An Open Letter to the American Zen Community 

About Clergy Sex Abuse in Our Sanghas

(Revised September 28. 2025)

Warm greetings to all American Zen practitioners and sanghas,

I am sharing this letter with the hope that it will inspire conversations within American Zen about how we can address past and present cases of clergy sex abuse in our sanghas and put our understanding of wisdom and ethics into practice to create communities that prioritize the safety of vulnerable individuals.

I write from the perspective of a licensed psychotherapist. I specialize in working with women survivors of all types of gender-based violence and abuse including intimate partner violence, sexual assault, everyday harass-ment and discrimination, and clergy sex abuse. I don’t claim to be an expert on many subjects, but I am an expert on this.

I have been a student of Buddhist philosophy and practice for 25 years and a member of a Soto Zen sangha for over 15 years. I’ve received jukai and have enjoyed intensive one-on-one instruction from my teacher.

When I write about women’s experiences of violence and abuse, I find that it is helpful to refer to expert research to support my assertions. Unfortunately, women’s descriptions of their lived experiences are often dismissed as being exaggerated, vindictive, unique to the woman herself, or overly emotional. The books and research I draw from are listed under References and Resources; I encourage all readers to do additional reading on this subject for themselves.

The thoughts I express here are based on years of experience working with and advocating for women. I have written extensively on the subjects of interpersonal ethics, gender-based violence, and the harms caused by patriarchy and misogyny. The conversations I hope to inspire are not about whether clergy sex abuse happened (it did) or whether harm occurred (it did) but about how our sanghas can begin to honestly address this harm and work to build safe, ethical, and inclusive communities.

If you resist words such as “violence,” “patriarchy,” “trauma,” or “clergy sex abuse,” I urge you to keep an open mind. This language sounds severe because we usually speak about this subject in euphemisms, if at all. If American Zen is to maintain its credibility as a philosophy of virtue ethics, we must not flinch when talking about the abuses that have occurred, and continue to occur, in our communities. This is a necessary conversation and while I do not cast blame on anyone other than known abusers, I believe we are all accountable for what happens next.

The Impetus for this Letter

Several months ago, I started a difficult conversation within my sangha. I had learned that my teacher’s teacher, Dainin Katatgiri, had sexually abused at least two of his female students and had sexually propositioned or harassed many others. Katagiri lied to his sangha and coerced his victims to lie to protect his reputation and position of authority. His freely chosen and oft-repeated actions created a culture of deceit, denial, and secrecy that has lasted for decades in his lineage.

When I came to understand that these facts were well-known but rarely discussed in the American Zen community, I was alarmed. Clergy sex abuse—and the secrecy that often surrounds it—can do serious, lasting harm to individuals, families, and communities even long after the abuse has occurred.

I was also angry to learn that my mentors—people who knew that I was a professional advocate for women’s safety—had kept this information from me. I had been denied the opportunity to decide for myself whether to chant the name of an abuser in reverence. I had not been asked my consent to study the ethical teachings of a man who did not value the safety or recognize the humanity of the women in his care. Instead, I was only told stories about Katagiri’s humor, charisma, wisdom, and kindness.

I expect that many other Zen practitioners are unknowingly chanting the names of abusers and studying their teachings. I am certainly not the only person to be told delightful stories about men who chose to abuse women over whom they held great authority. Every student of Zen should be given the respect of being able to choose for themselves whom they accept as an honored teacher and transmitter of wisdom. It is extremely paternalistic to make this decision for another person.

When I brought the subject up for discussion in my sangha, my friends struggled to balance their devotion to our patriarchal lineage with the newfound knowledge that a lineage holder had committed serious acts of abuse. Struggling myself, I failed to communicate clearly what I believed to be at stake for the future of the American Zen tradition. I hope this letter will serve as a correction and as a guide forward for us all.

A Note on Anger

My work as a psychotherapist requires me to understand emotional regulation. It is a skill that I employ myself, and help others develop, when we confront and communicate about difficult subjects. It can also be used as a weapon to silence victims who attempt to hold powerful individuals accountable for their actions. These women and their advocates are often dismissed as being too angry, vindictive, or even “unhinged.”

