THE DANGER OF DISCLOSURE

Seeking to protect future victims, Jennifer Lyell discloses her sexual abuse—only to discover that the act of telling her truth carries its own devastating cost.

 

For more than 30 years, a weary group of sex abuse survivors have tried to get the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to report and remove sexual predators, many pastors, within their midst. These survivors picketed Southern Baptist conventions, wrote numerous letters to church leaders, appeared on news programs, and blogged prolifically—only to be met with gaslighting and stonewalling from denominational leadership. But a seismic shift happened after advocate Rachael Denhollander led an army of women to speak up about Dr. Larry Nassar’s abuse of gymnasts: Rachael became the general of another army of abuse survivors—this time within the SBC. Now the denomination faces a season of reckoning as an explosive independent investigation releases their report investigating 20 years of abuse allegations.