Church Sex Abuse Crisis and An Alleged Rape by a Birder

 

Source

Dear Daniel,

A woman named Aisha White alleged in a lengthy, detailed blog post that a prominent birder, Jason Ward, raped her.

 

White's blog post, if accurate, describes how something she had come to love, and regard as salvific, is now associated, in her mind and indeed her body, with one of the worst experiences of her life.

 

She was depressed by the COVID shutdown. She wanted more contact with nature. An African American woman, she made contact with Ward, an African American man. She was on a birding trip with him, in the woods, when the alleged assault occurred.

 

White wrote about the aftermath. "The week following the assault, I walked around in so much pain I’d have to shift my weight in creative ways to avoid the discomfort that came with simply sitting down. I was angry about what he did but I was also sad because it meant the end of a beautiful amount of time connecting with nature in a manner I had never done before …

 

The kind gesture of a man holding the door open for me now makes me nervous, as I’ve become hyper-aware of men standing behind me. I have trouble sleeping uninterrupted every single night and I sometimes experience nightmares…

 

To borrow a quote from a blog he wrote, 'One black person’s paradise can be another one’s terror.' He proved that to be true…

 

It should have been a safe space because nature does not belong to any one of us, yet it should be accessible to all of us in its many forms. He welcomed me into this beautiful world of birding but quickly stripped me of the enjoyment of it by altering my association with birds and the outdoors…

 

Although it takes deliberate – and sometimes failed – efforts from me to avoid associating birds with him or what he did, I keep trying every day. There have been many days where I felt like giving up. I felt like my voice would never be truly heard. I am trying to remember who I was before this happened – the freedom I felt, and the comfort of knowing the sound of birds signal that I am alive."

 

White's words bring me to tears. I love nature. As a rape survivor myself, I completely understand the somatic connection between surrounding circumstances and an event like rape. For me, the trigger is not birdsong, but the smell of alcohol on someone's breath.

 

Another disturbing news story is breaking. The Lincoln Project played a key role in defeating Donald Trump. I have donated to the Lincoln Project. Now it's come out that John Weaver, a co-founder, is an alleged serial sex harasser. According to accusations, though Weaver is a married man, he used his political power to attempt to coerce males as young as 14 to trade sexual contact for political access. At the same time, the Lincoln Project is accused of maintaining a sexist, homophobic, and financially corrupt workplace.

 

We were eating a delicious apple and we found a worm in it. What do we do?

 

The solution will discover and expose common denominators and shared cures. What links White's alleged assault with the alleged assaults on young men committed by Weaver with priests' assaults on children with child sex trafficking? What lies are all these rapists telling themselves? What power fuels their violations? What new narrative will decrease violations? What balm will heal all victims?

 

The Catholic Church sex abuse crisis? Get the information out there. All of it. Change the church so it never happens again.

 

But that is not enough. Please don't talk to me about sex abuse in the Catholic Church unless you want to talk to me about sex abuse, period. Please don't talk to me about Catholic children unless you also want to talk to me about Nepali or Cambodian or Thai children who are sexually trafficked throughout Asia by marketers who operate with impunity with what sellers and buyers believe is the sanction of their belief systems.

 

Don't talk to me about rape, and the association of rape with something you'd previously thought of as safe, as holy, as sacred, unless you want to talk to me about events like what allegedly happened to Aisha White or the teen boys harassed by John Weaver. Or the Atheist women raped by New Atheist celebrities, celebrities empowered by misogynist New Atheist culture.

 

Because selective outrage – I only want to talk about sex abuse in the Catholic Church but nowhere else – communicates to me that the speaker is NOT a compassionate savior who wants to right wrongs, but is, in fact, a stone-cold hater, whose goal is not helping victims but smearing Catholicism, who exploits victims' pain to that end.

 

This will be my last letter, I think, on the church sex abuse crisis.

 

I want to make a request of you. If you want to refer to something I said, please quote me. Please don't paraphrase. I ask this because in a couple of previous pieces, you paraphrase me as saying something I don't think and never said. As a survivor of child sex abuse myself, I'm sensitive about what words others put in my mouth on this topic.

 

We need to move on to talking about Darwin and evolution, so I'll go silent on church sex abuse after this, at least for the time being, and give you a chance to respond to my letters on the sex abuse crisis.

And then we can move on to Darwin and evolution.