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Since founding ECPAT, an international organization working to end child prostitution and pornography, in 1991, the author has sadly come to recognize that church leaders and representatives are not exempt from involvement in the sexual abuse of children. Although working in a secular and apolitical organization, the author's Christian belief and experience have informed this study of a deeply disturbing phenomenon. He seeks through unsensational language to expose the truth of the church's involvement and by so doing start the search for solutions. Read more

The relentless crescendo of revelations of sexual abuse in the nation's Catholic churches has rocked the nation. Just how widespread is child sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy? And why hasn't the Catholic church done more to stop it? Read more

What sets this book apart from the many others on the topic is the emphasis on how a church congregation can begin to work to heal the wounds of sexual abuse and prevent further abuses from happening. Church members often must, at the same time, offer love, understanding, and healing to survivors while confronting (and still loving) the perpetrator. Includes a forward by Marie M. Fortune. Read more

An investigative reporter offers a portrait of Andrea Yates and her drowning of her five young children, incorporating the information from more than two hundred interviews to reveal the inner workings of the case. Read more

Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment, was the guest speaker at Atheists United. Her book is the first to take an in-depth look at child abuse and neglect caused by religious belief. Bethany Brittain joined Ms. Heimlich on stage to share her personal story about being abused as a child in the name of religion. (1:20:00) Read more

How to discipline one’s child, like decisions to treat “by faith alone,” run deep in religious and cultural belief systems. State regulation of child rearing not only impacts parents’ liberty but a community’s ability to maintain identity and transmit norms. Often, state solicitude for parental autonomy dictates children’s fate. This Chapter explores the limits of parental autonomy, showing that constitutional cases grant autonomy when no harm would result. Read more

High-profile cases such as the child sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church and “faith healing” child death cases in some fundamentalist congregations have drawn attention to a serious yet misunderstood problem: religious child maltreatment or RCM. (1:04:00) Read more

Are you a survivor of religious child abuse or neglect? Which children are at risk today? These are questions our speaker answered during this enlightening Sunday Gathering. (26:00) Read more

Janet Heimlich is the founder of the Child-Friendly Faith Project and author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment, both of which examine child abuse and neglect that is enabled by religious belief in the United States. Janet is also a reporter who has worked for NPR and written for a variety of publications. (Full disclosure, I’m on the advisory board for the Child-Friendly Faith Project.) I spoke with her about the way children suffer at the hands of religion, whether teaching kids about Hell constitutes abuse, and what atheists can do to help. Read more

Dr. Paul Offit talks about the importance of ensuring that all children are permitted needed medical care, even if their caretakers assert that their religious beliefs conflict with that need. (2:00) Read more

On February 11, 2016, experts on faith, medicine, and children's rights gave a presentation in Boise, Idaho, to discuss the problem of "faith healing" child medical neglect and the need to repeal dangerous religious exemptions. (1:05:00) Read more

Mr. Singer discusses strategies that he employs to help the faith and child protection communities work together to help children and families struggling with issues of abuse and neglect. (48:00) Read more

Law professor Marci Hamilton, a leading expert on such legal issues, will explain how statutes such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its state counterparts have lowered legal barriers on religious believers’ illegal conduct. (1:00:00) Read more

Therapy is an essential part of the healing process for those who have suffered the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. Yet many survivors don’t know where to turn to find those services. David Pittman—a survivor himself—founded Together We Heal for that very purpose. (45:00) Read more

In this interview, Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will, discusses religious abuse and mistreatment of children. (20:00) Read more

Janet Heimlich spoke at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, on the topic of religious child maltreatment. (30:00) Read more

Dr. Carla Cheatham spoke at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, on the topic of religious child maltreatment. (13:00) Read more

We discuss the ways in which religion serves as both a locus and a veil for child abuse, how victims can heal from such abuse, and how we can prevent it from happening in the first place. (46:00) Read more

A questioning of what should be considered as religious freedom or child endangerment. Read more

Discussion of the experience of mothers in cults and its impact to the mother-child bond, the methods used in cults to control and limit this bond, and the responses of mothers to these controls. Read more

Presentations given by national and international experts in child protection and abuse. Read more

Presentations given by national and international experts in child protection and abuse. Read more

An examination of the hypothesis that Conservative Protestants are more likely to physically abuse children than Mainline Protestants, Catholics, or the religiously unaffiliated. Read more

Graphic first hand descriptions by a Rabbi detailing long standing, open, and systematic sexual abuse of minors by high powered individuals in the Jewish community. Read more

This organization helps families understand and accept their LCBTQI children and others in the community. Read more

This video exposes problems of child sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Read more

Susan Cottrell offers a Christian-based workbook to help LGBTQ individuals heal from wounds left by families and church communities. Read more

The late Rev. Keith Wright examines the many abuses that the Christian Church inflicts on its congregants, clergy, and children. Read more

Michele Ulrickson's memoir about spending time in a fundamentalist Baptist reform school. Read more

Memoir from popular blogger Amber Cantorna, detailing her coming-out experience as a young, gay woman in an evangelical Christian community. Read more

This book explains how indoctrination occurs in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read more

Susan Cottrell, founder of Freed Hearts, navigates how parents can accept their child's sexual identity and maintain their Christian faith. Read more

Abuse survivor and therapist Dr. Jaime Romo pulls from his experience in creating this detailed workbook on how to heal from sexual abuse. Read more

