{"id":2908,"date":"2016-01-07T14:44:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T19:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=2908"},"modified":"2016-01-07T14:45:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T19:45:30","slug":"new-gothard-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=2908","title":{"rendered":"New Gothard allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten more women have stepped forward to allege sexual abuse by Bill Gothard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Ten women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, who for decades was a major force in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, charging him and leaders in his ministry with sexual abuse, harassment and cover-up.<\/p>\n

Gothard, who urged Christians to shun things like short skirts and rock music, is accused of raping a woman. The same woman says she was raped by one of the ministry\u2019s \u201cbiblical counselors.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It will all be sorted-out at the courthouse, I suppose, but the sheer number of women alleging mistreatment is arresting; Gothard is on his way to becoming the Bill Cosby of the evangelical right.<\/p>\n

As Jeri Massi remarks on her Facebook page: “I hope these courageous women can withstand the firestorm that is going to hit them.”<\/p>\n

Yup. It is a fact that you can ask any journalist, any social worker, any police officer, any doctor, any lawyer — anybody with first-hand professional knowledge of sexual abuse in the church environment — and every last one of them will tell you the exact same thing: Congregations all-but-invariably rally to the defense of the pastor, and drive-off his victims; you won’t see so many as half-a-dozen exceptions to that rule in an entire lifetime. We are not talking about freak events; we are talking about the ontology of Christianity, about what the Christian church … is<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Which is a predatory cult that exploits the weak and insecure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten more women have stepped forward to allege sexual abuse by Bill Gothard. Ten women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, who for decades was a major force in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, charging him and leaders … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2908"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2910,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions\/2910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}