Category Archives: BJU Dean of Students Jim Berg

PsychoPathic Defenders of Bob Jones University Pedophiles and Rapists: Blessed Little Blog Part THREE: Rape victims say Bob Jones University told them to repent

These disgusting trodlogytes for the Pedophiles of Bob Jones University love to unmercifully attack the victims of the disgusting pedophiles of the Bob Jones University. They love attacking anyone who DARES help defend and support the victims of their Bob Jones University Pedophiles.

Psycho Sally and her BJU Rapist and Pedophile Defending Crew says none of any of this happened. They attack the victims as liars and go after them in unmerciful and vile and evil ways. They think their gang of creeps can bully the victims of Bob Jones University’s rapists and pedophiles into silence or anyone who dares to help them. I got news for Psycho Sally and her crew. She met someone who has absolutely no fear of punk assed bullies like her or her crew. Or any pedophile or rapist or defenders of pedophiles and rapists cause all they are? Are the lowest form of sub-human shitstain trodogytes on the face of the planet and deserve to be eliminated off the face of the planet so they harm no one ever again.

NO MERCY should be given to ANY rapist or pedophiles, especially religions ones. They never give mercy to their victims or survivors do they? Well then they deserve what they sow back and shown and given absolutely no mercy. A death penalty punishment should be automatic for pedophiles and rapists. They are vermin who deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth and if we put dogs to death for biting children? How much more should we put these rabid religious dogs who rape children or others to death?

So here is another edition exposing the vile evil den of rapists and pedophiles at Bob Jones University.

http://www.blessedlittleblog.com/

Rape victims say Bob Jones University told them to repent

Former students at ‘the fortress of faith’ who reported sexual abuse say they were told they had sinned
By Claire Gordon
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/6/18/bob-jones-universitysexualabuse.html

Raised in a conservative Mennonite home in rural Ohio, Katie Landry was a sheltered kid. She hadn’t even held hands with a boy when, at age 19, she says her supervisor at her summer job raped her. Two years later, and desperate for help, she reported the abuse to the dean of students at her college. 

Katie Landry
Katie Landry at her childhood home in rural Ohio.

“He goes, ‘Well, there’s always a sin under other sin. There’s a root sin,’” Landry remembers. “And he said, ‘We have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape.’ And I just ran.

Landry ended up dropping out of college, and didn’t tell anyone else for five years.

Her college was Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., the flagship campus of American fundamentalism, which teaches a literal interpretation of the Bible and separation from the world. Last year, BJU hired a watchdog group to investigate how it may have failed victims of sexual abuse. The so-called “fortress of faith,” one of the most closed-off Christian colleges in America, was finally opening itself up.

In an America Tonight investigation, five former students detailed similar and scarring treatment at the hands of BJU faculty. They spoke of a larger culture that heaped on shame and pushed them to silence — one focused on purity and reputation, and insistent on unquestioning obedience. But most damaging was how, through the language of Scripture, victims say they were told that their sins had brought on their rapes, that their trauma meant they were fighting God and that healing came from forgiving their rapists.

The women interviewed for this article attended BJU during the course of three different decades – from the early 1990s to the 2010s – and none of them have fully recovered. 

I. Root sin

In 2004, Landry worked over the summer for an ambulance company in Columbus, Ohio. One night, she was counting supplies in the back of an ambulance, when she says she felt the prick of a needle.

“I just couldn’t move and he came over and he took my clothes off,” she remembered. “I could still speak, so I was telling him, ‘No.’ And he raped me and my eyes filled with tears, but I couldn’t brush the tears away.”  

Katie Landry
Katie Landry, around the time she was a junior in college.

Told that he “would do worse” to her 9-year-old sister if she didn’t come back, Landry said she had five more shifts, and was raped three more times, before she left for her freshman year at BJU.

Landry didn’t know the word rape; she only knew adultery, and liked the man’s wife, she said. Afraid of her attacker and deeply ashamed, she said she failed most her classes first semester, and kept her assaults a secret until her junior year.

“I just needed help,” she said. “I needed help really bad.”