Survivors of abuse are expected to appear weak and sad—not powerful, aggrieved, and defiant. The shaming of women’s anger is a feature of patriarchal systems that muzzles those who seek justice or reparations and contributes to a culture in which abuse is more likely to occur. We are encouraged to move quickly toward forgiveness so that no actual change is required of those in power.

Anger is an appropriate response to discovering that one’s Zen community—which claims to promote ethical behavior, personal development, and safe sanghas—knowingly harbors and defends abusers.

Understanding Clergy Sex Abuse

Clergy sex abuse is widely misunderstood and is often purposefully misrepresented to protect the reputations of powerful men. Although I refer to Katagiri’s abuses in this document, he is not the only perpetrator in the American Zen tradition. There are other well-known abusers who have been canonized (e.g., Taizan Maezumi, Joshu Sasaki, Eido Shimano) or may soon be canonized (e.g., Richard Baker), as well as many others with less recognizable names.

The harm these men caused does not exist only in the past. We continue to chant their names in reverence at our services. We are encouraged to listen to their recorded teachings and read their books as reliable sources of wisdom on subjects such as interpersonal ethics and skillful action. We see their biographies everywhere—on sangha websites, in books and magazines, listed as “beloved teacher.”

Almost always these biographies are uncritically glowing or, at best, may describe the abuser as a complicated man who made mistakes. A culture of gaslighting and denial prevails at the expense of truth and accountability. In one truly astonishing example of gross understatement, The Zen Studies Society website refers to Eido Shimano’s “complicated legacy.” I fail to see what is complicated about a man who was an unrepentant misogynist and serial sexual predator.

In truth, the subject of clergy sex abuse is not as complicated as apologists make it out to be. In Minnesota, the state in which Katagiri sexually abused his students, it has been illegal for clergy to engage in sexual contact with individuals in the course of counseling—even with the victim’s consent—since the 1980s. As a transmitted priest, founder, and head teacher of the Minnesota Zen Center, Katagiri was unequivocally in such a relationship with every student in his sangha. One of his senior students reported telling Katagiri that his actions could be illegal; he chose to ignore this warning and continued initiating sexual relationships with his students.

Clergy sex abuse is a crime in all 50 states. Its legality, however, is not the focus of this letter. Because Zen is a philosophy and practice that claims to have a serious commitment to interpersonal ethics, we must assess whether our responses to sexual abuse in our sanghas have met our own basic ethical standards.

Over the course of months of discussions with individuals in Zen communities across the country, it became clear to me that clergy sex abuse is difficult for most people to identify. Misguided and often harmful attitudes prevent us from collectively addressing clergy sex abuse in a way that fairly distributes consequences to perpetrators and justice to survivors. It may be clarifying if I directly address some of the statements and questions I encountered during these conversations.

“Don’t believe those women; they’re all crazy.”

The brilliant trauma expert Judith Herman wrote, “Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens.”

When the perpetrator is a man with power and authority (e.g., a transmitted priest who is the founding teacher of a Zen community) and the victim is a member of a devalued population (e.g., a woman in a patriarchal culture), the victim’s lived experience falls outside of the accepted narrative that is controlled by the people in power.

In this case, the narrative is that a Zen master is an awakened, deeply ethical person whose actions lie beyond reproach or censure. This makes his victims vulnerable to being discredited. In the case of clergy sex abuse in American Zen, when women tell the truth about their experience it endangers an entire shared and firmly enforced hierarchical structure and system of ascribing value to individuals.

In the past, women who spoke out about abuse were diagnosed as hysterics and often institutionalized. Today, we casually question their emotional stability. There is little difference in the nature and result of these methods of discrediting women and both are profoundly misogynistic. When we ignore or discredit women who speak about their experiences of abuse, or those who advocate for them, it exposes a very serious misalignment of what we claim to value—ethics and interdependence—and what we actually value—hierarchy and male power.

“Isn’t it just an affair if the woman gives consent?”

