January Digest (2025): Moral Injury, Moral Entrepreneurs, & the Narrative of "Moral Failure"
Discover the impact of moral injury from clergy sexual misconduct, examine how clergy as "moral entrepreneurs" influence public narratives, and learn how you can contribute to an upcoming study.
In This Edition:
Letter from the Editor: Celebratory News + Read a New Study in Full
Another U.S. state has criminalized clergy sexual abuse against adults, and researcher Jaime Simpson’s new study is available to read in full.
Researcher Dr. Marcus Mescher explains the profound moral injury caused by clergy sexual abuse and its concealment, offering valuable insights into both the research and real-world implications.
Exploring Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse and DARVO: Call for Research Participants
Researchers seek respondents for a study partially funded by the Center for Institutional Courage.
Religious Leaders as Moral Entrepreneurs and Their Impact in Cases of Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse
Research explores how religious leaders use language to shape responses to adult clergy sexual abuse and how it impacts survivors’ standing in the religious community.
Broken links? Scroll down for content.
Content Warning: Contains references to sexual abuse and spiritual abuse.
Letter from the Editor
Dear Readers,
I am pleased to begin this quarter’s digest with celebratory news: Massachusetts has officially joined the growing list of states that criminalize clergy sexual misconduct against adults. By recognizing clergy sexual misconduct as a criminal act, Massachusetts joins a growing number of states committed to protecting adults from exploitation under the guise of spiritual leadership. This milestone reflects the tireless advocacy of survivors and their allies, whose voices have brought this issue into the public sphere.
I’m also excited to share that Jaime Simpson’s completed study on adult sexual grooming within Australian Evangelical Pentecostal Christian faith communities is now available to read in full. Her study, “Broken, Shattered and Spiritually Battered” - Groomed: Pastors who Prey on Adult Congregation Members #ChurchToo, reveals a clear pattern of ongoing grooming tactics and coercive controlling behaviors that entrap adult congregation members. You can read highlights from this study in my interview with Simpson in our October 2024 digest.
This month’s digest also features interviews with researchers contributing to scholarship on the impact of adult clergy sexual abuse. Dr. Marcus Mescher, co-principal investigator of Xavier University’s study, Measuring & Exploring Moral Injury Caused by Clergy Sexual Abuse, joins us to discuss the study’s findings and their practical implications.
Elisabeth Arnold Ingram, a 2024 recipient of the Center for Institutional Courage’s Research Grant, is conducting a study on the impact of Institutional Betrayal and DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), concepts developed by Dr. Jennifer Freyd, on survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse and is seeking 500 participants.
Lastly, I explore how labeling theory can illuminate survivor experiences of adult clergy sexual abuse, explaining how religious leaders, as “moral entrepreneurs,” can apply deviant labels that shape society’s perception of victims and perpetrators.
May this edition deepen your understanding of the dynamics surrounding adult clergy sexual abuse and inspire action to improve policies and practices that prevent and address such abuse in faith communities.
Warmly,
T.P. Zamora
Editor, CSM Research Insights
Understanding Moral Injury from Clergy Sexual Abuse: Dr. Marcus Mescher Discusses the Research and Impact
Researcher Dr. Marcus Mescher explains the profound moral injury caused by clergy sexual abuse and its concealment, offering valuable insights into both the research and real-world implications.
In 2022, Dr. Marcus Mescher, associate professor of Christian Ethics at Xavier University, together with Dr. Kandi Stinson, Dr. Anne Fuller, and Dr. Ashley Theuring, conducted a groundbreaking study to measure the moral injury caused by clergy sexual abuse and its concealment in the U.S. Catholic Church. The findings reveal profound psychological, spiritual, moral, and social wounds affecting survivors and those connected to the broader faith community and its institutions.
