International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 9 2026 30
crucial than confronting abuse. This tactic created
“hell anxiety”, compelling victims to reinterpret their
experiences as forgivable moral lapses (Kim &Shaw,
2024).
Personal Threats
In addition to spiritual coercion, pastors employed
direct personal threats. With 72% of respondents
reporting feeling unsafe, 57% experienced ongoing
pursuit following the misconduct, and 33% noted
their pastor made threats of suicide. One respondent
recalled that the pastor threatened to take his life if she
spoke out, warning that his children would lose their
father. Another individual received images from the
pastor that showed scars on his wrist, evidence of a
past suicide attempt after his wife discovered an affair.
Threats of self-harm represent a deeply manipulative
tactic used to instil guilt, fear, and compliance
(Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). By exploiting concerns about
his well-being, eternal salvation, and the stability of
the faith community, the pastor shifts responsibility
onto the victim. In patriarchal settings, where women
are socialised to prioritise others’ emotional needs
over their own (Kim &Shaw, 2018 Taylor, 2020), this
creates an intense burden of care, further isolating
victims and discouraging them from seeking help.
Minimisation and Justification
Perpetrators also downplayed or excused their actions,
with 61% of victims reporting that their abuse was
minimised and 48% stating the pastor justified it by
referencing their own emotional or spiritual struggles.
One respondent recalled the pastor saying:
It was just a weak moment of my flesh, and
as a good Christian, I should forgive and move
on.
Additionally, 43% of victims were told the abuse was
an expression of love, with many manipulated into
believing they shared a mutual romantic relationship.
Grooming relies on fostering feelings of love, value, and
specialness (Sinnamon, 2017), which keeps victims
emotionally attached and under the pastor’s control
(Kennedy, 2009). One respondent reflected:
At the time, I thought he genuinely loved me. It
wasn’t until later that I realised it was all a lie.
This manipulation represents a particularly deceitful
form of spiritual, psychological and romantic
exploitation, in which pastors exploit religious
teachings that indoctrinate women to equate love
with service, submission, and emotional caretaking,
ideals reinforced as spiritual virtues within many
faith communities (Gallagher, 2003 Gardner, 2021
Kennedy, 2009). By manipulating these socially and
theologically sanctioned ideals, pastors turn compassion
and trust into tools of control, reinforcing dependence
while disguising coercion as affection. Such gender-
targeted deception reveals the deep betrayal and moral
injury that occur when spiritual authority is misused to
distort both love and faith (Freyd, 1996 Mesher, 2021
Simpson, 2025). Furthermore, 30% reported that the
abuse was justified through spiritual authority, while
22% were told it was merely a sexual sin. These strategies
not only distort the victim’s reality through gaslighting
(Stark, 2007) but also sustain a culture of silence that
shields the perpetrator and weakens accountability.
Together, these interconnected tactics—spiritual
threats, personal intimidation, suicide threats, and
minimisation—illustrate a complex system of coercive
control that intensifies victim trauma and perpetuates
systemic abuse within faith communities.
Denial, Attack, and Reversal of Victim and Offender
(DARVO)
Freyd (1997) identified a consistent pattern among
sex offenders—termed DARVO (Deny, Attack, and
Reverse Victim and Offender)—which is also evident
in perpetrators of intimate partner violence (Scott &
Straus, 2007). Consistent with these findings, this study
revealed that pastors frequently employed DARVO
tactics to evade responsibility and discredit victims. For
example, 59% of respondents reported that the pastor
outright denied any sexual misconduct, with 37%
noting that he downplayed his actions by portraying
himself solely as a mentor, effectively gaslighting the
victim and undermining her grasp on reality (Stark,
2007).
In the “attack” phase, 43% of respondents indicated that
the pastor blamed them for tempting him, while 44%
were accused of being “crazy” or mentally unstable.
One respondent recounted being told:

31
Jaime Simpson and Jodi Death |Pastor Sexual Exploitation of Adult Congregation Members
I was mentally unwell I was triggered by
something, and it didn’t happen. I was told I
need a psychiatrist and medication.
