SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Good Men Media [Belmont, MA]
June 23, 2024
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Melanie Sakoda is an important figure in cataloguing the crimes of the Easter Orthodox Church. What is happening in Orthodoxy?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Melanie Sakoda. She is a long-time – some like the term activist, some like someone working for a morally correct cause. You had a lot more time to reflect on the work on this issue. My first question: How did you originally get involved in this work? Because you have been doing this for decades.
Melanie Sakoda: We had an incident in our Church in San Francisco where there was a layman who was a child abuser with multiple convictions. They were allowing him free rein in our parish. Many children got hurt, as far as we can tell. That started it. The reaction when the families came forward was such a backlash. We thought, “Oh my goodness, we are complaining about someone who was only Orthodox for two weeks before his last arrest. What if you were trying to complain about the priest?” So, we decided that we wanted to start a website where people would have some place that they wanted to come, and people could have a sympathetic ear. We started in June of 1999. We took it down in March of 2020.
Jacobsen: For about 21 years, the internet was approximately too big in 1999.
Sakoda: No.
Jacobsen: Or it was smaller than it was in 2020. What was the reaction in 2020 versus 1999? What was the reason for taking it down?
Sakoda: Cappy (Larson), one of her daughters, did the original coding on the original site. Then she stepped down. It was Cappy and me. We are both in our 70s now. We were waiting to see someone stepping forward to take over for us.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: Cappy says, “Maybe we should let them miss us.” [Laughing]
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: So, that is what we did. Because there are expenses associated with maintaining a website, we were paying all the expenses ourselves since we needed more financial support. We had a post office box. We had a voicemail. We were paying for our domain main, then our security. Whenever people do not get the warning sign when they visit your site, it is quite pricey for people on fixed incomes. It was funny. It took some people years to notice that we were gone. I have a Facebook page, at least in the Orthodox churches. I have people who write in asking, “What happened to pokrov.org?”
Jacobsen: Now, this is common. I am finding this common through years and years of doing interviews with people who have left religious groups or who are still in, and have concerns, and want to see things become better, more just. It’s a handful of people who do specific parts of activism over an arc of time. You and Cappy are exemplars of that. So, those people also come under various forms of attack or even abuse. So, what kinds have you encountered? Which ones have been more humorous because you must develop a sense of humour in this industry? What ones could have been more humorous?
Sakoda: The most not-humorous one was Cappy’s daughter, Greta, who was still working with us. We were going to attend a conference in Dallas called Orthodox Christian Laity. Originally, Greta was going by herself, and then she received death threats from this one priest whose family was very unhappy that he had been put on our site. I ended up going with her. That was probably the scariest. One of the funniest things… do you remember when that girl went missing in Aruba many years ago?
Jacobsen: A few people may have gone missing, including Aruba.
Sakoda: It was a big case. She was a young, college-aged, blue-eyed blonde girl who went missing. We used to post on Orthodox message boards.
Jacobsen: Natalee Ann Holloway?
Sakoda: Yes. This priest puts on one of these message boards. I may have it in all of my junk. “Cappy, and you should be Aruba’d.” How inappropriate for a person?
Jacobsen: It just sounds like being an ass.
Sakoda: But the funny thing was, as the years went on, the reaction was very, very hostile at first. As the years went by, it became less hostile. People would send us stuff because they knew we would do something with it or try to do something with it.
Jacobsen: You’re in a safe zone.
Sakoda: It was an interesting experience. I do not regret it. I want to win the lottery, build the site, and hire people to work on it. We will see what happens. I do tell people on my Facebook page. I still have access to most of the information. I could get the information if they want information on someone they saw on the site. In addition to my access to the old website, I sadly have way too many hardcopy files because, of course, when I went to law school. Everything was paper. I tended to keep things on paper rather than on my computer. I have computer files.
Jacobsen: I am surprised you didn’t have anything on microfiche.
Sakoda: [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Yes, I know, microfiche.
Sakoda: I was about to say. It is pretty decent. I do have stuff on paper. When my husband and I downsized in 2018, we had this huge office with all these bookshelves. I do not have this anymore. I have a lot of the files in boxes [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Yes [Laughing].
Sakoda: Recently, someone asked me about this one group. I swear I have something else. I cannot find the hardcopy file.
Jacobsen: Doing a keyword search on a hardcopy file is hard. What aspects of justice have you reached for people who broadened to you? Has there been anything along those lines of help, or has it been a safe space where people can get information safely, and it has been a positive for them?
Sakoda: When we first started, as you mentioned, 1999 was the internet’s early days. Cappy would call people.
Jacobsen: This is from a home line. There are no cell phones.
Sakoda: There might have been cell phones. When did they start?
Jacobsen: I don’t know either. Oh! The first one came in 1983. So, she might have had a cell phone.
Sakoda: I am sure it was from her landline.
Jacobsen: Like a rotary phone or something.