An aspect of clergy sex abuse that mental-health professionals, experts in ethics, and the law agree on is that meaningful consent cannot exist within a relationship when one person holds great power and authority and the other is a member of a vulnerable or less powerful population. To be clear, this is not one person’s opinion, but a matter of basic ethics and law.

In Zen sanghas, the power relationship is based on trust and spiritual authority. In the case of a Zen priest such as Katagiri, his female students believed that their personal growth and their opportunities for ordination or transmission rested entirely in his hands. Katagiri held the power to confirm and validate their progress in their studies of Zen philosophy.

Katagiri’s role as a confidential advisor in dokusan created an environment in which the students became even more vulnerable when they shared deeply personal information with him. His immense power in these relationships should have been used exclusively to support his students’ personal autonomy, never to exploit them for sexual favors or emotional caregiving.

These one-on-one meetings are often where grooming begins in a priest/student relationship. The sense of intimacy can be manipulated to make the victim feel special. The teacher may tell the student that he admires her dedication to practice or her profound insights. He may recommend additional one-on-one meetings and reveal details of his own life so that the victim feels that she is his trusted confidant as well.

Acts of clergy sex abuse are a result of power imbalance, manipulation, and coercion—they are not “affairs” or “inappropriate relationships.” Nor are they a simple failure of judgment shared equally by two people. Abusers and their apologists often rely on this sort of language to minimize the severity of the actual harms that result from the deliberate, unethical choices made by powerful men.

“I don’t see how there was actual harm done to the women”

Clergy sex abuse can have devastating effects on the survivor. Research has shown that women who have been coerced into sex by clergy are at increased risk for developing depression, substance abuse issues, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Because they are often disbelieved or blamed for their abuse, survivors have also described feeling unbearable shame, low self-esteem, and worthlessness.

Victims of clergy sex abuse often leave their sangha or abandon Zen practice altogether. It can be devastating for a survivor to be without both her trusted teacher and the community she might have relied upon for support. Victims sometimes lose trust in all spiritual guidance and mental-health providers and so may not seek therapy to help process feelings of depression, guilt, and shame. This leaves them vulnerable to suicide.

In all environments—sangha services, one-on-one dokusan meetings, sesshin retreats—teachers must be trusted to refrain from exploiting their position of power and to not only respect, but to actively facilitate, students’ safety and autonomy.

“I heard that his female students initiated the relationships.”

In our training, psychotherapists learn about the immense responsibility that comes with transference and counter-transference. When two individuals are in a relationship that involves both a power imbalance and real or perceived intimacy, emotions can become complex and confused.

The female students of a male Zen priest may project intense unconscious feelings of paternal love or deity-like devotion onto their teacher. They may pursue closeness in a misguided attempt at merging with an enlightened being or confuse physical intimacy with spiritual intimacy.

In response to these unconscious feelings and behaviors in his student the priest may get swept up in the student’s projections, which impedes his ability to respond appropriately. The feeling of being adored or idolized can be intoxicating and even arousing.

It is the sacred obligation of Zen priests to be solely responsible for their students’ unconscious projections and to hold impeccable, inviolable emotional and physical boundaries. It is simply the most ethically imperative work they do. A lack of training or understanding on the part of the priest in no way obviates this ethical imperative because the failure to uphold these boundaries results in immense harm.

“He ordained women, so he obviously respected them.”

Abusers often perform an imitation of feminism to encourage women to make themselves vulnerable and to deflect suspicion from their harmful actions. Humility and kindness can act as a sort of camouflage. In fact, many defenders of Katagiri refer to his kindness and sense of humor as if being charismatic and likable made him less, rather than more, likely to get away with unethical behavior.

This behavior is not always calculated. The trajectory of becoming an abuser can be gradual. A man may see certain behaviors rewarded with female attention and affection, enjoy that feeling, and then ignore his ethical training to seek out more and more validation. The abuser may even convince himself that he is a champion of women and therefore deserving of their gratitude and sexual favors. Certainly, most perpetrators of clergy sex abuse never consciously acknowledge to themselves or others that what they are doing counts as abuse. This does not mean that it isn’t.

“We should have compassion for him; he had a traumatic childhood.”

