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wutbju · 1 year

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The Positive BJU Grads are upset that the BJU Board of Trustees has (allegedly) committed Title IX and Title VII violations.

They may have. I don't doubt it. It's highly likely.

But come on, alumni. You're all intelligent people. Think back a little bit. Remember Chuck Phelps and how he protected Ernie Willis and disciplined Tina Anderson? BJU protected Phelps. Brian Fuller and Steve Pettit protected him too. Pettit still aligns with Phelps.

And may I direct your attention to the the 300 pages of the GRACE Report? Have you READ it? You all need to read this. What Pettit is accusing the BJU Board of doing -- covering up violations -- is exactly what the Board did when Pettit was a member.

Why is it now acceptable and noble to protect President Steve Pettit as if he were a victim but not the countless victims of sexual assault that BJU abandoned?

The GRACE report documented that 48% of the BJU Board members in 2013-14 -- which included Steve Pettit! -- knew about sexual abuse with BJU's purview.

But let's go on. What did Great Steve Pettit himself say about the GRACE report upon its release? Do you remember? On May 10, 2015, Pettit himself said:

In the spirit of candor, it should be noted that the reviewers to date have found no evidence that the University protected any perpetrators or failed to comply with its reporting obligations. I am relieved by these conclusions. They are important. But they do not make up for the fact that we did not serve our students as well as we should have [emphasis mine].

This claim that Pettit deems so important is patently false, and the GRACE report proves it. Below are exact quotations from the GRACE Report that prove Pettit is knowingly lying.

The survey findings support a possible conclusion that BJU representatives may have sometimes discouraged the reporting of sexual crimes to the proper authorities (33).

An employee stated, “Their first response is that the person who was victimized should not be bitter and forgive, not that the perpetrator would receive justice. Many chapel speakers would not give names, but would tell stories of campers who mentioned abuse-no mention ever that person in leadership helped them report. The general culture is to forgive and forget and the abuser is never brought to justice.” Reference 50. A victim of childhood sexual abuse stated, “It is never about abuse. It is never about justice. It is about forgiveness and sending them (the perpetrator) a letter.” Reference 59. A victim of childhood sexual abuse noted, “My personal observations have been that those who spoke from the chapel platform about this topic [of sexual abuse] have always stressed ‘forgiveness’ and ‘personal repentance for participation in one’s abuse’ rather than to urge the reporting of crimes.” Reference 130. Another victim of abuse stated, “For the entire time that I was associated with BJU, and after, victims were told to forgive their abusers. They were never told to report their abusers to law enforcement, and the abusers were never condemned out loud, though it was clear that the BJU admin thought sex abuse was wrong, at least in theory.” Reference 132. (97)

The victim contacted the alleged perpetrator’s mission board to ask whether the mission board would remove him from his position due to potential risks he could pose to others. The mission board representative reportedly told the victim that it was the university’s and the alleged perpetrator’s church’s fault for not reporting him when the offense occurred nearly two decades before.77 Furthermore, the representative reportedly insisted that the alleged perpetrator had been repentant to the mission board by confessing his offense and by writing a letter of apology in 2012. (99)

In 2010, Bob Jones University adopted a policy entitled, “Sexual Abuse and Molestation Prevention Policy.”85 The following chapter will outline how BJU handled the reporting of sexual abuse disclosures before 2010. During the course of the investigation, GRACE noted instances in which BJU officials reported information regarding abuse disclosures to the Department of Social Services (DSS) or to law enforcement officials since the passage of mandatory reporting laws. The investigation also raised evidence indicating that information pertaining to some sexual abuse disclosures was not reported to DSS or to law enforcement official. Some pre-2010 case examples have been included in the Investigation Findings Appendix 6-2 and 6-3.87 BJU witnesses provided four primary reasons for failures to report sexual crimes: ignorance of mandatory reporting laws, misidentification of sexual crimes, inadequate training, and the reporting of sexual crimes by the Department of Public Safety to BJU administrative officials rather than to local law enforcement (178).

