International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 3, 2012 51
is frequently made when someone
wishes to attack another’s character,
such as in divorce proceedings, or
among disgruntled students and parents.
It is not surprising, therefore, that such
charges of child abuse are commonly
made against minority religious groups,
and charges of child abuse and neglect
have been made against New Religious
Movements for the past twenty-five
years. Even groups such as the Hare
Krishnas, who have a theologically
based, restrictive approach toward overt
sexuality, have been charged by critics
over the years with sexual abuse despite
the evidence that abuse occurs among
devotees at no higher rate, and probably
at a much lower rate, than in the general
population. (Lilliston &Shepherd, 1994,
p. 49)
These researchers offered this opinion the year
before a judge in a British court case presented a
very different analysis of child sexual abuse in
The Family during the 1980s and early 1990s.
In a lengthy written decision, the judge
concluded,
I am totally satisfied that there was
widespread sexual abuse of young
children and teenagers by adult
members of The Family, and that this
abuse occurred to a significantly greater
extent with The Family than occurred in
society outside it. (Ward, 1995, p. 111)
Moreover, roughly five years after this team
specifically mentioned the Hare Krishnas as a
new religion that had suffered unwarranted
child-abuse charges, the Hare Krishna
organization itself “published an unusually
candid exposé detailing widespread physical,
emotional and sexual abuse of children who
were sent to live in the group’s boarding schools
in the United States and India in the 1970s and
1980s” (Goodstein, 1998, p. A1 see Rochford,
2007, pp. 74–96 Rochford with Heinlein, 1998).
Some researchers, therefore, apparently did not
see what the critics of various groups knew—
that child sexual abuse was indeed a major
problem in some “new religions.”
Other studies have examined issues of protected
hierarchies and trust that facilitate religious
leaders’ exploitation of members. Anson Shupe,
for example, examined how the trusted
hierarchies within religions facilitate abuse, as
do types of hierarchical versus congregational
power structures in which various groups
operate (Shupe, 1995, p. 17). Refining and
building upon Shupe’s work, Peter Iadicola
concluded, “a religious organization most likely
to experience clergy malfeasance would have
hierarchical internal and external power
structures, charismatic leadership, and highly
unstable normative doctrine” (Iadicola, 1998, p.
227). Looking at other sociological contributors
to child sexual abuse, clinical social worker
Doni Whitsett and I reported that “many
conditions that facilitate child abuse in cults are
structural in nature, having to do with how these
groups operate in relation to society and in the
context of their own policies and practices”
(Whitsett &Kent, 2003, p. 496). The study that
I present here, however, takes an approach
different from these sociological ones, and I
hope that other researchers will revisit this
material through the lens of the social sciences.
Rather than focusing primarily upon the social
relations among leaders and followers that
facilitate child sexual abuse, or upon the (social)
psychology of age-inappropriate sexuality, I
examine the religiously coloured excuses and
doctrines that the perpetrators use to justify their
sexual abuses. For reasons of space I limit my
discussion to justifications that have appeared in
the West (excluding Islam), even if the
individuals or groups propounding them trace
their origins to non-Western religions from Asia.
In varying depth I identity and discuss eight
religious-coloured justifications connected to
child sexual abuse in Western countries. These
ideologies are: a) Western scriptural
patriarchalism b) Western patriarchal incest c)
patriarchalism and polygamous child brides d)
millenarianism e) antinomianism f) sex as the
means to salvation g) sex as salvation and h)
levelling all forms of sex as equally fallen.
I generated these justifications after reading
though media accounts, books, and other print
sources that I had been collecting for a number
of years as I oversaw the operation of a large,
is frequently made when someone
wishes to attack another’s character,
such as in divorce proceedings, or
among disgruntled students and parents.
It is not surprising, therefore, that such
charges of child abuse are commonly
made against minority religious groups,
and charges of child abuse and neglect
have been made against New Religious
Movements for the past twenty-five
years. Even groups such as the Hare
Krishnas, who have a theologically
based, restrictive approach toward overt
sexuality, have been charged by critics
over the years with sexual abuse despite
the evidence that abuse occurs among
devotees at no higher rate, and probably
at a much lower rate, than in the general
population. (Lilliston &Shepherd, 1994,
p. 49)
These researchers offered this opinion the year
before a judge in a British court case presented a
very different analysis of child sexual abuse in
The Family during the 1980s and early 1990s.
In a lengthy written decision, the judge
concluded,
I am totally satisfied that there was
widespread sexual abuse of young
children and teenagers by adult
members of The Family, and that this
abuse occurred to a significantly greater
extent with The Family than occurred in
society outside it. (Ward, 1995, p. 111)
Moreover, roughly five years after this team
specifically mentioned the Hare Krishnas as a
new religion that had suffered unwarranted
child-abuse charges, the Hare Krishna
organization itself “published an unusually
candid exposé detailing widespread physical,
emotional and sexual abuse of children who
were sent to live in the group’s boarding schools
in the United States and India in the 1970s and
1980s” (Goodstein, 1998, p. A1 see Rochford,
2007, pp. 74–96 Rochford with Heinlein, 1998).
Some researchers, therefore, apparently did not
see what the critics of various groups knew—
that child sexual abuse was indeed a major
problem in some “new religions.”
Other studies have examined issues of protected
hierarchies and trust that facilitate religious
leaders’ exploitation of members. Anson Shupe,
for example, examined how the trusted
hierarchies within religions facilitate abuse, as
do types of hierarchical versus congregational
power structures in which various groups
operate (Shupe, 1995, p. 17). Refining and
building upon Shupe’s work, Peter Iadicola
concluded, “a religious organization most likely
to experience clergy malfeasance would have
hierarchical internal and external power
structures, charismatic leadership, and highly
unstable normative doctrine” (Iadicola, 1998, p.
227). Looking at other sociological contributors
to child sexual abuse, clinical social worker
Doni Whitsett and I reported that “many
conditions that facilitate child abuse in cults are
structural in nature, having to do with how these
groups operate in relation to society and in the
context of their own policies and practices”
(Whitsett &Kent, 2003, p. 496). The study that
I present here, however, takes an approach
different from these sociological ones, and I
hope that other researchers will revisit this
material through the lens of the social sciences.
Rather than focusing primarily upon the social
relations among leaders and followers that
facilitate child sexual abuse, or upon the (social)
psychology of age-inappropriate sexuality, I
examine the religiously coloured excuses and
doctrines that the perpetrators use to justify their
sexual abuses. For reasons of space I limit my
discussion to justifications that have appeared in
the West (excluding Islam), even if the
individuals or groups propounding them trace
their origins to non-Western religions from Asia.
In varying depth I identity and discuss eight
religious-coloured justifications connected to
child sexual abuse in Western countries. These
ideologies are: a) Western scriptural
patriarchalism b) Western patriarchal incest c)
patriarchalism and polygamous child brides d)
millenarianism e) antinomianism f) sex as the
means to salvation g) sex as salvation and h)
levelling all forms of sex as equally fallen.
I generated these justifications after reading
though media accounts, books, and other print
sources that I had been collecting for a number
of years as I oversaw the operation of a large,