In my work as a therapist for survivors of gender-based violence, I have heard countless stories of horrific childhood abuse and neglect. Some of my clients lost one or both parents at a very young age. None of these women grew up to abuse or exploit others. Instead, they took responsibility for their own healing and bravely did the difficult work of facing down their trauma for the explicit purpose of being able to have healthy and safe relationships in their adult lives.

The emotional and intellectual gymnastics we do to make excuses for male perpetrators of sexual violence is so common that philosopher Kate Manne has coined a word for it: “himpathy.” One reason we do this is the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance we face when the perpetrator is someone we know to be accomplished and charming. We desperately want sexual predators to be creepy monsters who hide in dark alleys. In fact, most men who abuse girls and women are their fathers, friends, coaches, teachers, and priests.

The women Katagiri abused were human beings. They were not medicine for his childhood wounds. They were not simply bodies that existed to help him forget his troubles or cure his loneliness. They should have been able to assume that they were safe in their sangha and with their teacher.

“He was a lonely man in an unhappy marriage.”

I speak to lonely women in unhappy marriages every day; none of them believe that exploiting a more vulnerable person is the path to their own well-being. Again, they take responsibility for their healing and often view it as a sort of sacred imperative to become more skillfully attuned to their own emotions and to the emotions of others in their relationships.

This same attitude of mutual care should be a requirement for becoming an esteemed Zen master and transmitted priest. An individual who is granted the privilege of power that comes with leading a Zen community should have to prove a depth of emotional maturity before being allowed to spend time alone with students. At the very least, a man should be removed from his position, banned from one-on-one contact with students, and lose his place of honor in the lineage after showing himself to be a serial abuser of women.

None of these very reasonable ethical assumptions are currently true in American Zen. The women in our communities will continue to suffer for our lack of commitment to a basic ethic of care. The reputation and credibility of American Zen will suffer as well.

“Is it necessary to completely destroy Katagiri’s reputation?”

Katagiri destroyed his own reputation when he made the choice to sexually abuse women. If we don’t have a problem with repeatedly extolling his virtues, then why not his vices? This “himpathetic” (see above) argument only sounds valid if you value a man’s reputation over a woman’s right to be a fully autonomous being who exists for her own purpose and pleasure, rather than a man’s.

“But even the women themselves don’t claim it was abuse.”

Experts who study the subject say that one challenge of talking about clergy sex abuse is that the survivor is often unable to identify what happened as abuse. Because she is an adult at the time of the abuse, she may think she is at least partially at fault and may believe the abuse was consensual if she is unable to see the role of power within the relationship. It can take years for survivors to be able to identify what happened to them as abuse and realize it was not their fault—some never do.

No matter how survivors choose to frame their stories, trauma experts, the law, and basic ethics label Katagiri’s actions clergy sex abuse. The women’s stories are theirs to tell, and I do not question their interpretations of their complex lived experience. We can grant women power over their own narratives while simultaneously constructing an overall narrative of the history of clergy sex abuse in American Zen.

“Aren’t we all complicated humans who do both good and harm?”

Yes. However, we do not all abuse our power to sexually exploit and traumatize women. And we do not all commit devastating acts of abuse without consequence. We do not all expect to be honored and canonized as wise and skillful Zen masters despite having a known history of committing deeply unethical, abusive, criminal acts.

If we as a community do not believe that sexually abusing women is an offense serious enough to remove current perpetrators from positions of authority or past perpetrators from positions of honor, it begs a discussion of why we place so little value on women’s lives, safety, and well-being.

“Katagiri didn’t understand American cultural norms.”

Patriarchy and misogyny are American cultural norms. Research shows that in our country simply being female carries with it an increased risk for interpersonal violence, sexual assault, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress-related diseases. This is not due to an inherent inferiority or weakness within women. It is a disease of male entitlement and the American societal structures—which also exist within American Zen communities—that enable and protect abusers.

To frame Katagiri’s acts of abuse as a cultural misunderstanding is misguided and does not explain the storied histories of sexual exploitation that many American-born Zen teachers have within their own communities. It is also racist to imply that sexual abuse is more acceptable or prevalent in Japanese culture than in American culture.