Sakoda: An abuser was in the parish. He was part of this group that came into Orthodoxy. They were originally a New Age San Francisco cult called The Holy Order of Man. After Jonestown, they didn’t like being on cult lists. So, they started to look for another place to land. A lot of them began joining the Orthodox churches. Through one of Cappy’s other daughters, we found some guy who was from The Holy Order of Man, saying the Orthodox guy they went to was part of this cult group and had been Greek Orthodox. He was upset when they went with this Metropolitan Pangratios Vrionis of the Archdiocese of Vasiloupolis. Because he said, “He is an abuser. He’s been convicted.” We found this little thing on some Orthodox forum on the internet. You need help to look online for this information. All our information was from Pennsylvania and differed from what county or anything. So, Cappy started calling up every county and looking. “Do you have criminal records for this figure?” How hard could it be? Pangratios Vrionis, that’s not a name…
Jacobsen: …very rare, even for the Greeks!
Sakoda: She finally found him. The clerk there at the courthouse was very sympathetic. I shouldn’t tell you this. She not only sent us the records without charging us, but she went – and like me – looked in archives. She had things in boxes. She found a few more pages. She sent them all to us for free. That was one of the first cases we publicized on our website, which was Pangratios Vrionis. After it went public that he had this conviction, he was still operating as a bishop in Queens, New York.
Jacobsen: It is, probably, a big diocese.
Sakoda: Yes. Newer victims came forward.
Jacobsen: Of course.
Sakoda: He was convicted a second time. That was our first venture into it. Originally, we did a lot of that. Cappy is on her phone talking to clerks in various counties nationwide. But as time went on, as I said, people would start sending us stuff. They would say, “So-and-so is convicted; here is a link to the article.” Maybe, as the internet, too, picked up. There are some counties where you can look online for the records, but not as much as I would like. It became easier to find information.
Jacobsen: I want to search this one thing for this question. National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), “One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives… In eight out of 10 cases of rape, the victim knew the person who sexually assaulted them.” So, those are the numbers to indicate the extreme forms of sexual violence. Both experience them naturally, though women often experience them from men and men they know. So, if those are the rates in the US, how are the rates in the Church? Are they the same, or are they higher? If they are higher, what is the point of the Church as moral relevance to these people’s lives?Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Sakoda: The trouble is, as I mentioned when we were talking earlier, there aren’t real reliable statistics of abuse in the Orthodox churches. Since 2002, the Catholic Church has published lists of abusers by the diocese. There is the John Jay Report. There is not, to my knowledge, not a single Orthodox jurisdiction in this country that publishes information about their abusers. The closest we came was the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese for a while.
You will see a priest was removed, but you do not know why. Did he decide that he doesn’t want to be a priest anymore? Was he embezzling? Or was he sexually abusing someone in his parish, whether man, woman, or child? They don’t publish that. For a very short while, the Greeks froze or suspended. It might, if someone was defrocked or suspended, have had to do with the settlement in a Greek case. That someone was one of their non-monetary requests. It only lasted a short time. You don’t know. You can track it. Another thing related to the Orthodox cases is that the Catholics have the official Catholic directory. It is published every year. It is a huge book. It lists all the priests in the US and their assignments. The Orthodox do not have that kind of resource to track people. So, if you saw the spotlight movie, you would remember., They are looking for gaps.
People are frequently on ‘leave of absence’ or ‘medical leaves.’ We do not have that resource. I do have many directories. Now, they’re more likely to be online. I just downloaded a copy and put it on my overloaded computer. It is really hard to find information about the Orthodox cases. They’re under the radar. Are you familiar with the calendar issue? Some of the Orthodox churches use a different calendar than the others. What it is, a Pope, Pope Gregory instituted a calendar to start adding leap years because they realized.
Jacobsen: Oh! He stole that from Dionysus Exiguus. I am aware of that one.
Sakoda: Oh, okay, some Orthodox churches will celebrate Christmas on January 7th. They are on what is known as the Julian calendar, but it is a modified Julian calendar because it includes a leap year. So, believe it or not, this is a huge issue in Orthodoxy, particularly in this country. When you have abusers, “I decided the calendar was not where it was at. I decided the new calendar is the reason for all the problems in Orthodoxy.” Abusers were using that as an excuse why they were transitioning from one Church to another.
Jacobsen: A calendar.
Sakoda: Yes. There is this joke. “How many Orthodox does it change to a lightbulb?”
Jacobsen: How many?
Sakoda: “What? Change? No.”
Jacobsen: That’s right. That is why the men don’t shave. When asked why the men grow such long beards, I remember a funny response. He responds, “I would be more curious about the reverse. Why did the men start shaving?” I will give them that one.
Sakoda: It is funny. Some of the ultra-conservativism in Orthodoxy is not new. I remember my grandmother; I cannot remember if it was about wearing a scarf in Church or wearing a pantsuit to Church. My grandmother responded, “Of course, I wear a pantsuit to Church. What do you think this is, the old country?” [Laughing] My grandparents were immigrants, as was my mother. They came from a different world. Some of these things, I don’t know if you have come across the other funny thing. This is called the toll houses. Have you heard about the toll houses?
Jacobsen: No.
Sakoda: They have nothing to do with cookies. It is the theory that when you die. Christ does not judge you. You go through this series of toll houses. Where the Devil judges you, it has become popular in more conservative circles. Father Seraphim Rose was in that theology. The trouble is that it is used. It would be best if you had a spiritual father. You must do what your spiritual father tells you to get through the toll houses. I had one man tell me. “Okay, if your spiritual father tells you to kill someone, would you?” He said, “Yes.”
