SOUTH CAROLINA
The Raw Story
By Tom Boggioni
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
According to an investigative report from Al Jazeera America, rape victims searching for help at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., were told to repent and seek out their own “root sin” that caused them to be raped.
Within the past year BJU has opened its own investigation into sexual abuse and rape, and now former students who were victimized are coming forward to tell their stories about life on a campus where they were shamed and told to keep their stories to themselves.
Coming from a conservative Mennonite family, Katie Landry, who at age 19 had never even held hands with a boy, was raped multiple times by her supervisor at her summer job. Two years later, haunted by the attacks, and attending Bob Jones University, she sought help from then dean of students, Jim Berg.
According to Landry, Berg asked whether she’d been drinking or smoking pot and if she had been “impure.” He then brought up her “root sin.”
“He goes, ‘Well, there’s always a sin under other sin. There’s a root sin,’” Landry explained. “And he said, ‘We have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape.’ And I just ran.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.