The multicultural United Nations defines violence against women as a human rights violation and urges us to “not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid (our) obligations with respect to its elimination.” Cultural conditioning, regardless of one’s culture of origin, is not an excuse for violence against women.

“Can’t we allow our teachers to be imperfect?”

A vast chasm lies between being imperfect and being an abuser. One would have to be completely insensitive to the trauma that clergy sex abuse can cause, or not able to see women in their full humanity, to not discern the dif-ference.

I am not advocating for abusers to face a firing squad or encouraging a so-called “witch hunt.” I am making the very reasonable request that we not minimize the harm that known abusers have caused or insist on presenting men who commit clergy sex abuse as examples of wisdom and ethical conduct. Being canonized in the lineage is a privilege they lost when they chose to sexually abuse women.

“Let’s work toward forgiveness rather than blame.”

Women who advocate for forgiveness of abusers are often held up as being open-hearted and wise while women who advocate for holding abusers accountable are seen as being unreasonable and morally undeveloped. The reason for this is simple: Patriarchal organizations benefit when we skip past meting out consequences to abusers and move directly to forgiving their many harms.

I believe that it is kind and open-hearted to advocate for victims of abuse. It is fair to expect abusers to face consequences. It is a form of complicity to coerce forgiveness.

Trauma experts understand that expecting a victim to bypass her anger is cruel and can compound the harms already done. Unconditional forgiveness is a fantasy much like the revenge fantasies that victims have about their abusers. Neither scenario is available to regular people.

The conditions that make forgiveness possible very rarely materialize. First, the perpetrator must fully acknowledge his crime and the effect it had on his victim. He must offer sincere repentance. He must receive a fair and just consequence. Only then can his victim be given the opportunity (never required) to offer whatever form of forgiveness she feels would be an aid to her healing.

Those of us who were not directly harmed by the perpetrators of clergy sex abuse are in no position to be offering forgiveness or absolution. We can only support victims and work diligently to prevent future abuses.

“We all have our mud. Your lotus will be magnificent.”

I am grateful for this response to an email in which I described Katagiri’s acts of sexual abuse because it allows me to address Zen pracitioners’ particular style of spiritual bypassing.

In my lineage, Soto Zen, students are raised on a diet of Dogen’s paradoxical language. We enjoy metaphor as a tool that sparks sudden moments of awakening. We mimic the aphorisms we see in ancient texts to convey our own sense of profundity.

Let me be very clear—the women whom Katagiri (and Maezumi, and Baker, and others) abused are not metaphors. They are human beings. Their pain and trauma do not exist as a teaching story for the rest of us. The very real harm done to one person is not mud for another to plant their own lotus seed in. I will not wax poetic about another woman’s suffering.

Not all mud is created equal. Fidgeting during zazen or lacking patience with one’s coworkers is not equal to sexually abusing a woman. To even hint at this is morally offensive and dehumanizing to the victims of Katagiri and other abusers.

Clergy sex abuse is a form of sexual and emotional violence perpetrated upon living, breathing women—and it is a crime. The American Zen community must understand this and begin to respond to it accordingly.

The Compounding Harm of Institutional Betrayal

Institutional betrayal is a term coined by psychologist Jennifer Freyd to describe institutional policies and responses to reports of abuse that can often be more harmful to the individual than the abuse itself. Because of the lack of understanding of clergy sex abuse and the patriarchal nature of the Zen tradition, survivors of are likely to suffer this form of betrayal.

Research shows that the most harmful action an organization can take is to prioritize the reputation of the organization over the well-being of the survivor. This can come in the form of blaming the survivor for their abuse, covering up or minimizing the abuse, or allowing the perpetrator to remain in a leadership role.

Although American Zen lineages may feel that they are protecting their reputations by refusing to identify and adequately respond to cases of clergy sex abuse, they are actually compounding the trauma of victims. This will likely result in a decrease of support and participation, especially among women and people of vulnerable genders.

The Legacy of Our Lineages

I have more to say about the tainted legacy of American Zen and our deeply unethical practices of enabling, protecting, and canonizing men who abuse women. However, I’ve had this conversation enough to know that even thousands of words of research-informed expert testimony combined with a sincere plea for justice can fail to inspire empathy for women who were abused by powerful men.