Landry said she was referred to Jim Berg, then the dean of students. After she shared her story, she said Berg asked whether she’d been drinking or smoking pot and if she’d been “impure.” When he brought up her “root sin,” she said she raced out of the building.

“He just confirmed my worst nightmare,” Landry said. “It was something I had done. It was something about me. It was my fault.”

II. Bitterness

Becoming a Christian Counselor

A page from the book, “Becoming an Effective Christian Counselor,” in the section on incest.BJU Press

BJU practices, preaches and instructs a version of Christian counseling that rejects “secular psychology.” In the school’s worldview, almost all mental problems – beyond the medical – are the result of sin.  As explained in the 1996 book, “Becoming an Effective Christian Counselor,” “most people in mental hospitals are not sick; they are sinful.”

Written by Walter Fremont, who was the dean of education at BJU for 37 years, and his wife Trudy Fremont, a former BJU professor, the book specifically addresses incest and rape, advising counselors to emphasize that blame lies with the abuser. But the authors also make clear that being sexually assaulted is no excuse for the sinful feelings of discontentment, hate, fear, and especially, bitterness – unresolved anger that “in reality is rebellion and bitterness against God.”

In a 2009 BJU chapel service, former adjunct professor Rand Hummel recounts how he instructed a young woman to ask her abuser – her stepdad – for forgiveness for her bitterness, and that afterwards, he received a letter from her saying, “Finally, for the first time in my teenage life, I can smile.”

[Editor’s note: The below video is edited, because the original could only be found in clips, courtesy of Darrell Dow. The two cuts are clearly marked, and you can listen to the full audio of the sermon here.]

III. Forgiveness

After asking her rapist for forgiveness on the instruction of her BJU counselor, Sarah [1] didn’t smile. The man was a family member, who had abused her for several years as a child.

“I didn’t even know what sex was at that point,” she said. “All I knew was that it hurt and that I didn’t like it.”

When she started at BJU in the late 2000s, Sarah said she was haunted by flashbacks, nightmares and a deep fear of men, and was excited to finally get help. She was referred to Pat Berg, a professor of counseling at BJU and the wife of Jim Berg. 

Bob Jones University counseling
Sarah was counseled by Pat Berg while a student at Bob Jones.
“I would say that the impact of the two years of counseling I had with her is that I felt like I had been raped all over again,” she said.

In their many sessions, Sarah said Berg fixated on her “sin,” and then blamed her when she failed to “get better.” She said Berg told her that she needed to repent of any pleasure she experienced during her abuse. Since BJU doesn’t recognize psychiatric concepts like post-traumatic stress disorder, she said she was also told that she was choosing her trauma symptoms. 

“I remember her looking at me and saying, ‘You know that the nightmares are your own fault, because you’re choosing to replay pornographic thoughts in your mind,’” she said.

According to emails, Berg also advised Sarah to call her rapist and ask for forgiveness. Sarah said Berg told her that if she didn’t forgive, God wouldn’t be able to “use her.”

Pat Berg email
An email Pat Berg sent to Sarah giving her guidance on what to say to her rapist when she called him.

But talking to her rapist didn’t make Sarah feel better.

“Picking up that phone that day and calling him was one of the most gut-wrenchingly hard things that I ever had to do,” she said. “It didn’t bring me closure. Instead, it was like sticking a knife inside me and twisting it harder.”
Suicidal and overwhelmed by flashbacks and nightmares, Sarah said she kept going to counseling because “she was so desperate for some ray of light.” But instead, she said Berg told her that if she’d asked God’s forgiveness, she should be fine, and Sarah “walked out of her office for the last time with no hope.”

Through a BJU spokesman, Pat Berg said Sarah’s allegations were “patently false.” BJU wouldn’t respond to any of the other claims until the results of the independent investigation are released. Jim Berg has yet to respond to requests for an interview.

Writing through the university Facebook’s account, a school representative said, “We certainly encourage victims to report any illegal activity to applicable law enforcement agencies as these types of criminals may strike again.” None of the former students interviewed said that they were ever told their abuse was a crime.
This response to rape reports isn’t unique to BJU, according to Peter Janci of the Portland law firm O’Donnell Clark & Crew. In the dozens of sex abuse cases he’s brought against religious organizations, Janci says he’s found this type of victim-blaming reaction to be “all too common.” 
“We’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg of the issue of sexual exploitation in Protestant churches,” said Janci, who grew up in an evangelical home. “They haven’t been held accountable.” 

