Where are Women in the Story of Clergy Abuse?
2nd Annual Nancy Marzella Lecture on Women and American Catholicism
Susan Reynolds
Emory University
Date: Thursday, November 6, 2025
Time: 5:30 - 7pm
Location: Devlin Hall 101
Academic studies and journalistic investigations of Catholic clergy sexual abuse largely center the experiences of men and boys: bishops, priests, deacons, altar boys, schoolboys, and so on. Yet women and girls are part of the story, too — as survivors, whistleblowers, bystanders, and perpetrators. How does our historical understanding of clergy abuse deepen when we turn our focus to women and girls? How do these more hidden stories reveal a larger and more complex story about power in the Church? And what might we hope for the future?
Susan Reynolds is associate professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA. She is the author of People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (Fordham University Press, 2023). Her research on Catholic clergy sexual abuse in migrant contexts has received awards from the Catholic Theological Society of America and Fordham University's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Reynolds is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine and is currently a fellow at Emory's Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry.
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Justin Moyer wrote an article for The Washington Post entitled, “‘I Don't Know About Normal Love’: A Church Leader's Abuse and a Woman's Years-Long Struggle,” which discusses one woman’s story of sexual abuse at her church and the larger power dynamics at play in church sexual abuse scandals. The article tells the story of Lauren Griffis, who was groomed by the Director of Youth Ministries at her church in Virginia beginning when she was eleven years old. The director, Derrick Trump, took advantage of Lauren confiding in him after her parents went through a divorce. When she was sixteen, he sexually assaulted her, and he was arrested two weeks later after Griffis reported the incident to her mother. The abuse left Lauren with severe PTSD that affects her daily living. To this day, she experiences triggers everywhere, which has meant that she has had to complete college online and cannot travel anywhere without her therapy dog. Her trauma was compounded by the Church community's negative reaction to her speaking out. Upon hearing about her abuse, many of her church peers stopped talking to her, unfriended her on social media, and blamed her for ruining their youth group. Many families would not speak to the Griffis family, causing them to stop going to their church altogether. Lauren’s story highlights the institutional weaknesses of churches, as congregations frequently fail to protect and support victims of abuse. In an attempt to support survivors like Lauren, one pastor from Pennsylvania took a different route by encouraging survivors to come forward and tell their stories when his predecessor was accused of abusing girls for twenty years. However, he was heavily criticized for acknowledging the allegations, costing his congregation money and its reputation. The article discusses how clergy abuse should not be a normalized or secretive aspect of the Church; rather, it should be something every church discusses, even if they have not had a scandal. At her lecture, Susan Reynolds will discuss how our historical understanding of clergy abuse deepens when we focus on women and girls, how these stories reveal complex power systems within the church, and what we may hope for in the future.