Community Transformation After Sexual Harm: Churches and Religious Institutions
Throughout the two decades of my legal work representing survivors of violent crime, I was often told that sexual harm is an individual problem, solely a conflict between the person who was hurt and the person who harmed them. Yet what I saw on a daily basis is that sexual harm goes beyond this binary, leaving holes in families, friend groups, and larger communities, fractures that are usually ignored and never addressed. Survivors are left with a tattered or non-existent support system, and people who experienced secondary or vicarious harm are given no opportunities at repair. Too often communities are not engaged as part of the healing process and are left vulnerable to further harm and violence.
At Shared Roots, we use the term restorative justice to encompass both a philosophy and a social justice movement, rooted in indigenous practices and focused on how we, as a society, should address harm and wrongdoing without involving the traditional legal system. While our restorative justice processes center the harmed person and their needs and healing, true healing cannot occur in a vacuum; we must engage our communities and strengthen community-based systems to repair harm, mend community dynamics, and resist further violence. As stated by the founders of Creative Interventions, “To live violence-free lives, we must develop holistic strategies for addressing violence that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.”
What can a true community-engaged response look like? Let’s apply this process to a group of institutions that have faced many incidents of sexual harm: Religious institutions, including a number of churches in the Chicago area.
