Central Florida bishop makes ‘culture of protection’ a priority for every church in the diocese

Anglican Watch endorses +Holcomb’s efforts to make church safe for all persons, including those who have experienced abuse. We further note that he generally is considered a conservative bishop, which underscores our point that church safety is neither a liberal nor conservative issue, but rather a moral issue.

We believe the church cannot grow and succeed until it takes seriously its failings on these matters and its tendency to protect the church at the cost of those it has hurt, while protecting egregious, often illegal conduct, by clergy. Moreover, far too few bishops understand the importance of disclosure and its relationship to healing.

---

Reprinted from Episcopal News Service. By Melodie Woerman

Central Florida Bishop Justin Holcomb has made it his priority since becoming bishop 18 months ago to create what he calls “a culture of protection” across the diocese, including for people who have suffered abuse, especially sexual abuse.

“The church is supposed to be a safe place where abuse doesn’t happen,” Holcomb told Episcopal News Service, “and it’s supposed to be a refuge for people when it does happen. For those who experience abuse, it needs to be a safe place where they can be cared for and heal … a place of peace and healing with a message of hope for survivors.”

He has prioritized safety in part because he knows the statistics. During an April 2024 webinar of the Anglican Communion Safe Church Commission, he laid out abuse statistics across American society: one in four women and one in six men have or will experience sexual abuse in their lifetime. One in five children experience sexual abuse before they are adults. One in five women and one in 20 men will suffer domestic abuse or domestic partner abuse.

And he is keenly aware that those numbers are no different for the people who fill the pews in churches across his diocese.

The Episcopal Church has had model policies and procedures to prevent abuse, known as Safe Church, for two decades, with other efforts going back another  10 years. General Convention in 2022 created a staff position to manage Safe Church efforts, which in general exist to help Episcopalians know how to recognize, respond to and prevent power imbalances between those in authority and those they serve.

Central Florida’s existing diocesan Safe Church policies were good ones, Holcomb said, but he wanted outside experts to look at them for places where they could be improved. He brought in GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), a nonprofit based in Lynchburg, Virginia, that helps churches with prevention, healing and accountability around all kinds of abuse, to do that. Holcomb sits on the group’s board.

One existing diocesan policy he wants to strengthen concerns people who have been placed on Florida’s sexual predator and offender registry. People are placed on the registry by state law, which may set a time limit for a name to remain there, Holcomb said. He wants the diocese to keep a list of those currently on the state registry, as well as those who were on it but have been removed because they no longer are required to be on it.

“The church should have a more expansive view” than the state, Holcomb said. “We can do more than the law requires for safety.”

Holcomb knows this topic personally, as a victim of sexual abuse when he was 10 years old by a distant family member. In the webinar he described the sense of disgrace he and other abuse survivors often feel, along with helplessness, humiliation and confusion.

He has been involved with preventing abuse and protecting victims for more than 20 years, including teaching about it when he was a professor at the University of Virginia and as the author of seven books about abuse written with his wife Lindsey Holcomb, a former case manager at a sexual assault crisis center who now works as an advocate for abuse survivors.

In recognition of his commitment to abuse prevention, in 2023 he was invited to become a consultant to the Anglican Communion Safe Church Commission.

He served as a canon in the diocese for 10 years before becoming bishop, and he said he was clear in the statements he submitted for his candidate profile that working to keep church members safe and helping those who have been abused recover would be central to his episcopacy.

Holcomb sums up what he wants to see happen in every one of the 81 churches across the diocese in three phrases – prevent abuse, recognize abuse and respond to abuse, no matter where the abuse happens. Too often the church lags in its calling to care for people instead of being where it should be – on the forefront of these efforts, he said.

In May the diocese sponsored a training event, titled “Shedding Light on Abuse: Prevention and Response,” that was presented by GRACE. More than 100 people attended, Erik Guzman, the diocese’s director of communications, told ENS, and professionally produced videos of the event were made available for additional training opportunities in smaller groups around the diocese. Holcomb and Mike Sloan from GRACE also will offer a one-hour training opportunity during the diocese’s annual convention in January.

The bishop also has started a new diocesan Safe Church Commission to look at ongoing efforts. One of the co-chairs is Monica Taffinder, a therapist who works with people who have been sexually abused. She is also a member of the diocese’s Commission on Ministry and a former member of the Standing Committee. Taffinder sees Holcomb’s efforts as shifting the diocesan conversation about Safe Church training from something that’s “good to do” to robust efforts that ensure people are safe and where those who have been abused “feel safe, known, heard and loved,” she told ENS.