IV. Godliness

Jim Berg
Jim Berg was the dean of students at Bob Jones for 29 years, until 2010. But he remains on the faculty.

The method of counseling at BJU ends up punishing victims far more than their abusers, according to Julia [2], a former BJU student, who was also counseled by Jim Berg.

“[The offenders] are able to quickly move on. They say they’re sorry, they’re repentant, so they go right back,” she said. “As the victims continue to struggle in the aftermath, we are the ones seen to be in sin. Struggling with fear, confusion, anger, talking about what happened, or any other reaction to trauma is seen as sin. We are expected to repent of those sins and live as though nothing happened.”

Twenty years ago, Julia received counseling from Jim Berg for an eating disorder. Growing up in a ministry, she was familiar with fundamentalist views on sexual abuse, and so never brought up the abuse she says she experienced as a child.

“You’re worthless if you’ve been abused,” she said. “I knew enough to never, ever, ever, ever mention what had happened.”

Berg said her eating disorder was “a lifestyle of sin,” and Julia graduated believing “God has spit me out,” she said. Seven months later, she says a co-worker and Bob Jones ministry student raped her. She thought of him as “the tool that God used to punish me.” 

Within a week, she said Berg found the man responsible and expelled him, but three semesters later, he was allowed to come back. When she expressed her fear to an administrator, Julia said she was asked whether she would really want to prevent a “Godly man” from getting an education that would allow him to “serve the Lord.” 

A couple years ago, Julia found out that her alleged rapist was in Christian ministry in another country, and was wracked with guilt that she never reported him.

“He’s a sex offender and he’s in ministry,” she said, “and what if he hurts somebody else?” 
An ad for the counseling program Freedom that Lasts, which seeks to help “those enslaved in life-dominating sins or overcome by hurtful events of life.” Jim Berg serves as executive director.

V. Repentance

At the request of BJU, the nonprofit Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) is currently investigating the university for how it’s handled sexual abuse. More than 100 people have come forward to GRACE investigators, and the report is due out in the next few months. Boz Tchividjian, the head of GRACE, believes Christian organizations across the country have failed victims in similar ways, and that the Protestant world could in fact be “worse” than the Catholic Church

Boz Tchividjian and Billy Graham
Boz Tchividjian, the director of GRACE, and his grandfather, the iconic preacher Billy Graham.

When GRACE investigates an organization – usually churches and ministries – Tchividjian said the goal is the same: Get the institution to demonstrate “authentic repentance.”

After graduating BJU, Sarah took matters into her own hands and reported her rapist to the police. He was recently convicted of sexual battery of a minor under the age of 12.

“If you would have told me that dark day when I walked out of [Pat Berg’s] office with no hope, that one day my rapist would be convicted and sentenced to prison, that I would be living a stable, successful life and that I would be healing from my abuse, I would never have been able to believe you,” she said. “But those are the miracles that I have seen my God do.”

Last year, Landry, now 31, moved to New Orleans, and started a tour business of the city’s historic madams and brothels. She still has dark days, but says she has no anger toward BJU, or regrets about going there. She remembers in particular her Bible teacher telling the class about the Greek word “metanoia”: It’s translated as “repentance,” which suggests anguish; but more accurately, it means to completely change the way you think about something. 

“I’m going to use the language that Bob Jones University should definitely understand here, when I say, I want you to repent, I want you to metanoia of your leadership,” she said. “I want you to repent, I want you to metanoia of covering up and protecting men who have sexually abused young women and children – and many. I want you to repent, I want you to metanoia this rape culture mentality that you have bought into and tried to sprinkle God over.” 