“Moral injury,” Dr. Mescher explains, “is a term that originated among veterans who felt humiliated or ashamed of what they perpetrated or observed during combat after realizing these actions violated their own moral compass, the military’s honor code, and the trust they had in their unit or the chain of command.” He shares that researchers are now exploring moral injury in healthcare, education, and law enforcement, where individuals “perpetrate, endure, or witness cruel or degrading actions or other violations of human dignity.” Dr. Mescher and his fellow researchers found moral injury to be a useful hermeneutical lens for understanding the ripple effects of clergy sexual abuse and the intrapersonal and interpersonal wounds of betrayal.
Veterans’ suffering is often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “Moral injury,” he clarifies, “is marked by similar psychological symptoms like guilt, shame, or anger, but it also comprises spiritual, moral, and social dimensions caused by a loss of trust in oneself, others, God, and institutions.”
Dr. Mescher explains that in church settings, where clergy are trusted and revered, their manipulation, coercion, or deception is “widely disorienting and disillusioning.” Such abuse violates sacred trust and power. When leaders conceal the truth, shield perpetrators, and discredit survivors, they “extend the radius of harm outward to more individuals.”
Marcus Mescher is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a Catholic moral theologian who focuses on moral formation, especially as it relates to solidarity with the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable. Since 2020, he has been researching moral injury caused by clergy sexual abuse, the subject of his next book: A Body of Broken Bones: A Morally Injured Church, due out with Paulist Press in 2026.
As he explains in detail in a publicly available book chapter on clergy sexual abuse as moral injury, when a clergyperson who represents God and the church commits abuse, it “casts a pall on what is sacred or holy” and “damages the religious authority and moral credibility of the church and its leaders. It undermines trust between members of the faith community.”
In 2023, Dr. Mescher published a taxonomy of moral injury, which provides five categories to differentiate experiences of moral injury:
Moral injury caused by an action I did to another
Moral injury caused by another’s actions toward me
Moral injury caused by a failure to act
Moral injury caused by institutional affiliation
Moral injury caused by exposure to a toxic environment
It is important to note that there is a subjective dimension to measuring moral injury, like rating pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Using this taxonomy, I invited Dr. Mescher to comment on a case study I created, a composite of typical survivor stories.
Sally was a devoted follower of her faith and a deeply committed church member and volunteer. Many in her church community admired her dedication and care for others. Tragically, her pastor, Brian, exploited this dedication, assigning her tasks that constantly placed her in close contact with him, grooming her, and ultimately committing adult clergy sexual abuse (ACSA) against her. Due to the grooming and fear of bringing shame to her faith community, Sally remained silent.
When the abuse came to light, church leaders pressured Sally to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and promoted a false narrative to the congregation that framed the abuse as “consensual.” Meanwhile, Assistant Pastor Howard, disturbed by what he was learning about ACSA online, felt uncomfortable with the church’s response. However, he and his wife, Miranda, were loyal to the church’s hierarchy. This loyalty strained their once-strong friendship with Sally and her husband, Jay, who struggled to understand what was wrongly framed as his wife’s “affair.”
The church community eventually fractured as some congregants viewed the abuse as part of a broader pattern of spiritually abusive behavior. Others remained loyal to the church, labeling dissenters as no longer true believers and “threats” to the church. Even after Howard and Miranda recognized the situation as abuse and left the church, they never reconnected with Sally and Jay nor publicly or privately affirmed Sally. Ostracized and isolated, Sally stopped attending church altogether, focusing instead on her children, who lost friendships in the church community, and on her now-strained marriage.
Only a few former church members, such as former lay leaders Gloria and Daryl, maintained contact with Sally. However, as they struggled and failed to advocate for Sally among the church leadership, they became increasingly disillusioned, realizing they had been part of a flawed system that enabled such abuse. Additionally, as former lay leaders, Gloria and Daryl recognized that, in many ways, they had perpetuated spiritually abusive practices that harmed those under them while at the same time were on the receiving end of it from those above them.
Sally, too, struggled as she grappled with the reality that grooming had coerced her into compliance with her abuser. During the abuse, he manipulated her into misleading others about his actions behind closed doors, and now she remains silent, bound by an NDA. Benefiting from the NDA and crafted narrative, Pastor Brian was reinstated to a leadership position after publicly confessing to an “affair” and apologizing for the hurt caused to his wife, children, and congregation. Unaware of the true nature of his actions, the remaining congregants praised him for what they perceived as a display of “humility.”
In Dr. Mescher’s taxonomy, the first category is “moral injury caused by an action I did to another.” Dr. Mescher explains that “this is the kind of moral injury that is most similar to many veterans who feel anger, guilt, or shame for what they did in combat.”
In the scenario above, Pastor Brian committed ACSA against Sally. Considering that there is a subjective dimension to moral injury, Dr. Mescher comments, “If he has a well-formed conscience, Pastor Brian should experience the first category of moral injury as a perpetrator.” He found in his research that “some offenders experience tremendous grief and shame for what they have done. Others convey almost no remorse at all. Given the power and prestige granted to many pastors and the circle of protection and loyalty among church leaders to shield them from accountability, they may lack empathy with those who have been hurt by them. Some survivors have told me that the failure of their perpetrator to show contrition for the harm they have caused has been as traumatizing—and sometimes even more traumatizing—than the original abuse.”
The second category, “moral injury caused by another’s actions toward me,” is pertinent to Sally’s experience. Although he doesn’t want to overgeneralize survivor experiences, Dr. Mescher explains that in his study, “survivors report feeling ashamed, alone, and confused, often accompanied by profound despair and futility.” He clarifies, “To say that a survivor experiences confusion is not to suggest they are unreliable as a source of truth about what happened, but to convey that what they held as true—in terms of beliefs and values—has been upended.”
“Because Sally respected and felt safe with Pastor Brian, this profound betrayal makes it difficult to trust herself, others, and God. Many survivors say their relationship with God and organized religion is permanently damaged or completely destroyed. The fact that so many members of the church, including its leadership, may blame Sally, discredit her account, or misconstrue the situation (to suggest that it was a “consensual affair” rather than to recognize the asymmetry in power between a pastor and a member of the congregation) only compounds the emptiness and isolation she experiences. If not for Jay and other family members, she may be tempted to believe that she is beyond redemption or that her life is pointless. Sally’s story calls to mind what one survivor told me, ‘You’re left with a broken heart until you die.’”
Dr. Mescher elucidates how the third category, “moral injury caused by a failure to act,” addresses the entangled responsibility of those aware of the truth but didn’t address it, such as Pastor Howard and his wife Miranda, the church leaders who forced Sally to sign the NDA and who shielded Pastor Brian from accountability for his actions. He says, “Although they may have been focused on loyalty to the institution or aiming to shield the faith community from scandal, they are culpable for hiding the truth, which is an abuse of sacred trust and power. By keeping people in the dark, these individuals are exercising control over them and making others vulnerable to subsequent abuse from Pastor Brian or anyone else who may benefit from this corrupt system.”
He clarifies that this type of moral injury can vary in severity based on awareness and the ability to act. “Given that Howard and Miranda are more proximate to the situation than Gloria and Daryl, they may experience more remorse for what they could have done but failed to do, whether for Sally or anyone else harmed in this situation. Jay may also identify with this category of moral injury, as he may feel frustrated that he couldn’t do more as an ally or advocate for his spouse. Sally’s other friends and family members may also experience a more diffuse level of moral injury as they come to grips with what she endured and to what extent they were able to support her or try to prevent this from happening to someone else.”
Dr. Mescher emphasizes that “most abusers are serial perpetrators and that the failure to hold Pastor Brian accountable will likely embolden him to abuse power again in the future.”