The Safe Church Commission plans to work alongside the bishop to help clergy better understand the depth of trauma that many of their parishioners face, usually in silence. “It’s safe to assume that a third of people coming through the church doors have had some kind of sexual trauma, because it’s so underreported,” Taffinder said.

She rarely has heard a sermon about sexual abuse, she said, and while she doesn’t recommend making it a regular topic, clergy do need to better understand the impact their words can have on abuse survivors. “The church certainly has inadvertently failed people who have been sexually abused, because a lot of times pastors speak from a context of a pretty trauma-less life,” she said, and they don’t think about how their words are heard differently by abuse victims than by others.

For survivors of sexual abuse, hearing about forgiving people can sound like what happened to them not only doesn’t matter, that it wasn’t that big a deal, she said.  “Having everybody be more trauma-informed will greatly influence what people hear.”

Taffinder said she hopes the church can be a place where “everyone who comes in is safe because we have such great communication and protocols in place, where children and adults who have been abused are safe because nothing’s in secret – everything’s in the light.”

Holcomb also wants church members to know how to respond if an abuse survivor confides in them. “The moment of disclosure is one of the most powerful times in a survivor’s life,” he said, because they are taking a risk and hoping they aren’t met with shame or suspicion.

What they need to hear instead are simple phrases: I believe you. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry this happened to you. I hope you feel safe. It’s OK to cry. Is there anything I can do to help? I’m glad you’re talking to me. Thank you for telling me – that took a lot of courage.

ENS asked Holcomb about the impact on survivors when cases of sexual abuse are in the news, including Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s resignation over his failure to follow-up on reports of violent abuse by a British lawyer on young victims he met at youth camps beginning in the late 1970s tied to the Church of England, as well as the men President-elect Donald Trump has nominated for high-level jobs in his administration.

Instances like these often activate memories of abuse and feelings of despair within survivors, even if the abuse happened years ago, he said, and they can raise questions about a lack of accountability for abusers. “Why is that abusive person given power instead of justice?” is what survivors ask, Holcomb said, which then feeds into questions of whether it’s worth it to speak up if they feel they won’t be believed.

“Victim blaming is strong in America,” he said, because it’s easier for people to cope with the horrors of abuse if they think someone brought it upon themselves rather than recognize that perpetrators exist. This especially is true around sexual trauma, he said, and greater blame is often placed on victims of date rape and on victims who have been sexually active, intoxicated or engaged in non-stereotypical gender role behavior before the attack.

Robin Hammeal-Urban has worked with Holcomb in her role as one of the 17 members of the Anglican Communion Safe Church Commission, which seeks to implement the communion’s safe church guidelines across its 42 provinces in 165 countries. She is the former canon for mission integrity and training in the Diocese of Connecticut and was chair of The Episcopal Church’s 2018 task forcethat produced new model Safe Church policies for adults and for children.

In September she and Holcomb were part of the communion’s Leading Safer Churches conference in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where she was surprised to find that people were eager to talk about abuse. Commission members were greeted by songs, one of which was about abuse as a reality, and this was followed by conversations about how widows and single mothers are treated badly.

Hammeal-Urban led a panel about forgiveness that included Holcomb, two bishops from Africa and a bishop from England. During the discussion, some of the participants realized and then admitted that they had abused power while growing up and asked forgiveness for that. At the end of the session, a man raised his hand and said, “’I’ve been a priest for 22 years, and this is the first workshop I’ve been to about this topic. Why is that? How come?’” she recounted.

She agreed with the emphasis Holcomb has placed on making churches in his diocese places of safety and healing, and she has witnessed the healing power that can come with telling one’s story of abuse.

A few years ago, a woman who had suffered sexual abuse in the church decades earlier asked Hammeal-Urban if she could tell her story to the diocesan bishop. He agreed, and along with Hammeal-Urban listened to her and then told her how sorry he was for what happened to her and reiterated that it wasn’t her fault. After he left the room, the woman said she had realized for the first time that the shame she had carried all these years wasn’t hers but instead belonged to the man who abused her.

“This is the healing that the Gospel is about,” she said, “and that’s why over and over and over we tell people who have been victimized that it’s not their fault, and that we believe you.”

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas\