he did go through a two-year restoration plan with our denomination. His ordination was revoked when he was exposed and fired. And in order to regain his credentials, you would need to go through this process. And he did. He agreed to do it. And at the end of the process, the denomination said, no, we’re not going to restore your credentials.

[00:46:13] Julie Roys: This was Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, correct?

Sharon Clements: Yes. I was encouraged by that.

[00:46:16] Paul Clements: Yes. Props to them for recognizing. And what we were told was that he just didn’t seem to get it. The leadership abuse in particular. He just didn’t seem to understand or acknowledge and lack of humility. Again, from there, it was just a matter, I think, of a months or a year later, the church he had been attending here in town brought him on staff as a pastor, and that lasted about a year and then he’s moved away. But yeah, continuing to be a pastor in non-denominational churches where there’s no outside accountability structure.

[00:46:59] Julie Roys: Props to the Christian and Missionary Alliance. They were also the church that didn’t handle so well the adult clergy sexual abuse that that Lori Anne Thompson experienced with Ravi Zacharias. And they were really, really slow on that. And again, denominational leaders really need to get up to speed on this because they are deciding some of these cases and they have no clue what they’re doing. But good to hear that they particularly caught Pete and understood in this case. That’s fantastic.

[00:47:21] Julie Roys: In the wake of all of this, you started as we’ve mentioned this ministry called The Way Home and really ministering to people who have been victims of spiritual abuse. There are so few organizations like this really ministering healing. I know it’s one of the reasons we started our RESTORE conference, for example, was I saw all of these church refugees, people have been harmed and not receiving care. Not receiving that community that you need, because I think you really, you heal from trauma in community. So I’m so thrilled you started this.

[00:48:09] Julie Roys: Talk about how this ministry has brought healing for the people that you’ve ministered to. And I’m guessing that, they say healing, what is it like an onion there’s layers and layers, and I’m guessing that as you’ve ministered to others, it’s ministered to you, and you’ve gone deeper with your own healing. But describe this ministry and how it’s ministered to others, but to you as well.

[00:48:27] Sharon Clements: We haven’t just been rescued for us, but we have been rescued so that we can put up road signs and guideposts for people so that they also can find their way home. And so that has been our prayer and our journey. We’re a nonprofit that’s been going for about a year and a half and, our heart is to help people recover a thriving faith in the aftermath of spiritual abuse.

[00:48:58] Sharon Clements: Because we’ve zoned in today about adult clergy sexual abuse, but that’s just one branch. It’s a big one, but it’s a branch of spiritual abuse in general. And so many people they risked on the church. They maybe came to Christ in a community that then had this dynamic at play. And so their spiritual lives have gone reeling.

[00:49:26] Sharon Clements: Like, Who do I trust? Was any of this for real? Is God who he says he is? Is God gonna use his power against me? Like it brings up so much chaos in your heart. And we’re working on small group curriculum of how to like a church can recover. That will be out this fall. Like we’re wanting to provide care, but also training. We’ve been able to actually work with some denominational leaders who actually do want to understand, who brought us in to do some training on this.

[00:49:48] Sharon Clements: It is both so disheartening that abuse is out there. We often say we wish we didn’t have to exist, but getting to talk to a woman, who has walked the path that I’ve walked and help her, help the light come on for her the way that The Hope of Survivors did for me to help them see what actually has happened here, because it’s just what you just said, the truth will set us free.

[00:50:27] Sharon Clements: I’ve got a fantastic group of partners, my sister I told you about, she’s the co-founder and we do this together and it’s been a beautiful journey.

[00:50:38] Julie Roys: Something that I think speaks to your integrity and really your commitment to do the right thing and to bring healing is the fact that you actually went back and tried to make amends with an awful lot of people that you realized had been harmed by one, you being a part of this toxic system. But by everything that happened. Could you describe what you did? I think this is just beautiful. And it does speak to the kind of person you are and also I think this is the Christian way, right? Is to seek that kind of reconciliation and healing after people have been so harmed. So would you talk about that?

[00:51:21] Sharon Clements: As I was being groomed and all the things that were happening to me, I was perpetuating the system as well. And that when I started to understand that it just broke my heart. And about a year and a half after the rescue I had been meeting with a woman. We were walking through the 12 steps of recovery, we have been doing a lot of work just for my own healing, my own soul healing after all this. And we came to steps eight and nine, which talks about making a list of people you have harmed.

