Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment

History

In the early 2000s Tchividjian became convinced that Protestant institutions had not properly addressed incidents of sexual abuse, incidents that he believed would eventually lead to scandals similar to those that had damaged the Catholic Church. In Tchividjian's view, the legalistic, authoritarian culture of some Protestant organizations was particularly susceptible to what he called "spiritual abuse" — the attempt of religious leaders to silence victims or convince them that they deserved their abuse. Tchividjian has stated that, "When it comes to child sexual abuse, too many churches and Christian organizations prefer to sacrifice individuals in order to protect themselves. We end up living out the very antithesis of the Gospel that we preach. The consequences are devastating."

GRACE began in 2003 when a reporter called Tchividjian about a case of sexual abuse mishandled by a pastor. Tchividjian first contacted Victor Vieth, who previously headed the Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center, and Diane Langberg, a psychologist from Pennsylvania who specialized in trauma and subsequently the three invited a number of legal, therapeutic and clerical professionals to form a board that created GRACE, an organization dedicated to educating churches and parachurch organizations about preventing, detecting, and dealing with sexual abuse. For example, the children’s ministry OneHope and the relief organization Samaritan's Purse each requested help from GRACE to aid them with abuse prevention and response.

In 2009 Tchividjian was asked by New Tribes Mission, an evangelical missionary organization with 3,000 missionaries in 20 countries, to investigate claims by former children of missionaries that they had been abused while attending a central mission boarding school run by New Tribes Mission in Fanda, Senegal. Because the statute of limitations had expired on all the cases, GRACE investigated the abuse with the goal of revealing the full extent of the abuse and allowing New Tribes Mission to confess, repent, and reform. The investigation, which took a year to complete, demonstrated that the abuse had been more extensive than had previously been thought; the results of the investigation were widely discussed among evangelicals. After the release of the GRACE report led to allegations of abuse at nine other New Tribes boarding schools, New Tribes hired a different organization, IHART, or Independent Historical Abuse Review Team. As of 2014 IHART had completed only one investigation and had published nothing.

In 2011 the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), which had 900 missionaries in 60 countries and 5,000 supporting churches, asked GRACE to investigate allegations of abuse at its mission in Bangladesh. After 100 interviews over two years, ABWE fired GRACE just as it prepared to publish its report, claiming GRACE had mishandled the investigation. ABWE then hired an organization called Professional Investigators International (PII) to complete the investigation.

In 2012 Bob Jones University asked GRACE to investigate the way it had handled reports of sexual abuse and sexual harassment. After a year of investigation, and just as GRACE was ready to release its report in early 2014, the university fired GRACE, a move widely reported in the media, including the New York Times and The American Conservative. A month later BJU rehired GRACE, and in December 2014, GRACE released its report.