1. Sarah asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

2. Julia asked to remain anonymous out of concern that she might negatively impact the GRACE investigation.

PsychoPathic Defenders of Bob Jones University Pedophiles and Rapists: Blessed Little Blog Part Two: Rape victims ‘hopeless’ after Bob Jones University response

A second blog posting exposing this Psycho Sally and her Bob Jones University Pedophile Defending Crew

http://www.blessedlittleblog.com/tag/disturbed/

http://www.blessedlittleblog.com/page/102/

http://www.blessedlittleblog.com

Why am I doing this? By now if you have gone to some of the links I have posted in my blog to other blogs I have done? Like Voices From the Grave: Suicide Victims of the Roman Catholic Church? Then you would know who I am.

As a fighter for victims of rape and pedophilia FOR OVER 14 YEARS NOW, and a survivor of such a brutal crime, by disgusting Christians? I actually met a victim from the Bob Jones University. She had contacted me after she talked to another advocate for people who were raped or had pedo crimes committed against them by Christians and runs her own blog.

This woman had come under viscious, vile attacks by this Psycho Sally and her Bob Jones University Pedophile and Rape Defending Crew. I will not get into those details, all one has to do is go to this Trailer Park Trash Troglodyte for Bob Jones University Pedophiles and Rapists and read some of their shit and you will see? The stories of the victims who were either raped at Bob Jones University or by their various pastors of their Bob Jones lines of Fundie Churches, and trust me, they are BAD? Is proven right by this disgusting blog attacking a victim and most of all?

A BRAVE SURVIVOR OF SOME HORRORS DONE TO HER BY A PASTOR OF BOB JONES UNIVERSITY WOULD MAKE YOU PUKE.

SUFFICE IT TO SAY MY LAST TIME I REALLY GOT TO TALK TO HER? SHE WAS ONCE AGAIN? UNITED WITH HER REAL BIRTH FAMILY WHO HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR HER FOR A LONG TIME AND SHE ACTUALLY? HAD A SMILE ON HER FACE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG TIME.

I LOVE THAT SURVIVOR LIKE I LOVE ALL THE VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS I HAVE EVER WORKED WITH IN MY LONG YEARS OF DOING THIS. AND I WILL ALWAYS STAND FOR HER. HER BRAVERY AND COURAGE IN THE FACE OF THE DISGUSTING, VILE AND EVIL THINGS THESE SCUM FROM THE BOB JONES UNIVERSITY PSYCHOTIC DEFENDERS OF THEIR RAPISTS AND PEDOPHILES? SHE SAID TO ME TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT I HELPED HER SO MUCH, BUT IN RETURN? SHE HELPED ME AND OTHERS BY HER COURAGE AND BRAVERY FOR US TO KEEP FIGHTING AND EXPOSING THIS AND STANDING UP TO IT AND DEMANDING JUSTICE FOR ALL THESE CRIMES AGAINST ALL OF US.

AND? THESE ACTIONS OF PSYCHO SALLY AND HER BOB JONES UNIVERSITY RAPE AND PEDOPHILE DEFENDING CREW? SHOULD BE CONDEMNED BY ALL TRUE CHRISTIANS AND ALL DECENT AND RIGHT THINKING AND MORAL HUMAN BEINGS IN THE WORLD.

AND THERE ARE MORE OF US GOOD PEOPLE, EVEN US ATHEISTS, THAN THERE ARE OF THESE KINDS OF SCUMBAG SHITSTAINS ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY LIKE PSYCHO SALLY.

Once again? The WhoIs data for this disgusting, psychotic shitstain on the underwear of humanity? Psycho Sally’s blog defending the Bob Jones University Pedophiles and attacking the victims and supporters of the Bob Jones University Pedophile Crew.

This is the WhoIs information for this disgusting shitstains blog.

Domain InformationDomain:blessedlittleblog.com
Registrar:Domain.com, LLCRegistered On:2015-12-15
Expires On:2020-12-15Updated On:2019-11-12
Status:okName Servers:ns1.ipage.com
ns2.ipage.com
Registrant ContactName:Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.Organization:Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.Street:10 Corporate DriveCity:BurlingtonState:MAPostal Code:01803Country:USPhone:+1.6027165339
Email:email@domainprivacygroup.com
Administrative ContactName:Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.Organization:Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.Street:10 Corporate DriveCity:BurlingtonState:MAPostal Code:01803Country:USPhone:+1.6027165339
Email:email@domainprivacygroup.com
Technical ContactName:Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.Organization:Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.Street:10 Corporate DriveCity:BurlingtonState:MAPostal Code:01803Country:USPhone:+1.6027165339
Email:email@domainprivacygroup.com