[00:51:55] Sharon Clements: And I knew that it wasn’t like, I understood that the abuse that had happened to me wasn’t, that wasn’t my fault. That was somebody else, but the part that I had played, that there was still a lot of wounds from that. And so I made a list, and it was long. I started and then I started adding and then I started adding and I was like and these people, and it got really overwhelming. Just the thought of how many people had been wounded.

[00:52:26] Sharon Clements: And I remember talking to my sister about it. I just said, it’s too much. It’s just too much. And she had a good word for me. She just said, it’s a lot, but it’s finite. Like it isn’t never ending, it’s finite and there was something about that just helped me go, okay, I can go for it.

[00:52:52] Sharon Clements: And so I sat down and met with person after person, sometimes a couple lunch hours. A couple people in the evening, there was about a three- or four-month period where Paul and I, Paul was with me for almost every single one of them, just as he has been with me through all of this from day one.

[00:53:13] Sharon Clements: We just would say, who’s next? And we worked with the elders of the church to  help that be smooth. There were some Saturdays I would sit at a booth in Panera, and it would be like somebody would be there for 30 minutes and then it would be like next. And then the next people would come and next and just personally apologize.

[00:53:37] Sharon Clements: Just get to tell them what I had understood of the part I had played. I couldn’t apologize for what wasn’t mine, but what was mine I could and asked to hear how it had hurt them to bear witness with their grief and what church hurt is, it’s just so damaging and so just to have somebody just bear witness and say, they’re actually sorry And ask if there was any way I could make amends, or if they would forgive me and not a demand of forgiveness, but just tell them that I hoped that they would.

[00:54:14] Sharon Clements: And overwhelmingly people forgave, and I think it was a really healing thing. It’s some of the most holy work I’ve ever been a part of. I know what it felt like for me when somebody sat across the table to bear witness with what I had walked through. Not my abuser, but somebody else, who validated what my experience had been.

[00:54:38] Sharon Clements: And I just wanted to meet and apologize for my part. And it was hundreds of people, like over 300 people, I think at this point that, and honestly, now if I’m walking down the street and the Lord just stirs I’ll see somebody I haven’t seen in a bunch of years. I’ll just go, Hey I’ll pause and just tell them I’m sorry.

[00:55:01] Sharon Clements:  When a grenade goes off in a church, it’s like in battle, you can be dismembered, like a body can have an arm or a leg blown off. And in the body of Christ, it’s like there was just a battlefield that was strewn with parts of the body that were just bleeding out and have friends who are partners in this ministry who use the phrase that the Lord is re-membering us. Like he is knitting us all back together again. And that work was a lot of the work of re-membering the body of Christ. Just helping people maybe find some degree of peace because they could have somebody who said they were sorry. And I’m so grateful that I had the chance to do it. It made me nervous. It was super vulnerable, but it was holy work and I’m really grateful I got to do it.

[00:56:08] Paul Clements: One of the bravest things that I’ve ever witnessed. All of these people were contacted by the elders of the church and given the opportunity, here’s what Sharon would like to meet with you, but it was completely their choice to say yes, they want to do it.

[00:56:31] Paul Clements: And if they wanted an elder to be present in the conversation that was provided. It was all done with such humility and respect to people. And about a month in, people started coming in and going, we’ve heard about this. We’ve heard about what you’re doing and we’ve really, we’re just eager to be it’s like eager to be a part of it.

[00:56:52] Paul Clements: So it was a beautiful, just behind the scenes kind of thing, but it was so healing. And again, we’re not all in the same church anymore, but so much repair was done just through the spirit of humility and saying, help, here’s what I understand. Help me understand how did I wrong you? How did I hurt you? And what can I do to make it right? That was just beautiful.

[00:57:24] Sharon Clements: I have one girl in my mind right now who, she was like on the edge of her seat, eager to forgive me. Like she was just like, just say the words, just go ahead and say your apology. Cause I’m ready to, she was so eager. For some people it was more of a process, and I hugely respect that journey.

