It is crucial for women to recognize the signs of clergy misconduct, as those who experience betrayal or emotional abuse often turn to their faith communities for solace and support. Here’s what you need to know.

If you relate to this, you need support. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Dave Gemmel, Associate Director of the NAD Ministerial Association, joins Anne Blythe, M.Ed. to discuss clergy misconduct. Congregants seek spiritual guidance, compassion, and leadership from clergy. When pastors, bishops, and other spiritual leaders use their authority to destroy a congregant’s trust or faith in God through misconduct, that sacred role is diminished, and victims may experience severe trauma, which often includes a crisis of faith.

Dave enumerates some of the ways that clergy can violate trust and commit misconduct:

• abuse


• adult sexual abuse


• harassment


• rape


• sexual assault


• sexualized verbal comments or visuals


• unwanted touches and advances


• use of sexualized materials including pornography


• stalking


• sexual abuse of youth or those without mental capacity to consent


• misuse of the pastoral/ministerial position


• Failing to protect a victim of abuse


• Can include criminal behaviors that are against the law in some nations, states, and communities.

Understanding How Clergy Misconduct Happens

As Dave explains, pastors have spiritual authority, which makes it impossible for an “asymmetrical relationship” between himself and a congregant. Because of the lack of “considered mutual consent,” a sexual relationship with a pastor or bishop is not an affair, but abuse. Women who have experienced this form of abuse may blame themselves, but abuse is never the victim’s fault.

When clergy take advantage of their position of power, congregants may feel disloyal or unworthy if they report misconduct. Furthermore, congregants, especially abused women, may not know they have betrayal trauma. Utilizing women’s intuition helps prevent clergy misconduct. Because women have adept intuitive abilities to decipher safe or unsafe individuals, Dave suggests all religious organizations implement a 50% policy.

This means that in search committees, boards, and other leadership committees that determine who is leading a congregation, women make up at least half of the group. When women discover betrayal and identify abuse in their relationships, they often seek support from clergy. Dave recommends that women and couples do not seek therapeutic counseling from clergy.

Instead, women suffering from the effects of betrayal and abuse can utilize professionals who are trained in trauma and abuse.

Trained coaches lead the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. If you are seeking validation, empowerment, knowledge, and support, join the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group today and find the community you deserve.

Transcript: The Truth About Clergy Misconduct

Anne: Today, I’m with Dave Gemmel. He’s an associate director of the NAD ministerial association. He received his doctorate of ministry with an emphasis on multicultural leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1992. He began pastoring in the San Francisco bay area in 1978. Welcome Dave.

Pastor Dave: Thank you very much, Anne. It is a delight to be with you, and I love your mission. Betrayal Trauma Recovery aims to protect women from emotional abuse, psychological abuse, and coercion. We are on the same page.

Anne: Let’s just dive right in to talking about clergy misconduct. Many think it is only preying upon minors. Could you please define it?

Pastor Dave: Yeah, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Clergy misconduct, typically, we think of all the stories in the news, stories of the Catholic Church with pedophilia, abusing little boys in the church, and so that’s what comes to mind when we think of clergy misconduct, but the scope is actually a lot bigger than that. If I could just give a little preface here before we jump into it.

Clergy, many, if not most, have advanced education and have been carefully screened before endorsement by their congregations. Most are highly trained, behave with great integrity and professionalism. Having said all that, there is a segment of volunteers and professional clergy who violate sacred trust, and in doing so damage the reputation of all clergy.

That’s the segment that we’re going to zoom in on today. So what is clergy misconduct? It’s a betrayal of sacred trust, as I mentioned. And it can be on a continuum of abuse or gender directed behaviors by either a lay or clergy person with a ministerial relationship, whether they’re paid or unpaid.

The Scope Of Clergy Misconduct

Pastor Dave: Here are some of the things it can include. Abuse, adult sexual abuse, harassment, rape, sexual assault, sexualized verbal comments or visuals and unwelcome touch and advances. The use of inappropriate materials. Including pornography, stalking, sexual abuse of youth, or those without capacity or consent. Also misuse of the pastoral ministerial position, and sometimes criminal behaviors that are against the law in some nations, states, and communities.

So that’s an official definition of misconduct by clergy. That’s in the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, which is one of the best out there.

Anne: So in your definition, you said gender directed behaviors. Are you talking about misogyny?

Pastor Dave: Yeah, that absolutely is misogyny. And that is proclaiming that women are not as valuable as men. And men have the right to dictate women’s behavior.

Anne: Let’s talk about your contention that pastors can’t have affairs with church members. And why when people say, oh, he had an affair with a member of his congregation, that’s not a thing.

Pastor Dave: Sometimes when a spiritual leader had an inappropriate relationship with a member of the congregation, and we write it off as an affair, I don’t believe it’s an affair. Here’s why, the word affair implies mutual consent between two adults. But there’s an asymmetrical role between pastor and congregant. In other words, the pastor has spiritual authority, which does not put them on the same playing field. That’s why it’s asymmetrical.

So any intimate relationship between a pastor and a congregant, I believe, is clergy misconduct. and cannot be considered mutual consent.

Even if it’s not physical coercion, the clergy is the one in a position of spiritual and emotional power and must be held responsible for the abuse of power.

Therapists & Clergy: Positions Of Power

Pastor Dave: So, any relationship between a spiritual leader and a member is not having an affair. It is clergy misconduct.

Anne: Thank you for making that so clear. It’s the same type of thing, where can you have an affair with your therapist? And the answer is also no, because he’s in a position of power. His role is to treat you for a mental illness. I think that that would fall into the same category in terms of therapy or other professionals.

Pastor Dave: Absolutely, and a therapist should lose their license and be barred from practicing. It’s on a continuum, and the reality is there are some predators who’ve managed to become clergy. The biggest study was done, it’s from the Journal of Scientific Study of Religion, titled Prevalence of Clergy Advances Toward Adults in Their Congregations. It was a twofold study. Victims of clergy misconduct were studied from a wide range of religions.

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They were asked to tell their stories of abuse. And in almost all these cases, the clergy offenders in a series of small acts broke down the natural defenses. And took advantage of a position of spiritual power to eventually make the relationship inappropriate. But what do we call that? That’s a predator. And somehow there are a few of these predators that have managed to get in among the ranks of spiritual leaders.

It’s so dangerous, and here’s why, because the victims, the families, and the congregation did not seem to notice it. Or they refuse to confront the clergy. So there’s this special fog in a congregation that people aren’t looking for that, and so they don’t see it. And it makes a ni