Raw Whois Data

http://www.blessedlittleblog.com/page/102/

Domain Name: BLESSEDLITTLEBLOG.COM
Registry Domain ID: 1987622182_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.domain.com
Registrar URL: www.domain.com
Updated Date: 2019-11-12T00:14:06
Creation Date: 2015-12-15T23:52:13
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2020-12-15T23:52:13
Registrar: Domain.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 886
Reseller: iPage
Domain Status: 
Registry Registrant ID: 
Registrant Name: Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.
Registrant Organization: Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.
Registrant Street: 10 Corporate Drive 
Registrant City: Burlington
Registrant State/Province: MA
Registrant Postal Code: 01803
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.6027165339
Registrant Phone Ext: 
Registrant Fax: 
Registrant Fax Ext: 
Registrant Email: email@domainprivacygroup.com
Registry Admin ID: 
Admin Name: Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.
Admin Organization: Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.
Admin Street: 10 Corporate Drive 
Admin City: Burlington
Admin State/Province: MA
Admin Postal Code: 01803
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone: +1.6027165339
Admin Phone Ext: 
Admin Fax: 
Admin Fax Ext: 
Admin Email: email@domainprivacygroup.com
Registry Tech ID: 
Tech Name: Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.
Tech Organization: Domain Privacy Service FBO Registrant.
Tech Street: 10 Corporate Drive 
Tech City: Burlington
Tech State/Province: MA
Tech Postal Code: 01803
Tech Country: US
Tech Phone: +1.6027165339
Tech Phone Ext: 
Tech Fax: 
Tech Fax Ext: 
Tech Email: email@domainprivacygroup.com
Name Server: ns1.ipage.com
Name Server: ns2.ipage.com
DNSSEC: unsigned
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: email@domain-inc.net
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.6027165396
URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdprs.internic.net/
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2020-03-28T13:52:13Z <<<

"For more information on Whois status codes, please visit https://icann.org/epp"

Registration Service Provider:
    iPage, email@ipage-inc.com
    +1.8774724399
    This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords,
    DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions.

There is a cure for Pedophiles and Rapists. For how much should we put to death Christian pastors and preachers and priests who brutally rape children, mind, body and even soul, and then? Destroy those victims using their Christian theology to do so. If Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians Pastors are out there using Leviticus to demand the death penalty for homosexuals? Then we should have a right to demand a death penalty punishment for ALL Christian priests and pastors who either rape children or adults. There should be absolutely NO MERCY for them because they showed NO MERCY for their victims. Especially? Their victims who were children.
There is a cure for Pedophiles and Rapists. For how much should we put to death Christian pastors and preachers and priests who brutally rape children, mind, body and even soul, and then? Destroy those victims using their Christian theology to do so. If Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians Pastors are out there using Leviticus to demand the death penalty for homosexuals? Then we should have a right to demand a death penalty punishment for ALL Christian priests and pastors who either rape children or adults. There should be absolutely NO MERCY for them because they showed NO MERCY for their victims. Especially? Their victims who were children.

Rape victims ‘hopeless’ after Bob Jones University response

The conservative Christian school responds to blistering report on how it told rape victims to repent
By Claire Gordon
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2015/3/30/bob-jones-university-sexual-abuse.html

Thousands of people watched in the campus chapel, and countless more tuned in to a live Web feed earlier this month as Bob Jones University President Steve Pettit addressed the school’s handling of sexual assault reports.

Like many of those with ties to BJU, a private school in Greenville, South Carolina, nicknamed the “fortress of faith,” Julia had been waiting decades for this moment.

After watching the video for just a few minutes, she vomited.

“I couldn’t stop throwing up,” said Julia (not her real name), who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity so as not to be linked to her alleged rapist. “It shocked me. There was nothing in me that prepared me for the response that came.”

To those who abuse. The crime is yours, the "sin" is yours and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: Blaming the victims only masks the evil within. Making YOU just as guilty as those who abuse.