Jacobsen: Wait. The spiritual father has more authority than the Decalogue.
Sakoda: Yes, than anything, your conscience, the Bible.
Jacobsen: That’s kind of troublesome.
Sakoda: It is very troublesome. Some of these groups were amassing. They had weapons caches.
Jacobsen: Like AK47s and grenades?
Sakoda: Yes.
Jacobsen: What?
Sakoda: Because they are preparing for the end of days.
Jacobsen: Of course, you need ammunition and weaponry for demons. They probably watched Constantine too much or something.
Sakoda: It was a different world to me. What I started to say, I was telling my father’s youngest sister about this. She has been Orthodox her entire life. She says, “I have never heard of toll houses.” [Laughing] Because people are not well-versed in their religion. Someone comes along with this snow-white beard and is presented as an elder.
Jacobsen: Looking like Jehovah in the illustrated Bible or something.
Sakoda: One man told me once he was in Greece someplace. He met this woman. They had a brief fling. The next day, he went to see this elder. The elder told him exactly what he had done the night before. So, that must mean the elder was clairvoyant. I said to him. “Or that the elder sent the woman to you, which is, probably, more likely.” The idea is that the elder tells you to meet this man and have sex with him. You do it. Otherwise, you will not go through the toll houses.
Jacobsen: It is the unquestioned authority. It will be different per community. But that fundamental of unquestioned authority is the fundamental issue.
Sakoda: I was surprised. The money for these monasteries was supposedly coming from the Russian mafia.
Jacobsen: Ha!
Sakoda: I have much information about those allegations and why they thought they were. The idea, especially now, is with Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. It is Russian money. There are monasteries with guns, supposedly. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of it because I wouldn’t set foot in those monasteries [Laughing]. You must wear a tablecloth on your head if you are a woman.
Jacobsen: The gun in churches thing is, ironically, American.
Sakoda: Yes [Laughing].
Jacobsen: The tablecloth on the head, that’s more – I don’t know – fundamentalist Islam or fringe Christian groups in the United States.
Sakoda: It has become more and more of a thing within Orthodoxy. As you see more and more converts coming into Orthodoxy, they are benignly brought in by these groups. My aunts spent their entire time in the Church. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.” Hats, maybe, and head coverings were optional when I grew up. I must admit. In the 50s, we did wear hats when we went to Church. Not in the sense of having to cover your hair or anything. You see little girls who have to have ankle-length skirts with these big head coverings. To me, there is something wrong with it. As one woman I used to work with, she was a priest’s wife. She had a PhD working in the area of clergy sex abuse. She says, “When you start to think about that, what is that telling people? Children are sexual objects.” She thought it was abusive. In some places, you could get your bathing suits from the Mennonites or whatever [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Probably better than the Mormons; they have full-body underwear that they think can protect you from bullets. If it works, that’s great, but call me skeptical!
Sakoda: All children should have them [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Especially if you go to a Russian Orthodox Church [Laughing] or an American church.
Sakoda: Orthodoxy has changed since I was a child. It has not changed for the better.
Jacobsen: Has the core issue of abuse changed significantly other than the fact that it is coming out more?
Sakoda: I don’t think it has changed. I think it was sad when we first started talking about what had happened at our Church and started talking to priests whom I trusted/admired; they all kept saying, “Abuse is unknown in the Orthodox church.”
Jacobsen: Ha! Yes, I saw some vague commentary by some Orthodox priests about that, where they were more or less saying, “Look, it doesn’t happen at all or as much in our Church. Regardless, we’re not the Catholics, and look at them.” That’s the argument. It is an insidious and disgusting argument if that’s your standard.
Sakoda: I took a paper. The Orthodox Church of America was having its annual or bi-annual conference. I didn’t register. I went. I had my books out. As people entered the conference, I was handing out my subversive literature.
Jacobsen: Excellent, way to go, good job, we appreciate you.
Sakoda: The funny thing was that this was, again, one of those things that made it seem like Cappy was finding the conviction for Pangratios. The colour I chose for my little booklets was the same as the liturgy for the conference [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Nice.
Sakoda: People were grabbing them, thinking they were liturgy books.
Jacobsen: No!
Sakoda: They were opening them.
Jacobsen: Surprise.
Sakoda: Surprise! I don’t remember if I learned how he got it. I got this card from this man talking about his daughter being abused by an Orthodox priest. It was somewhere around the Chicago area. He was telling a lie about that. That, yes, it happens. They don’t talk about it. Or they cover it up. There was a case from the 1800s that was in the papers about an Orthodox priest abusing somebody.
Jacobsen: Can you send me that?
Sakoda: I could if I could find it, Scott [Laughing].
Jacobsen: It is not a small project. This kind of thing. It takes time.
Sakoda: I have a closet full of papers four big boxes. As I said, I have a penchant for keeping things hard, not scanning, and putting them on my computer. But it has been a problem. If you don’t talk about a problem, you can’t solve it. That’s my issue. If you want people to stay in the Church, you must minister to the hurt people—the direct victims and their family members. Many family members leave after this kind of incident, too.
Jacobsen: They either convert out or stop believing.