As previously discussed, South Carolina’s mandatory reporting law was initially enacted in the 1970s. GRACE found some instances in which a BJU mandatory reporter who received information about an allegation of child sexual abuse reported that information to law enforcement or to DSS, and some instances in which the information was not reported (178).

Throughout this chapter and this Appendix, GRACE has identified several disclosures that raise some questions about whether BJU mandatory reporters fully complied with mandatory reporting laws. As noted earlier in this report, this investigation and the findings resulting therefrom are necessarily limited by the totality of available information which is determined by the cooperation of voluntary witnesses, restrictions on the university’s ability to produce some records that are governed by FERPA protections, and the availability of some types of information, such as law enforcement records. Therefore, we draw no legal conclusions about whether any individual has actually violated any federal or state laws as these judgments are reserved exclusively for legal professionals who must apply governing laws to the specifics of any particular case. Furthermore, nothing in this report should be construed as offering any legal advice, opinion, or judgment regarding any legal matter contained within this report (178).

GRACE received a few reports that Dr. Berg had discouraged victims of sexual abuse during counseling sessions from contacting the police. These participants said that Dr. Berg either implied that the offense was “an internal issue to be handled by the school”108 or explicitly stated that the victim should not contact the police for various reasons that could upset internal family dynamics (181).

On a number of occasions, sexual abuse and sexual assault appear not to have been reported to law enforcement or DSS officials because they were mislabeled and not identified as sexual crimes. BJU officials, on multiple occasions, identified sexual crimes as only moral offenses and disciplined the offender for a moral offense instead of reporting the offense as a crime. Dr. Berg stated that in some instances where sexual abuse or assault had been disclosed, “It never crossed my mind that it was a crime- it was not just that it was not clear; it never crossed my mind.”124 Dr. Berg explained that some offenses were not recognized as sexual crimes because of an inaccurate understanding of the terms “sexual assault” or “rape" (185).

Reference 276. Dr. Berg reiterated a failure to identify this offense and other non-forcible sexual assaults as crimes at other points in the interview stating, “If someone was forcibly raped, obviously that is so obvious it would be. But this was not obvious to me as a crime and to the way we thought at that time as a crime. I say we didn’t even weigh it as, ‘Well it is not this so therefore it is not a crime.’ There wasn’t even a weighing of that. There just was not any consciousness that it even entered into that realm. We just knew we had a very, very immoral guy, and he needs to go home and bear the responsibility for what he did.” Reference 279. In an alleged report, an adult college student reportedly touched a minor’s private part outside of the clothing. Reference 274. In another alleged scenario, Dr. Berg admitted a failure to recognize a report of consensual sexual contact between an adult and a minor as a crime. Reference 277 (186).

Some victims of sexual abuse reported the impact of this lack of training. One such victim of child sexual abuse reported that she sought help from a professor she trusted and also disclosed her abuse to a few friends. She explained, “Fellow students were supportive, but of course had no idea what to do. We merely shared each others’ secrets. The prof[essor] I did talk to was supportive, but never mentioned anything about reporting the abuse.”144 The former student remarked, “to be fair, [the abuse occurred in] another state and the [statute of limitations] may have expired.”145 However, she regretted that the professor did not suggest reporting the abuse, nor did he have the resources to refer her to someone who could help.146 Another victim of sexual and physical abuse reported that she told her Dorm Supervisor in the late 1990s about her abuse and was extremely concerned about her younger siblings who were minors still living at home with the alleged perpetrator.147 The victim explained that she told her Dorm Supervisor her concerns, but the Dorm Supervisor simply gave her Bible passages to read and other spiritual advice about forgiveness (188-89).

Tumblr has a 4098-character limit on a post, so I will share the rest of the documentation in a subsequent post.

What does all this mean?

In May 2015, Steve Pettit was covering up violations that the GRACE report documented. He did in 2015 what he accuses the Board of Trustees doing in 2023.

#Bob Jones University #Steve Pettit #GRACEReport #BJUisNOTSafe #PalmSunday2023 #BJUExodus2023

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