Hello and welcome to this evening's very special unbelievable event falling from grace addressing power leadership and abuse in the church. I'm just in Brahli and I'm delighted to be joined by a really significant panel of speakers for today's event and people from all over the world are currently joining to be part of our audience as well. It's great to have so many of you involved in today's discussion.

This is a serious issue though a series of leadership scandals have rocked the evangelical church in recent years celebrity pastors with large platforms of fallen leaving a trail of abuse survivors in their wake.

Postumes revelations of sexual abuse by Ravi Zacharias led to the collapse of the apologetics ministry are Zim prominent Hillsong leaders Carl Lentz and Brian Houston recently stepped down following allegations of inappropriate behavior.

And of course we've heard the full story of the rise and fall of Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill church that's been heard around the world and the question is what do all these stories what does this reckoning mean for our ministry models today.

How do we ensure the voices of survivors are heard and what does the church need to do to repent and be transformed in the process.

I'll be introduced my panel in just a moment's time but we really pleased to be partnering today with 31 eight the UK's leading independent Christian safeguarding charity will meet their chief executive Justin Humphries later on in the show for some of his reflections and they've got together a really helpful range of resources and links for further reading and support that might be helpful to you.

If you want to take this further explore the topic more those are on a safeguarding help line if you want to talk to someone about these issues so there's a link to that in the chat it's 31 eight dot org slash unbelievable 31 eight dot org slash unbelievable but we're linking to it there in the chat if you want to check it out.

I am delighted to be joined for today's discussion by Amy or you in Rachel then holanda might cost by and I am Langberg Rachel then holanda is an attorney and advocate for abuse survivors Rachel was the first woman to publicly accuse us gymnastics doctor Larry mass of sexual assault.

Now hundreds more survivors of abuse came forward following that leading to his imprisonment and Rachel's also the author of what is a girl worth she now advocates as an attorney and public speaker for abuse survivors both in the secular and church world Rachel thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a privilege to be here I've been really looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah well I'm so glad to have you and all the fantastic guests we've got here today and for those who want perhaps too familiar with your story do you want to just briefly tell us about your experience because I believe the abuse that happened occurred under the guise of medical care in your case.

Yeah my second set of abuse with Larry did the first time I was abused was actually in the church context and I experienced the loss of my church community through that and just how so much of our Christian theology can be misunderstood and twisted and warped and weaponized.

And that really did set the stage for my abuse later on because I learned very early if you cannot prove your abuse do not speak up because it will cost you everything and just that incredible hurdle that survived to even the people who are close to them understand and trust their judgment that they know what's happened to them.

And so I experienced that in the church at around age seven and then again with Dr Larry Nasser who was the Olympic the physician for Olympic gymnastics team and the chief medical coordinator for our elite program also as a professor at one of our very prominent state universities Michigan state university in Michigan.

And at the time I remember thinking very clearly this is clearly something he does all the time there's no way that has been described before other people haven't talked to what's going on in the exam room.

And if somebody had described something or said something surely the other adults in charge would have made sure that this is legitimate treatment to the fact that I'm in here means this must be medical treatment this must be this therapy that I've heard about a had a category for pelvic floor therapy.

And I didn't just trust Larry I trusted the community around him that's something that's really critical for us to understand and through the trust in the community and the depth of the community betrayal and how that impacts survivors it's not just one abuser it's our entire system.

And does that explain to some extent why you were the first to publicly come forward despite the fact that we're obviously many many victims of this abuse.

God really orchestrated the events around that and I get the question all the time what took you so long to speak up and I think what we have to grapple with is my survivors are willing to speak up but they lack the safe place to speak up.

And so rather than asking the question how do we how do we make the survivor speak up we need to ask how do we make it safe for them to speak up.

And especially in the church space how do we create places where survivors are heard and listened to and believed and supported so I was incredibly blessed to have a strong family support system and to have had 16 years to walk through the healing journey and to have a significant amount of expertise in legal communication so that I understood what it was going to take and what it was going to cost and I could bring the case really to the detective and I think that's really important.

And let everything out from a medical and a legal standpoint but no survivors should have to do that new survivors should be put in that position and I'm grateful that God allowed me to do that and orchestrated this events and put that in place but I would never ask somebody else to have.

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