Sociologist Carol Gilligan describes how, in America, our patriarchal indoctrination begins early. Boys are taught that being empathic and relational is unmanly. Girls are taught that following their inner knowing of what is right and wrong can make them unsafe. This creates a culture in which men feel entitled to women’s care as well as their bodies, and women feel powerless to push back against this narrative.

When these men and women join Zen communities they are taught that a necessary ritual of personal development is to revere a list of nearly 90 male names. This grooms us to locate wisdom and authority in the masculine, to respond more favorably to teachings when they are transmitted in a male voice, and to experience cognitive dissonance when we learn about the true characters of the men whom we were told embodied Zen wisdom.

One result of this dissonance is that the glowing references to known abusers are still everywhere you look. The Minnesota Zen Center’s website proclaims, “Katagiri Roshi is remembered with appreciation for his deep prac-tice, wise teaching, and warm heart.”

A more in-depth biography on offer begins with nothing short of hagiography: “Katagiri Roshi was a beloved figure during his lifetime. The pro-found yet human way in which he presented Buddhism touched people’s hearts and inspired many to study, practice, and teach Zen as a lifelong path. He supported equality for women in all aspects of Zen practice….”

Along with more fawning descriptions of his character and a heartrending depiction of his childhood, there is a brief mention of his “affairs” and “inappropriate sexual behavior” with female members of his sangha. The words “abuse,” “coercion,” “lie” and “secrecy” do not appear in the document, and the word “trauma” is used only in reference to Katagiri’s childhood experiences. Katagiri’s reputation as a wise and kind man is firmly centered in this version of the story. The full humanity and suffering of his victims is barely acknowledged and there is not even a hint of suggestion that Katagiri should have faced any consequence more severe than the mild censure on offer.

Other known abusers also continue to benefit from our collective refusal to publicly and unequivocally acknowledge the individual and collective trauma caused by clergy sex abuse. Until their biographies are rewritten to center the women they harmed, no real change is possible. Unless we accept that a man cannot be both a sexual predator and a wise Zen master, American Zen has no credibility as a philosophy of ethics and is certainly not a safe place for people of vulnerable genders.

There has been some hopeful movement toward repair in individual American Zen sanghas. Many groups also chant a lineage of women ancestors or chant no lineage at all. Quite a few sanghas are led by transmitted priests of vulnerable genders. However, I know of no widespread actions taken by majority of American Zen communities to sanction known abusers, remove their names from official lineage documents, or to significantly repair the damages of the past and prevent harms in the future.

Some sanghas have published statements of ethics and have instituted systems for reporting instances of abuse. This is a very positive first step. To support these statements, we must also be fully transparent with all new and existing students about the history of clergy sex abuse in our lineages. We must allow everyone to choose for themselves whether to study the teachings of known abusers. This is the only way to end the culture of gaslighting and denial. Without these actions, a statement of ethics is a hollow gesture.

Instituting an Ethic of Care

Zen is a philosophy of virtue ethics. Our precepts describe a set of characteristics one is expected to embody to be a virtuous, or ethical, person. When we put these internal characteristics into action in the world, they become forms of care.

Care must flow from the powerful to the vulnerable. Most of our reverence, respect, and protection must be reserved for the people we practice with and for vulnerable members of our communities. Preserving the reputations of abusers must not be the focus of our efforts. Until a significant majority of people who hold the power to create change take up the burden of this labor, no American Zen space can claim to truly value the lives of Zen women more than it values the reputations of Zen men.

Most of the individuals I observe putting care into action are cis-women, non-binary, and trans. This requires an immense amount of emotional labor and puts them at risk for retraumatization. To require vulnerable people to do the work of advocating for their own safety is an unconscionable failure of empathy. Cis-males must take up this work as their own, just as the onus of advocating for racial justice must be on people who are not members of vulnerable races and ethnicities.