STAND UP FOR THE INNOCENT, OR GO DOWN WITH THE REST
To those who abuse. The crime is yours, the “sin” is yours and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: Blaming the victims only masks the evil within. Making YOU just as guilty as those who abuse.
STAND UP FOR THE INNOCENT, OR GO DOWN WITH THE REST
Three months before Pettit’s speech, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), an independent Christian organization, released the results of a nearly two-year investigation, detailing how the  school — over four decades — heaped shame on rape victims, urged them not to go to the police and even counseled them to repent for their own abuse.
BJU leaders commissioned the report voluntarily after a scandal about one of the school’s trustees allegedly making a teen rape victim confess her “sin” before his church’s congregation.

The probe was unprecedented in the world of higher education and sharply divided the wider school community, which stretches to churches around the country and ministries around the world. BJU’s response was considered less of a test for colleges on the issue of sexual violence and more of a test for American Christianity’s most conservative wing.

In its response, the school doubled down on the biblical counseling that many victims found so devastating. Two sexual assault victims on the task force that drafted the report’s recommendations later wrote an open letter to Bob Jones, saying their “hope was shattered by BJU’s official response.”

According to a current student, many faculty members are extremely upset — although they can’t express it publicly for fear of losing their jobs.

There were a few firm reforms. Incoming students and faculty members now receive an hour of abuse awareness training, and all BJU employees are designated as mandatory reporters of child abuse.

The school says there will be further changes, including a review of its student culture, which many graduates say is so oppressively rule-focused that you are afraid to admit a problem at all for fear of being seen as a failed Christian.

Moral or medical problem?

Many sexual assault victims pinpoint Bob Jones’ philosophy of biblical counseling as the greatest source of harm. In BJU’s brand of pastoral care, all mental issues — such as ADHD, depression and trauma — are considered spiritual fights with God. The result: Abuse victims whose issues weren’t resolved through prayer or religious study were told they were sinning and needed to repent.

Julia said she never told her counselor, Jim Berg, then the dean of students, about the abuse she experienced as a child years before she arrived on campus. Instead, she sought help for an eating disorder.

She says he labeled her struggle “a lifestyle of sin,” and she graduated thinking “God has spit me out,” she said. When a BJU ministry student raped her several months later, she believed he was “the tool that God used to punish me.”

Sarah, a recent graduate and abuse victim, who also asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said her Bob Jones counselor told her, “You know that the nightmares are your own fault, because you’re choosing to replay pornographic thoughts in your mind.”

“I would say that the impact of the two years of counseling I had with her is that I felt like I had been raped all over again,” Sarah said. ‘Look at me and tell me I’m not to blame. Tell me it wasn’t sin in my life. Tell me that and tell me you understand that and tell me you’re sorry for that.’

Katie Landry former BJU student

GRACE urged Bob Jones to strike these teachings from sermons and curricula, bar certain individuals from counseling and outsource the counseling of abuse victims to licensed trauma professionals. None of the counselors at Bob Jones are licensed. 

But BJU hasn’t done any of that.

Proof to me? That Bob Jones University President Steve Pettit? Speaks out of his anus.

“God’s inerrant and authoritative word is completely sufficient to address any problem believers face in their spiritual life,” Pettit stated in his address. “We are and will continue to be totally committed to a philosophy of biblical counseling at BJU.”

“I feel Bob Jones has gone decades backwards, not forwards,” Sarah said. “They are reinforcing the very policies and counseling standards that caused the damage.”

The university did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

But BJU Vice President Marshall Franklin has been in regular touch with several sexual abuse victims who attended the school. Julia said he explained to her that BJU couldn’t budge on issues of doctrine and that it had a fundamentalist constituency to serve.  

BJU’s hard-line spiritual approach to counseling has become increasingly controversial in the university’s ranks.

“I literally shook. I was so upset by the things he was teaching,” said one recent BJU graduate about her counseling class. She said she has a family member who struggles with psychological issues and asked to remain anonymous because she’s still in good standing with the university.

“The secular is bad at seeing everything as a medical issue and not a moral issue,” she continued. “But just because the world is wrong doesn’t mean we can go to the opposite extreme and call it right.”