The fourth category, he explains, is “moral injury caused by institutional affiliation” and captures the “hurt through belonging to a faith community where this violation of sacred trust and power occurred. This is a less intense experience of moral injury than the persons named in the story but illustrates the fallout on a relational level where people stop attending church or tithing, leave for another religious community, lose their faith, or begin to identify as ‘spiritual but not religious.’”
In this category, he says, “People lose confidence in the religious authority and moral credibility of the particular faith community or organized religion on the whole. Empirically, we can see a demographic shift where Americans express low rates of trust in institutions. I think we can see this as a symptom of betrayal by specific individuals and a growing realization that these are not just a ‘few bad apples’ but a pattern in which institutions—even religious ones—do not consistently serve their members’ best interests.”
Sally and Jay’s children might experience this category of moral injury more acutely than most congregants, “given their proximity to the pain Sally endures and the fallout of their own emotions, damaged relationships, or experience of shame, isolation, or futility.”
The fifth category, “moral injury caused by exposure to a toxic environment,” Dr. Mescher explains, is “more social or secular—the result of a toxic cultural anthropology that desensitizes us to violations against human dignity and rights as well as other threats to social justice and the common good. Christians should be vigilant against any belief or practice that assigns shame, normalizes stigma or exclusion, foments distrust, impairs agency, or undermines relationships marked by mutual respect and co-responsibility.”
Since Gloria and Daryl recognized that they had perpetuated spiritually abusive practices while at the same time were on the receiving end of it from those in superior positions, they might also experience this category of moral injury. “They are still culpable for spiritual abuse, acting as agents of a toxic system. I see Gloria and Daryl as both enduring moral injury from a toxic system and perpetuating it, so they may illustrate the feedback loop that reinforces the fifth category of moral injury.”
For those who have experienced moral injury from clergy sexual abuse and its concealment, Dr. Mescher recommends a communal approach—“group settings where people can feel welcome and safe, known and believed, supported and empowered,” such as the Awake community. He is writing a book-length manuscript on this topic, which is due out this year. Additionally, he has written a chapter in the recently released anthology Accountability, Healing, and Trust: Interdisciplinary Reflections for Ministry in the Midst of the Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis, which he says “shares what I have learned from walking with survivors of clergy sexual abuse over the last several years as well as steps toward reform and renewal at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels.”
This critical research demonstrates that moral injury resulting from clergy sexual abuse and its concealment is a pervasive harm, profoundly impacting primary survivors while also extending its effects throughout the broader religious community. Religious leaders must take these findings seriously, using them to inform the creation of policies and response protocols that prioritize accountability, healing, and prevention.
Sharing these findings widely among religious community members, including seminary educators, is imperative to create safer communities. By engaging in open conversations, implementing educational programs, and developing supportive frameworks, we can begin to address this injury and create safer, more compassionate faith communities.
Having presented on this topic in academic circles, church settings, and conferences hosted across the US, Canada, Europe, and South America, Dr. Mescher invites anyone interested to email him for more information on his presentations and publications.
Read the study, Measuring & Exploring Moral Injury Caused by Clergy Sexual Abuse.
Exploring Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse and DARVO: Call for Research Participants
Researchers seek respondents for a study partially funded by the Center for Institutional Courage.
Elisabeth Arnold Ingram, a 2024 recipient of the Center for Institutional Courage’s Research Grant, is investigating the impact of Institutional Betrayal and DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), concepts developed by Dr. Jennifer Freyd, on survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse.
“When the Center for Institutional Courage was founded,” Ingram shared, “I recognized an unprecedented opportunity to expand this critical research into the domain of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse.”
Ingram plans to contribute to academic scholarship and practical reforms by publishing her findings in trauma studies and institutional abuse journals, informing evidence-based legislation and institutional policies, and writing a book “contextualizing the findings within the broader societal imperative to address sexual violence.”