One lesson I’ve learned from the conversations of the past several months is that our Zen practice is just as likely to put us to sleep as it is to wake us up. Practitioners accumulate thousands of hours of zazen, wake up at dawn to make it to the zendo in time to hit the han, take vows to uphold the precepts, and study the sutras.

It may be that we feel that the stiff joints, the dedicated study, and the hours spent in silence absolve us of the obligation to ensure that the person sitting on the cushion next to us is safe and cared for. Perhaps some of us mistake complacency for equanimity, or indifference for wisdom.

There is no point to our study and practice if it does not awaken in us a sense of responsibility to care for others, keep them safe, and diligently uphold our ethical vows.

References and Resources

Chaves, M., & Garland, D. (2009). The prevalence of clergy sexual advances toward adults in their congregations. Journal for the Scientific Study of Reli-gion, 48(4), 817–824.

Chemaly, S. (2018). Rage becomes her: The power of women’s anger. Atria Books.

Crossman, K. A., & Hardesty, J. L. (2018). Placing coercive control at the center: What are the processes of coercive control and what makes control coercive? Psychology of Violence, 8(2), 196–206. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000094

de Weger, S. E. (2022). Insincerity, Secrecy, Neutralisation, Harm: Reporting Clergy Sexual Misconduct against Adults—A Survivor-Based Analysis. Religions, 13(4), 309. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13040309

Downing, M. (2002). Shoes outside the door: Desire, devotion, and excess at San Fran-cisco Zen Center. Catapult.

Flynn, K. A. (2008). In their own voices: Women who were sexually abused by members of the clergy. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse: Research, Treatment, & Program Innova-tions for Victims, Survivors, & Offenders, 17(3-4), 216–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538710802329684

Fogler, Shipherd, Clarke, et al., (2008). The impact of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse: The role of gender, development, and posttraumatic stress. In R. A. Mc Mackin, T. M. Keane, & P. M. Kline (Eds.), Understanding the Impact of Clergy Sexual Abuse. Routledge.

Freyd, J. J., & Smidt, A. M. (2019). So you want to address sexual harassment and as-sault in your organization? Training is not enough; education is necessary. Journal of Trauma.

Garland, D. R., & Argueta, C. (2010). How clergy sexual misconduct happens: A quali-tative study of first-hand accounts. Social Work & Christianity, 37(1), 1–27.

Gilligan, C. (1993). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press.

Gilligan, C., & Snider, N. (2018). Why does patriarchy persist? Polity Press.

Gursoy Ataman, G. (2013). Uses of culture and ‘cultural relativism’ in gender violence discussions. Kadın Arastirmalari Dergisi 13(2), pp. 61-80.

Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

hooks, b. (2004). The will to change: Men, masculinity, and love. Atria Books.

Langberg, D. (2020). Redeeming power: Understanding authority and abuse in the Church. Brazos Press.

Manne, K. (2018). Down girl: The logic of misogyny. Oxford University Press.

Manne, K. (2021). Entitled: How male privilege hurts women. Crown.

Moncrief-Stuart, S., & Pooler, D. K. (2025). Adult clergy sexual abuse survivors, post-traumatic stress disorder, and institutional betrayal trauma. Traumatology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000542

Nyquist Potter, N. (2011). Mad, bad, or virtuous? The moral, cultural, and pathologizing features of defiance. Theory & Psychology, 22(1) 23-45.

Pargament, K.I. (2008). The sacred character of community life. American Journal of Community Psychology 41, 22–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-007-9150-z

Smith, C. P., Cunningham, S. A., & Freyd, J. J. (2016). Sexual violence, institutional betrayal, and psychological outcomes for LGB college students. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 2(4), 351-360. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000094

Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2013). Dangerous safe havens: Institutional betrayal exacer-bates sexual trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 26(1), 119-124. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.21778

Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2014). Institutional betrayal. American Psychologist, 69(6), 575-587. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037564

Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2017). Insult, then Injury: Interpersonal and institutional betrayallinked to health and dissociation. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trau-ma, 26(10), 1117-1131. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2017.1322654

Tuerkheimer, D. (2021). Credible: Why we doubt accusers and protect abusers. Harper.

Contact: SherylLilke@gmail.com