Sakoda: If the Church is the arc of salvation, then you should have everyone on board. It would help if you didn’t reject the people who have been injured. It is a big shock when they think, “We are the injured party. We got to the Church. We expect to be embraced. ‘I am so sorry. What can we do for you?’” That does not happen. I do not recall a victim saying it. It could be the ones who do, do not contact me. It does not happen. Part of it may be a need for more education. What do you do when someone comes and tells you that? What should the response be?
Jacobsen: Some of the most recent Canadian Armed Forces. In the 2022 data published December 5th, 2023, most Canadian Armed Forces members don’t think it is something they do; it’s a lifestyle with a contract they sign. Over half of Canadian Armed Forces members either deal with it informally – that’s another category, and those who do file a report figure something will be done, or more will be done. So, it would help if you got those stories. So, even the self-selected groups reporting on this are the more hopeful groups; other sets are not reporting it: Dealing with it themselves or among their family. They leave. Some try reconciling it with their faith, God, or religion. I imagine that being a very difficult line to thread.
Sakoda: Yes, because, I think, one of the unfortunate things, usually, when you go to a church or a Christian church, “You need to forgive and forget.”
Jacobsen: That’s toxic.
Sakoda: It’s not how abuse manifests itself in people’s lives. You could be going along thinking, “I’ve put my abuser out of my mind.” Maybe the child turns the age of you when you were abused; then it brings it back up. For survivors, it is more of an up-and-down rollercoaster. What does it mean to forgive in that case? My best definition is that you are not thinking about this, not holding onto all of this anger and angst. You are moving on with your life.
Jacobsen: Right, it has been integrated.
Sakoda: What has happened to you has been done; it will not change.
Jacobsen: That part can’t be changed and is the hardest to accept.
Sakoda: Yes, I have a lot of Orthodox priests that said nasty things to me. One accused me that if you say this to people, it will damage them. I said, “No, if you have a child that is in a car accident and loses a leg, can that child go on and have a happy life? Of course. Will it ever get another leg? No.” Sexual abuse is the same thing. It is a permanent injury. So, what you want is you want it to heal nicely with the scar, not to be a constant abscess.
Jacobsen: What else have they said to you?
Sakoda: Our favourite one, this is another funny one.
Jacobsen: This is the point of doing this work for those reading this. You will only make it long-term if you have a sense of humour.
Sakoda: No, you laugh at things that are not funny, but you laugh at things all the time. What is the alternative – being angry and crying all the time? A priest said Cappy and I were obvious lesbians.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: I called Cappy and asked, “Did you see this? Should we tell our husbands?” [Laughing]
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: I’ve been married for 49 years this year. She’s been married longer. It’s like, “Gee, should we tell Greg and Robert?” Anything or we were angry.
Jacobsen: Yes, many atheists get that when they’re critiquing religious injustice. It is the same as speaking out in the Church.
Sakoda: My favourite response was, “Why aren’t you angry that children are being permanently injured in the name of God?”
Jacobsen: Should you be angry with me?
Sakoda: Yes, shouldn’t you be angry with me? You don’t have to throw rocks or take those machine guns.
Jacobsen: I take anger, but not necessarily in its obvious forms of pitchforks, torches, rocks, and guns. It is the long-term burn of letter writing, campaigning, filing reports, press releases, interviewing, and gathering databases.
Sakoda: If you want to look at it, as I told someone too, Christ took the whips from the moneychangers and drove them out of the temple. There is a precedent for some anger. Then you get a response. “What? Do you think you’re Christ?”
Jacobsen: Isn’t he supposed to be the example for these folks?
Sakoda: It is an example. It shows you there is a time and a place. My uncle, an Orthodox priest, was my father’s youngest brother. This came to me through a convoluted process, which I won’t get into. He once told a woman who was struggling. She went to him for confession. A relative abused her children. She said, “I cannot forgive them for what they did.” My uncle told her, “Christ is going on his ministry and saying, ‘Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven.’” She goes, “What did he say on the Cross? ‘Father, forgive me.’” He said, “Don’t try to be better than Christ.” For whatever reason, it released her load. She said that she was doing the best she could and that she didn’t have to forgive them. She should say, “God, it is up to you.” For many survivors, particularly those struggling with remaining a part of the Church or not, that is a very meaningful thought. “I do not have to embrace my abuser.” They can wash their hands of them.
Jacobsen: Our minds only work on remembering salient information. Trauma is very salient to a person to avoid that situation again. That’s why it is trauma and highly remembered. The phrase you said about forgive and forget doesn’t fit our cognitive system, but it works: Forgive and don’t forget is the key.
Sakoda: Don’t forgive, but live a happy life anyway.
Jacobsen: It is up to the person whether they forgive. It is not up to the community, the priest, or anyone else. For some people, forgiving is not the right choice for them.
Sakoda: If you look at it, as I said, for people still trying to be within the religion, if the idea is your sins won’t be forgiven, it is fear. “How do I do this? I will be damned because I cannot forgive.” That’s why I said what my uncle said to this woman. It gave her much comfort because he wasn’t demanding. He didn’t say, “How terrible, you are going to Hell if you don’t forgive your relative for sexually abusing your children.” He said, “Let God sort it out.” You go and live your life. I think that’s not an easy thing to do anyway. It is harder to do if you are still trapped in this idea. “Oh my God, I am damning myself if I can’t do this.”
Jacobsen: After 2020, what are the updates on these kinds of cases for the Orthodox Church? I will be working on an analysis of the materials that Hermina and Katherine gave me. It is a year-by-year chronology of what they have so far, summarizing and breathing new life into those popular or unpopular news reports.
Sakoda: [Laughing].
Jacobsen: It covers a little bit. It doesn’t have legal force. It takes people like yourself, Hermina, Katherine, Lucy, and others to make things happen. I am nothing. All the people I am aware of working on this regarding Eastern Orthodox traditions are women who are approximately 40 years old and older.
Sakoda: And up and up! [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Right, so, what is it about women in those communities and being in the latter half of life, statistically speaking, that puts that demographic in a position to speak on these topics over a long period and to put in the hard work that is doing statistical analysis, getting data, getting the stories, and being a resource for people?
Sakoda: Part of it, religion has always been more of a women’s province anyway. When you have a community, for the Orthodox and the Catholics, you do not have women priests. You do not even have women deacons anymore. Although, there is a revival of that going on in the Orthodox churches. So, it is a man-centred thing.
Jacobsen: True.
Sakoda: I think men and women react a little bit differently to trauma. Part of it could be, too. I remember the MeToo Movement, which started or exploded, and there were all these things about women posting MeToo and talking about what they do to protect themselves. There was a man puzzled. He posted, “What do you do to avoid sexual assault?” He goes, “Stay out of prison.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: Women are constantly under assault or unwelcome touching. I think it gives them a more sympathetic perspective when someone comes and says, “This happened to me.” Maybe they are more likely to believe it happened to you because it happened to them. I don’t think you could interact with an adult woman who hasn’t been assaulted in some form or another. You’re on the train or bus, and someone grabs your butt. Men don’t experience that as often. Not all men, but maybe that’s a variable.
Jacobsen: I experienced some of it. I was working at a low-grade pub.
Sakoda: [Laughing].
Jacobsen: I worked in the back of the house, sometimes in the front. I worked at four restaurants simultaneously and did janitorial for 2 of them overnight, seven days a week. I remember one bartender. She would ask me to reach for something and grab my stomach, ass. That harassment was not requested [Laughing]. I don’t think, from what I am reading and have heard and been told, that’s nearly as pervasive as it has been for many women.
Sakoda: I think it doesn’t help that for many men, particularly if a man assaulted them. The idea is, “Why didn’t you fight him off?” You get a little of that as a woman. As a woman, you will often get, “What were you wearing?”
Jacobsen: Same tone in the question, too. I’m noticing. “Why didn’t you fight him off?” is “What were you wearing?” What did you do to call this upon yourself?
Sakoda: Truthfully, if I am being charitable, people’s self-protectiveness. If it can happen to you, then it can happen to me. Therefore, you must have done something to bring it onto yourself. Otherwise, it can happen to me.
Jacobsen: the question will assume men’s strength and self-defence regarding aggression. For the women, I am getting two points there. On the one hand, what are you wearing? Many women’s power in society has to do with their beauty. That’s what has been assigned. On the other hand, how they relate to one another in terms of telling their stories is relational. It is seeing that story in another person.
Sakoda: The other thing, something that you said. My book club read this book by Deborah Tannen once, You Don’t Understand. She is a linguist. She is saying men and women speak different languages. She puts it to the men, originally hunters, and women, the gatherers. So, the men, you had to have someone in charge. You had to have a hierarchy. You did what you were told. You didn’t talk about it. You said, “You go there. You go there. This is what we are going to do.” Women would be spending all day talking and gathering stuff. So, women talk to create relationships between themselves. Men talk to convey information.
Jacobsen: As a general tendency, when men relate to one another, picture them sitting at a log and speaking parallel, not looking at each other. Women, it is face-to-face.
Sakoda: How about that? [Laughing] I like that. All of us tried to get our husbands to read the book. The worst was my husband because he was puzzled when I told him this theory; he is smart. He went to Yale. He goes, “I don’t understand. We have a relationship. You’re my wife.” It’s not exactly what I am talking about regarding a relationship. Even within SNAP, the women leaders talk to each other. We know what is going on in each other’s lives.
Jacobsen: “How are you doing? Cindy came back from a funeral and is having a really hard time. Kathryn and her kids are doing fine. One has just entered a hard business school, and the other is sick.” [Laughing] This stuff.
Sakoda: It builds relationships instead of having someone in charge calling the shots, and there is a pecking order. Women can be vicious. Don’t get me wrong, particularly teenage girls.
Jacobsen: I agree with Margaret Atwood. I don’t think women are angels or demons.
Sakoda: They have a different way of relating to one another than men. You notice this in your marriage, going to the book club, because you’re not on the same wavelength. Women want to talk about something to happen. Men are like, “What do you want me to do?”
Jacobsen: It conveys data for action instead of narrative-building for relationship sustaining.
Sakoda: Yes, that may make women more sympathetic to survivors coming forward. They are trying to connect to them. I don’t think most women become women without experiencing some sexual assault along the way.
Jacobsen: Can you say that again? It is a very powerful phrase.
Sakoda: I don’t think some women haven’t been sexually assaulted, if they are being honest. They may not think about it. Someone is groping you on the bus and turning around and not knowing who did it. It is just a fact of life. Women do things. My husband was surprised. I was saying that most women when they park their cars. They park under a street light. They carry their keys in their hands to poke someone’s eyes out. When I open the car door at night, if I am by myself, I check in the back seat first.
Jacobsen: That last one might be Hollywood influence.
Sakoda: It is something you read. Women’s magazines talk about all kinds of things. My husband said, “Do you look at the back seat?” I said, “Yes.” It could be in the hood and popped up out. [Laughing]
Jacobsen: [Laughing]
Sakoda: Or if, sometimes, women are waiting for an elevator and a guy gives you a creepy vibe, you pretend, “I forgot. You go ahead,” because you don’t want a ride with him. One of the books I have read in the past few years is Gavin de Becker. It is called the Gift of Fear. He had a second book too. Women are taught to be more polite. My daughter has his complaint. Men always interrupt women.
Jacobsen: True. I do it!
Sakoda: [Laughing] But they do not even think about it, interrupting. Anyways, women who are supposed to be polite are supposed to accept that. When you are interrupted, you do not say anything. You say, “Quiet down.” That is one of the things. Maybe it is why women are more subject to assault because they are trying to be polite. They ignore. It is waiting for an elevator, getting creeped out, and getting in an elevator with him because you don’t want to think he creeped you out [Laughing]. It is important. Sometimes, in church situations, people ignore this: They might see the priest or teacher hugging a child. It will tingle their spidey sense. But they won’t do anything about it, particularly in church situations. “I have such a dirty mind to think that Father could have anything nefarious in mind when he is hugging this child.” It is like, “No, for whatever reason, we get these feelings. We need to pay attention to them.”
Jacobsen: Are most priest abusers likely, so far, never to have come to justice? Those who have been abused have stayed in positions of authority or been promoted.
Sakoda: Yes. As I said, I do not have as good a frame on the Orthodox because there isn’t as good of a frame. People used to ask me, “What is the rate of abuse in the Orthodox churches?” How would I know? All I know is that if you look at the names on my site, I probably have ten more I can’t put on the site because someone will write to me: Father So-and-So abused me. I keep a file on it in case someone else comes on down the road and comes and claims, “Father So-and-So abused me.” Now, I forgot what you asked [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Most who have abused, have they not come to justice?
Sakoda: I do not have as much information, but I know in the Catholic context. Very few priests have been prosecuted for their crimes. Part of that is the statute of limitations problem. After a sufficient time, the statute of limitations has expired. In the US, the Stogner decision, California tried to do this end run around, saying that they wouldn’t change the definitions of the crimes or the penalties. Still, they would allow criminal cases to be brought forward beyond the statute of limitations. The US Supreme Court said, “No, you cannot do that. It is a violation of constitutional rights. You cannot retroactively change the criminal statute of limitations.” People usually come forward between 50 and 70. It is a joke, not a nice one, that the statute of limitations stands for “Shit Out of Luck.
Jacobsen: How did George Carlin put it? “You’d be SOL and JWF. Shit out of luck and jolly well fucked.”
Sakoda: So, there’s that thing. If you figure out that the churches and the Orthodox Church are doing this, I do not have as much data. They are not reporting them to law enforcement. That is why you don’t have as many prosecutions. I am trying to think. This is one of the first big cases. I think in 1999. In an Orthodox monastery in Texas, two people were reported down there for child sex abuse. Abbott and his righthand man, what’s his name? Father Benedict Green, the other guy was Jeremiah Hitt. Besides the Pangratios conviction we uncovered, they were the first. Hitt went to trial. Benedict pleaded guilty. But you still had all these people who didn’t believe it.
Jacobsen: That is not the controversial part. That’s pretty par for the course. Even the guy who ran the human trafficking, sex trafficking, and sex cult, Keith Raniere, was part of the HBO special or documentary series, The Vow, where he was Vanguard in NXIVM. He got life in prison and several of his accomplices as well, men and women. Still, many people defend him when in prison.
Sakoda: Yes, in this particular case, in 2006, there was a second set of charges. New victims are coming forward multiple victims. I cannot remember if 5 or 6 of them were on charges and were all convicted. Benedict Green killed himself before he could go to trial because I think he knew he would go to prison. After all, this was his second conviction. This was in Texas. You don’t want to go to prison in Texas or Florida. [Laughing]
Jacobsen: No! The weather sucks.
Sakoda: No prison is truly humane, in my view, having visited various prisons in California. They’re particularly bad. In Florida, you can get in a chain gang, too. Do you know what a chain gang is?
Jacobsen: No.
Sakoda: They let the prisons go to highway labour. How old was that Paul Newman movie about that chain gang? There is a staple in the South. You won’t find them in the rest of the country. They might have programs. California has a program where you can be released to go and fight wildfires.
Jacobsen: I honestly don’t know what is worse: firefighting for free or being in prison.
Sakoda: At least you’re out. For many people, it is hard not to be outside.
Jacobsen: It is like the one man you’re saying about MeToo. He would probably be out fighting fires rather than being in prison, afraid of being sexually assaulted.
Sakoda: He was probably 400 or 500 pounds. They shouldn’t have him fighting fires.
Jacobsen: Structurally, it takes work.