This illustrates how such attacks exploit mental health
stigmas within faith communities. Furthermore,
in the “reverse victim and offender” phase, 44% of
participants reported that the pastor positioned himself
as the victim, with 15% stating that he accused them of
having a history of false allegations. Some respondents
also described being labelled a “Jezebel”, a term drawn
from Christian discourse and historically used to
sexualise and vilify women who resist male authority
or transgress patriarchal expectations (Collins, 2000
Pippin, 1995 Stark &Van Deventer, 2009). As Pippin
(1995) argues, Jezebel operates as a misogynistic “fantasy
space,” a cultural construct projecting moral panic
about female autonomy and desire. In this discourse,
Jezebel is portrayed as a “cheap harlot”, “evil”, “wicked”,
“calculating”, and “ruthless” (p. 221). This moral
panic extends beyond the individual woman to shape
congregational perceptions, legitimising suspicion
and judgement toward those accused of “seduction”.
Within church communities, such rhetoric reinforces
collective complicity, allowing abuse to be reframed as
a spiritual battle rather than a violation of power and
trust. Stark and Van Deventer (2009) further observe
that this trope has been repeatedly deployed to justify
sexual exploitation while absolving male perpetrators
of responsibility, particularly within racially and
religiously stratified contexts. In contemporary church
settings, invoking this label serves to moralise abuse,
frame women as seductresses, and shift blame away
from the perpetrator. These tactics force victims to
defend their credibility rather than hold the offender
accountable, deepening isolation and reinforcing a
culture of silence and complicity (Harsey &Freyd,
2020).
Together, these DARVO strategies function as a
powerful mechanism of coercive control, shielding
perpetrators and significantly obstructing victims’
ability to seek justice. By consolidating all the post-
abuse maintenance tactics, these findings illustrate a
complex pattern of coercive control, where spiritual,
personal, and rhetorical strategies are used to silence,
discredit, and manipulate victims. By recognising these
tactics, faith communities can strive for accountability
and provide support for survivors, rather than
nurturing a culture of impunity.
The Inner Circle: Compliance and Entrapment
The Pastor Sexual Exploitation of Adult Congregation
Members framework illustrates how institutional
messages, grooming tactics, sexual violence, and post-
abuse maintenance tactics collectively entrap ACMs,
creating a sustained cycle of power and control by the
pastor. The inner circle of compliance and entrapment
extends Sinnamon’s (2017) Seven-Stage Model of
Adult Sexual Grooming by shifting the analytic
focus from the perpetrator’s preparatory tactics to
the victim’s experience of ongoing subjugation and
constrained agency during the grooming process.
While Sinnamon’s (2017) model concludes with
Controlling the Victim, the Pastor Sexual Exploitation
Framework of Adult Congregation Members extends
the post-abuse maintenance stage by illustrating how
the ongoing dynamics of compliance and entrapment
generate significant and enduring harms for victim-
survivors.
The profound impact of pastor sexual exploitation on
the overall well-being of ACMs cannot be overstated
(Simpson, 2025). Consistent with other victim-based
studies (de Weger, 2016 Flynn, 2003 Garland, 2006
Garland &Arguta, 2010 Kennedy, 2009 Pooler &
Barros-Lane, 2022), the survivors in this survey have
faced significant harm. Respondents disclosed the
spiritual, emotional, financial, physical, relational, and
psychological injuries they have suffered (Simpson,
2025). These survivors, whose pre-abuse identities
were closely tied to their faith communities, experience
compounded trauma when their faith is exploited to
manipulate them into intimacy and to silence their
voices, a phenomenon referred to as “double betrayal”
(Freyd, 1996). The scars left by such abuse endure,
with many survivors continuing to grapple with these
feelings decades after the abuse took place (Simpson,
2025).
Limitations
This research has several limitations. The online
survey may have excluded individuals without internet
access, limiting reach. The small sample size restricts
generalisability to broader experiences of adult sexual
grooming in faith communities. The absence of