Katie Landry
Katie Landry at her childhood home in rural Ohio.

While Pettit’s pronouncements seemed unmovable, the school’s more detailed response, posted on its website, offered an inch.

“We recognize there currently may be limits to our ability to deal with certain aspects of trauma present in some cases of sexual abuse/assault,” it reads, adding that students have the option of pursuing help off campus.

For Katie Landry, it’s an unconvincing concession. She dropped out of BJU in 2004 after she says Berg told her to “find the sin in your life that caused your rape.”
“Look at me and tell me I’m not to blame,” she said of Pettit’s speech. “Tell me it wasn’t sin in my life. Tell me that and tell me you understand that, and tell me you’re sorry for that.”

In an example of how the investigation has divided the wider fundamentalist community, Landry’s mother, father, sister and brother-in-law left the Ohio church they attended for 17 years, after the pastor allegedly refused to even read the GRACE report.

Policies and people

Bob Jones University
An ad for Bob Jones University in Christian Life magazine, May 1968.
A campus culture that GRACE described as “showcase Christianity,” coupled with militaristic discipline, has been a suffocating one for many Bob Jones students, especially those grappling with the aftershocks of abuse.
“People ask you questions, like, ‘You seem exceptionally sad.’ ‘Why are you sleeping so much?’ ‘You cry out in the middle of the night because you’re having nightmares, what’s wrong with you?'” said one former BJU student who was a faculty member for more than a decade in the 1980s and ’90s and asked not to be identified because she has family and friends associated with BJU. “Girls got turned in because somebody noticed a symptom of trauma, and then, of course, they got routed up to Mr. Berg.”

Lydia, who asked to be identified by only her first name, was raped as a freshman over the 2008 winter break at Bob Jones. She sought help and was directed Berg, who sent her to meet with a dorm counselor, a BJU graduate student. The counselor told “America Tonight” that there was no confidentiality; she was told to keep the higher-ups in the loop. Within a couple months, Lydia was expelled in the middle of the night with no explanation.

She believes she had become an irritation to the school administration.

“It should have been expected that I would feel stressed out and trapped and alone and emotional about it,” Lydia told “America Tonight” in 2013. “And they sent me back to the place with the person who attacked me, to be alone all day.”  ‘I believe in my heart that we have always loved our students, but we have not always disciplined with love.’

Steve Pettit president, BJU

“A part of our culture placed too much emphasis on policies and not enough emphasis on people,” said Pettit in his address. “I believe in my heart that we have always loved our students, but we have not always disciplined with love.”

This culture has been changing slowly for a decade, propelled by the Internet, which exposed students to ideas outside the fundamentalist worldview. The campus handbook is still anchored in the 1950s, with an emphasis on obedience, alongside rules about handholding (banned if you’re unmarried) and music (no rock, jazz or hip-hop beats). But at a recent talent show, students performed the soft rock song “Ocean (Where Feet May Fail)” by the Christian band Hillsong United, and it was extremely well received. 

A rat-out culture used to be encouraged on campus, but now snitches are a minority, according to a current student. In the last few years, student movements like Do Right BJU have sprung up, advocating for change and openness.

And on a campus where individuals have long been hesitant to speak up, a student petition declaring their empathy for victims of abuse garnered 392 signatures in the lead-up to Bob Jones’ response.
In a powerful sign of the changing times, the administration embraced the petition, with Pettit praising it on the chapel stage.

Overall, though, the university president’s language was carefully hedged, clearly geared to the Bob Jones loyalists who have felt scorched by the GRACE report and the national attention it has received.

“I wanted substance, and I felt like I walked away with mist,” said Ryan Ferguson, a popular Greenville pastor and former BJU student. “What would have happened if someone had sat down and said, ‘Case No. 5074, we wronged you. Case no. 5045, we wronged you.’ What would have happened in our town? To the faith community?”  

But he said he was impressed that when he reached out to Pettit’s office, the president agreed to meet him in person.

According to some of the victims who poured their heartache into the GRACE investigation, however, the school’s response felt like just another insult. And this time they felt they had exhausted all recourse. Many used the word “hopeless.”

“I feel like we were pawns in a game I don’t understand,” Julia said.