Ingram, who served as an Adult Clinical Intern at Domestic Violence Intervention Services, is a Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Facilitator completing her MS in Counseling with a Clinical Mental Health specialization at Oklahoma State University. She combines academic research with over 300 hours of trauma-informed clinical experience supporting survivors of interpersonal violence. The completed study will be publicly accessible through the Oklahoma State University digital repository (ShareOK).
Ingram says she desires to “recruit 500 participants through survivor networks and advocacy organizations.” She and her co-investigators, Lisa Beijan, and John Romans, will use “rigorous statistical methods to identify significant patterns while centering survivor needs and safety.”
The results will be presented as a poster at the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation’s 2025 annual conference in Boston. “I am thrilled to share my research at the conference where one of my heroes, Dr. Judith Herman, will speak.” Ingram also identifies Dr. Jennifer Freyd and Dr. David Pooler as influential researchers. “These researchers share a commitment to rigorous methodology while centering survivor voices and experiences—an approach I strive to emulate in my own work.”
“Participants will complete five validated assessment instruments measuring experiences of institutional betrayal, DARVO, PTSD symptoms, dissociation, and psychological safety. The questionnaire is designed with a trauma-informed approach, allowing participants to complete it at their own pace and take breaks as needed. Clear information about available support resources will be provided, and participants can discontinue at any time. We’ve implemented specific protocols to ensure data security and participant confidentiality. The estimated completion time is 30-45 minutes.”
“The goal,” Ingram says, is to “help society comprehend both the devastating impact of sexual violence and institutional betrayal while also illuminating pathways toward prevention and healing.”
If you are interested in participating in this study, please send an inquiry via email.
Religious Leaders as Moral Entrepreneurs and Their Impact in Cases of Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse
Research explores how religious leaders use language to shape responses to adult clergy sexual abuse and how it impacts survivors’ standing in the religious community.
In my peer-reviewed article, Language as Power: A Labeling Theory Perspective on Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse Discourse, published in the Journal of Sociology and Christianity (Vol. 14, No. 2), I explore how labeling theory provides a critical lens for understanding the common language used in addressing adult clergy sexual abuse (ACSA). I use this framework to analyze how religious leaders, who act as “moral entrepreneurs” within their faith communities, use language to define such cases and their consequences.
Sociologist Howard Becker’s concept of “moral entrepreneurs” describes individuals or groups who shape societal norms by defining certain behaviors as deviant or immoral. These entrepreneurs influence how behaviors are stigmatized or normalized, making them pivotal in creating and applying societal labels. This concept highlights the unique responsibility religious leaders hold in shaping narratives around clergy sexual abuse.
Labeling theory, which explores how society defines behavior as deviant, reveals how language can obscure the power dynamics in ACSA. Mischaracterizing abuse as a “consensual affair” or merely a leader’s “moral failure” shapes congregants’ perceptions of the egregious traumatic experience, further compounding harm to survivors and reinforcing societal misconceptions and stigmas.
Language as Power: A Labeling Theory Perspective on Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse Discourse was presented at the 45th annual meeting of the Christian Sociological Association (CSA) in 2024. Watch the presentation on YouTube.
Survivors often internalize these labels, such as “seductress,” initially misinterpreting their experiences, only to later recognize the coercion they endured. This painful realization can lead to ostracization from their religious communities, compounding their trauma.
This analysis emphasizes the transformative role religious leaders can play as moral entrepreneurs. By adopting a unified, research-informed language that accurately represents the abusive nature of ACSA, leaders can foster healing, support survivors, and strengthen their communities’ moral integrity.
The insights presented can aid survivors in processing their experiences. For faith leaders, this article will guide them through the typical, harmful survivor labeling process and challenge them to adopt just, compassionate, and informed approaches to addressing ACSA.
For a deeper exploration of these insights, read the full article, Language as Power: A Labeling Theory Perspective on Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse Discourse.
T. P. Zamora, editor of CSM Research Insights and sociology student, explores power dynamics and abuse within religious institutions and its multi-faceted impact on survivors.
Such fantastic resources--thank you!