Janet Heimlich is the founder of the Child Friendly Faith Project and author of

breaking their will shedding light on religious child maltreatment, both of

which examine child abuse and neglect that is enabled by religious belief in the United States.

By way of full disclosure, I should say that I'm on the advisory board for the Child Friendly

Faith Project.

Janet is also a reporter who has worked for NPR and

written for a variety of publications. So Janet, thank you so much for

joining me here and let me just start off. When I think of faith-based child abuse,

I assume most people would jump

to the Catholic Church Pedophilia scandal.

But how limited is that?

How many examples of this are there?

That's a great question.

In 2011, I came out with a book called

Breaking Their Will, which looks at religious child maltreatment and at the time there was

very little said about what all that encompasses up to that point most people were mostly familiar with sexual abuse in the Catholic

Church. Some people were also aware of some faith healing related death cases but except for those you know pretty

extreme and widespread situations, I think that people had no idea, and I will say I

had very little idea, just how pervasive religious child maltreatment is.

And to define that, really it's any form of child abuse or neglect, which is what maltreatment is, any form of abuse or neglect, which is enabled

in some way by religious belief.

And this can be beliefs held by perpetrators, victims, or the surrounding community.

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