Sakoda: Besides, in his first criminal trial, he came to his first criminal trial with an oxygen tank. This is a common tactic for abusers to show up on crutches in a wheelchair.
Jacobsen: It is to garner sympathy.
Sakoda: Yes, it was funny. He had just been to Colorado without oxygen. So, people accepted it. The second set of charges when they came down. In some ways, that was a turning point. That was when we got more credibility. The first charge, people said – my other favourite thing, is that “Father only plead guilty to prevent that victim from having to lie on the witness stand.” When you plead guilty, you must say I did this, did this, under oath. Is it better for him to lie? It is amazing how little people want to believe this happened. Orthodoxy is perfectly willing to believe it happened in the Catholic Church.
Jacobsen: It is a different frame on NIMBY. It happens not in my backyard, but not over here.
Sakoda: They will say the most, “They have those celibate priests.” Orthodox priests can be celibate, too. Some of them are abusers. All Orthodox bishops either have to be widowed. There have been bishops who put their wives in monasteries. They have to be unmarried, too. So, you do have celibate clergy portions in the Orthodox Church. But I think people have the idea that it is a choice. You have to decide if you are celibate or married before you are ordained, and you have a choice. But what happens to a priest whose wife dies? He cannot remarry in Orthodoxy and be a priest. So, it’s part of him being married or being a priest. He has a hard choice to make. But I think the main thing is that people equate celibate priests with abuse. Abuse is not about sex. It is about power and control. It is through the vehicle of sex. It makes it confusing for the victim.
Jacobsen: It goes back to the question about unquestioned power in that particular structure. If they have that transcendental status connecting to something divine, it is much harder to question it, especially if you have grown up or been imbued in it. It is much harder to question it.
Sakoda: A lot of the priests tell convincing lies. This is what God wants you to do. Sometimes, for girls, they’ll say, “God wants me to indoctrinate you to what it means to be a Christian wife,” or something. It is one of those things where you must be in the situation. You have to be the child and realize everything that has happened before or the other tactic. It was Phil Saviano. He did the expose on the Catholic Church. He said, ‘The priest gave me a beer and gave me porn.’
Jacobsen: Ha!
Sakoda: ‘The next time, he wanted me to go further. I couldn’t say, ‘No,’ because I was compromised with the beer and the porn.’ That is the way children’s minds work.
Jacobsen: Yes, in some of these stories, the people regress. The way they talk. They cannot just tell this priest to “fuck off,” to put it colloquially.
Sakoda: I had one man come to my meetings. I do not know if he came more than once. I have support meetings for survivors. He said, “I am not sure I should be there,” because he was there when the priest tried to touch him. He punched him and ran away.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: He goes, “I wasn’t abused,” but what happened was his trust in the institution died, whether the priest actually touched him or just tried to touch him, and he got punched. I try to tell people all the time. Even if you get away, many people freeze. Even if you froze or punched him, you would still feel that damage. “Oh my God, he is supposed to be a priest.” Particularly children, what do you do to protect yourself the next time? “It must be something I did. What do I do to change this situation?” You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. There’s probably nothing you can do, particularly for little kids. A grown man and a 6-year-old, that’s not even a fair fight.
Jacobsen: 18, 20, 25, they still have a lot of the development of having a feeling and standing in it. It can be much if you push them hard enough. It doesn’t take that much pushing. It takes a long time to get a backbone.
Sakoda: Especially to stand up to someone who you have been told is someone who represents God. I remember one survivor. He was abused as an adult. He was a seminarian. When the priest attacked him, he froze. He was shocked that a priest would be doing this. Afterwards, he had such self-blame and loathing because “Why didn’t I do something?” I think that’s hard. It is not just fight or flight. It is also fighting, fighting, freezing, freezing and complying. People tend to forget about that. That happens. It can set a pattern. That freeze and compliance can haunt you in similar situations for the rest of your life. You may revert to that response instead of doing something different. I think trauma is stored in a different part of the brain. It affects your behaviour in ways that you do not always realize. Someone told me. When their abuser had told them that if they spoke up, they would be killed, and when they spoke up, they were so terrified. The idea that the axe was coming. Even though their abuser was dead, it was terrifying to come forward because of what they had been told.
Jacobsen: The tools of religious indoctrination, from my view, are based on fear. A lot of it is reinforced by fear of death. “I would rather not think about the idea that I would stop existing and, therefore, I will exist eternally in some other transcendent dimension.”
Sakoda: So, “I have to do x, y, and z.” It is like the toll houses. “I have to do everything my spiritual father tells me, or I will be eternally damned.”
Jacobsen: The easiest presentation, I think it goes against… the philosophy on life is you’re a flame. Once you snuff the flame out, it doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops being. I think it is the same for us.
Sakoda: No one knows because no one has returned [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Right, people who believe in Uri Geller, who was shown as a fraud by James Randi on national television on Johnny Carson. Similar fakes and frauds, and so on, I am noticing the same phenomenon that you’re describing with individuals who come forward with the abuse. They have public cases. They have data up to 2020. They have news organizations cataloguing stuff like Hermina and Katherine. People, like the X Files, they want to believe.
