If a pastor or someone in spiritual authority lures a married adult into a sexual relationship,

is that abuse or an affair?

And can an adult engage in a sexual relationship but not be culpable because she was manipulated by a sexual predator?

Welcome to the Roy's Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church.

I'm Julie Roy's.

And today I'm going to be exploring this very difficult and sensitive issue with Dr. Diane Langberg.

Dr. Langberg is a practicing psychologist with 47 years of clinical experience working with trauma survivors and clergy.

And her most recent book, Redeeming Power, explores how authority can be abused in the church.

In fact, in November, I recorded an entire podcast with Dr. Langberg on that book.

So if you like this podcast, and I'm pretty sure you will, because Dr. Langberg is brilliant,

you may want to go back and listen to that previous podcast. But here's why I invited Dr. Langberg on now to discuss

the issue of adult clergy abuse. Last week, I published a podcast with Katie Roberts. Katie is a

married woman who says her sexual relationship with her seminary professor,

Dr. Art Azurdia, was abuse not an affair. And I agreed with her. Clearly, Dr. Azurdia was in a

position of power over Roberts, and what Roberts described in our podcast was definitely predatory

behavior. But I've received a lot of comments concerning that podcast,

and there were a sizable number who said that an adult cannot be groomed by another adult,

and even if Roberts was groomed, she's still culpable for her behavior. To be honest,

Katie's culpability was not the focus of my podcast. My focus was and is on exposing predators in the church,

and I don't feel it's my place to judge victims of abuse and their culpability. That said,

the podcast does raise some important issues, and I think as a church, we have a long way to go

in understanding abuse. So I'm very much looking forward to

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