[00:57:41] Sharon Clements: I’m so pro forgiveness. Because of the healing work, Jesus says, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Like he is the author of our forgiveness. He shows us the way. But that is honest, thorough work that truly is done. I think it matters in the healing and it has mattered for the rebuilding of relationship. That has opened the door to reconciliation. That’s opened the door to restoration and the body of Christ being able to actually heal, at least in this little pocket of the world. It was beautiful, not very pretty, but it was beautiful

[00:58:33] Julie Roys: before you go. I would love for you. and Paul because there are people listening, I’m sure not just women, but their spouses. And men can be victims of clergy sexual abuse as well, can be victims of spiritual abuse. I know so many. And I think the thing that’s really difficult is hanging on to hope because despair is right there knocking at the door, and it is so easy to give into and to not choose hope.

[00:59:01] Julie Roys: So would you speak to that person and what they’re going through and just some encouragement for them.

[00:59:07] Sharon Clements: If you are finding yourself stuck, maybe you’re part of a church and, Wade Mullins language, something’s just not right. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid that you need to keep everything nice and even. If you’re volunteering a lot and you feel uncomfortable telling somebody how many hours you’ve put in at the church because they just wouldn’t understand, then it’s that’s just a good red flag to say, why would I want to be keeping this kind of under wraps? But I just encourage you to ask questions. Don’t be afraid. We don’t need to be afraid of messing up the kingdom. God has got it. He is so faithful, and it is him. You don’t need to be afraid of that.

[00:59:56] Sharon Clements: But if you’re a woman who is trapped, like I was trapped, you’re probably super confused. But you’re also probably really afraid. And I just want to tell you that you’re really loved. You’re dearly loved by your heavenly Father, and he sees you and he does not need your secrecy or your shame or your silence for his kingdom to advance.

[01:00:24] Sharon Clements: Like he wants you free, daughter or son. He wants you free. And here’s a question I would ask if I were you. Is this how Jesus would be treating me? Is this how Jesus would treat me? Not making that thought up, but literally you can just go read the pages of the Gospels and see how he treated the vulnerable, those who were on the outside, those who were afraid; he lifted, loved, and blessed them with dignity.

[01:00:57] Sharon Clements: He never used, he never abused. And I just want to tell you, you’re invaluable to God’s heart and we are proof that there’s hope on the other side. It was a painful rescue, but it was merciful. It was like severe mercy that God led us through and brought us to a place now where we’re on solid ground, where we’re free, where there’s no secrets, where we have each other back, where our family is like really thriving and our kids were spared so much. They walked through a lot, but the Lord has been generous in their healing and I just I come back to Psalm 40 all the time when we’re slipping and sliding in the mud and the mire, God hears our cry, and he picks us up and puts us on solid ground and will give us a new song to sing.

[01:01:53] Sharon Clements: And I don’t think that’s just for me. I think that’s for you. There is hope on the other side of this. It may seem like; how could you ever walk through it? But there’s hope, and if you need to tell somebody what’s going on, reach out to us because we would be glad to walk you through this,

[01:02:11] Julie Roys: Paul, anything you want to add to that?

[01:02:13] Paul Clements: Just this really is a story of Jesus’s rescue and redemption. If you’re at a church where your pastor doesn’t have a humble heart, whether that means it’s too big and you can’t get to them, or when you do have an interaction especially if you’re a volunteer or a leader and you have an interaction where there’s some kind of question that you’re bringing, If that’s not met with humility and a desire to understand and respect what you have to say, if someone turns it around back on you and says, oh, I think the problem is you have a critical spirit or maybe you should ask why you’re asking these questions.

[01:02:51] Paul Clements: That was so many people we talked to. I was like, that was such a common experience. And it’s just so sad and manipulative and damaging to people. So I would just say, get out of there if that’s not the spirit of the community you’re in, the leaders that you have. It’s not safe.

[01:03:13] Julie Roys: Thank you to both of you. It’s been really just a pleasure to speak with you and thank you for sharing so vulnerably and for the ministry that you’re doing. That is just beautiful. So thank you for being part of the solution and for getting this message out. I appreciate it.

[01:03:30] Sharon Clements: Thank you, Julie. Thanks for letting us share. And thank you for being a light. Light really matters. And you’re so courageous to bring light and to turn the lights on places that are not always very comfortable. And it’s r