Sakoda: They do. Part of it is that you want to go on with something bigger than yourself. That’s okay. What you cannot have is that my father ruined me. He said, “Melanie, you have a head to do more than decorate your shoulders.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: He focused on thinking for himself and didn’t tell people what to do. I think there is that element of social conditioning. Where you are supposed to obey the teachers. You are supposed to obey the priests. It is basically, people don’t say, “What if the priest is a creep?” What do I do them? Sex abuse is pervasive in society. I think it would find it in the Church. I think they could do a lot more to make churches a safer place if people are going to go to them.
Jacobsen: It is probably a hard pill to swallow because it makes churches seem like every other institution, which is to say, human. There’s also the fact that the indoctrination starts so early. I agree with Hypatia. If you imbue someone sufficiently early, it is extremely hard for them to unravel not the moral stuff, the superstitions that are built up around this complex of theology and social life, community, and ritual, and the unquestionable authority of these priests and bishop figures.
Sakoda: Yet, some overcome it. I know the woman who runs Bishop Accountability, Ann Barrett Doyle. She was one of those that was raised Catholic. I remember reading something about her. That was when she was 14. Their priest was saying something. She thought it was ridiculous and stood up. So, as my father said, you have people who believe in using your head or your conscience and speaking up when you see something wrong. Being comfortable and having someone telling you what to do is more tempting. It is not your responsibility.
Jacobsen: That’s scary for some people.
Sakoda: It is scary the other way too.
Jacobsen: Sure.
Sakoda: So, if the elder asks you to kill someone, you say, “Yes, sure thing.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sakoda: Then you go and do it. But you will go to Heaven because you obeyed your spiritual father. That, to me, is scary. I think it is a perversion of what religion is all about.
Jacobsen: Since you have given me so much of your precious time, m’lady.
Sakoda: [Laughing].
Jacobsen: I am going to ask one last question.
Sakoda: Is it a trick question? [Laughing]
Jacobsen: I am hoping not. If you could point people to individuals or resources they can go to for help if they’re coming out of the Orthodox tradition, who should they look into? What organizations can they get some help from? Also, for yourself or others doing this kind of work, here is my experience so far. It is – literally – women doing this work. How can they support them with their time, skills, volunteer efforts, and finances? What are the ways to help as well?
Sakoda: Regarding organizations such as SNAP, we have support groups for survivors. They follow the AA meeting model. Most people find them either as a supplement to therapy or some people use them instead of therapy. It is a way of meeting other survivors or going to a room where you say, “This happened to me when I was 6.” Instead of people turning the other way or saying, “You need to forgive and forget,” or whatever. People will say, “We understand.”
Jacobsen: #ChurchToo.
Sakoda: Yes. There is also, in this country, a group called RAINN, Rape Abuse Incest National Network. They have some of the same services that they offer. However, they do not specialize in religion or religious abuse. SNAP is the only one I know that does it. That has a mission to support survivors of abuse and religious institutions. Maybe this is not quite what you meant by this. I think what people can do to help support. If someone comes and confides in you, when I was 10, my priest raped me, or my pastor raped me or whatever.
Jacobsen: The severity, just hearing it, is a very… If you hear that sentence, pause and hear what they’re saying to you; they’re not lying to you, most likely.
Sakoda: What do they have to gain?
Jacobsen: Seriously.
Sakoda: What do you say? You say, “I am sorry. I am sorry that happened to you. What can I do to support you?” Maybe you cannot do a whole lot. Maybe this is their healing journey. If you accept what they say… I had one Orthodox survivor who was abused. When I started talking to him, it was automatic, “I am so sorry that happened to you.” He started crying. What can I say? I make men cry. He said, “No one has ever told me that before. That they were sorry for what happened to me.” It is like, that’s sad.
Jacobsen: That breaks the spell. I am stealing from a now-deceased philosopher, Daniel Dennett, who wrote a book called Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. What you do when you do that, socially, at least, for me, you break the spell. You break the spell for men by doing so.
Sakoda: Yes, that helps; as to what can help the advocates, if they’re involved with an organization, you can support it. As I said, we never get the support to take status as a non-profit. Maybe it will happen. I am not going to hold my breath. The Catholic Church, you’d think Orthodox people would think about SNAP. “That’s for Catholics.” It was funny. I sent one woman. She had been abused as an older teen. I think she was 19, and it was by an Orthodox priest. I said, “Why not try one meeting? What is it going to hurt?” She said, “Oh my God, they didn’t have a regular meeting.” This one had a play being performed at a community theatre or something. The group went to see and support him. She goes, “Oh my God, he was a man. I was a woman. He was Catholic. I was Orthodox. He was telling my story.”
I think that is what you find in the community. If you find another organization that does that, support them! Because it is to make people come forward earlier and earlier. If we have children coming forward, then they will have criminal convictions. Chances are: If it gets publicized by the police if others know, you will get the convictions and some of these people behind bars rather than behind the pulpit. The more you do that, the more people will be willing to believe it, too. There will still be a few religious zealots who never believe this whole thing about “He had hands laid on him!” There is some change in Catholicism, starting with an O that happens when you are ordained. The best response I ever gave someone, particularly the Orthodox Church, was, “The Church may be mystical. It is not magic. If someone is an abuser before they are ordained, they are going to be an abuser afterwards. It is not going to fix them automatically.”