Elizabeth Esther's memoir brings to light her struggles with the lingering effects of spiritual abuse. Read more

Noted mental health counselor and cult expert Steven Hassan provides the knowledge and awareness needed to help people avoid or escape from dangerous people and situations such as cults and undue influence in the digital age. Read more

Lucia Greenhouse's memoir describes her experiences growing up in the Christian Science Church. Read more

This collection of writings looks at the impact that beliefs about spirit possession and witchcraft affect children. Read more

Janet Heimlich fully examines the phenomenon known as Religious Child Maltreatment, child abuse or neglect that is enabled by, or justified with, religious belief, scripture, or doctrine. Read more

This memoir by Jenna Miscavage Hill, the niece of the president of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavage, describes what it was like for her to grow up in, and ultimately escape from, the controversial religious organization. Read more

Noted pediatrician Paul Offit gives readers a never-before-seen look into the minds of those who choose to martyr themselves for their children in the name of religion by actively refusing to seek medical treatment for preventable or curable diseases. Read more

Julia Scheeres uses the accounts of survivors of the the People's Temple cult to chronicle the abuses they suffered at the hands of religious leader Jim Jones. Read more

Child marriage is as damaging in the U.S. as it is across the globe. Minors—even highly mature 17-year-olds—have limited legal rights and therefore can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in an unwanted marriage. The data compiled in this study shows how child marriage it as much a human-rights abuse in the U.S. as anywhere else. Read more

Child marriage, or marriage before age 18, has devastating implications for underage girls. Yet between 2000 and 2018, nearly 300,000 minors were legally married in the U.S. This report, published in 2021, details the dangerous implications of child marriage, legislative failures at state and federal levels, and concludes with a simple solution: commonsense legislation to end any loophole that allows a minor to be married. Read more

In this inspirational memoir, Rob Scheer, the founder of the nonprofit organization Comfort Cases, tells his story of entering foster care at age 12 and his harrowing journey of survival, resilience, and determination. In the book, he shares his life experiences that led him and his husband to adopt their four children and sparked a determination to rebuild a broken system. A portion of the proceeds of this book are donated to Comfort Cases, which inspires communities to bring dignity and hope to children in foster care. Read more

Rooted in her experiences growing up in an Evangelical Christian family, Jamie Lee Finch’s “You Are Your Own” offers an overview of Evangelicalism and the painful confusion and anxiety experienced under its demands. Finch explores the mechanisms of trauma and how fundamentalist denominations match the patterns connected with PTSD. She elaborates on the doubt, guilt, fear, and grief that haunt those leaving the Evangelical faith and offers an approach to help them recover healthy self-worth and resilience. A socio-historical autobiographical analysis of Evangelical Christianity's religious trauma, “You Are Your Own” emerges from Finch's reconnaissance on her own life—her journals, her stories, her trauma—and offers advocacy for everyone harmed by fundamentalist faith. Jamie Lee Finch is a sexuality and embodiment coach, intuitive healer, self-conversation facilitator, sex witch, and poet. You can learn about Jamie’s work at JamieLeeFinch.com Read more

As an educator and spiritual caregiver to the bereaved, Terri Daniel, DMin, offers supportive companionship and spiritual healing tools for the grief journey. In this capacity, she has encountered certain theological mindsets that can disrupt psychological well-being, and in some cases lead to complicated mourning, depression, and even illness. This paper explores these “toxic theologies” and their relationship to complicated mourning while offering alternative perspectives and cosmologies that may be helpful in supporting grievers who face spiritual challenges. Read more

In this paper, Terri Daniel, DMin, references the book "Breaking Their Will" by CFFP founder, Janet Heimlich. The paper was part of Daniel's doctoral coursework at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Read more

In the 1990s, a "purity industry" emerged out of the white evangelical Christian culture. Purity rings, purity pledges, and purity balls came with a dangerous message: girls are potential sexual "stumbling blocks" for boys and men, and any expression of a girl's sexuality could reflect the corruption of her character. This message traumatized many girls, resulting in anxiety, fear, and experiences that mimicked the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and trapped them in a cycle of shame. When the youth pastor of her church was convicted of sexual enticement of a 12-year-old girl, Klein began to question purity-based sexual ethics. She contacted young women she knew, asking if they were coping with the same shame-induced issues she was. These intimate conversations developed into a 12-year quest that took her across the country and into the lives of women raised in similar religious communities. It was a journey that facilitated her own healing and led her to churches that are seeking a new way to reconcile sexuality and spirituality. Read more

This doctoral dissertation offers quantitative evidence about the BITE model (Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion) as a potential tool to help evaluate cases involving exploitive or undue influence. BITE offers a clearly defined model based on observable behaviors that expert witnesses can use to evaluate the presence of mind control or thought reform across a variety of settings and groups. Read more

A substantial minority of Americans have religious beliefs against one or more medical treatments. Some groups promote exclusive reliance on prayer and ritual for healing nearly all diseases. Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose blood transfusions. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren have religious or conscientious exemptions from immunizations. Such exemptions have led to personal medical risk, decreases in herd immunity, and outbreaks of preventable disease. Though First Amendment protections for religious freedom do not include a right to neglect a child, many states have enacted laws allowing religious objectors to withhold preventive, screening, and, in some states, therapeutic medical care from children. Religious exemptions from child health and safety laws should be repealed so that children have equal rights to medical care. Read more