Charlie is a Methodist getting ready to graduate from an Anabaptist seminary. In addition to being a child abuse survivor himself, he is an activist for child abuse survivors, and we are thoroughly impressed by his commitment to resisting abuse and holding communities of faith accountable for doing the same. Preparing to be a minister himself, Charlie has hard-earned wisdom to offer the church. We are grateful he has chosen to share a bit of it here. “Perhaps you have figured it out by now, but little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.” Kyle Stephens I don’t recall when I realized what was happening to me was abusive. There was a time between the ages of five and seven that my grandmother picked me up to take me to school and asked me why I was crying. “Momma doesn’t love me,” she recalled in a conversation we would have in my teenage years. As she described the situation, I was wearing a jacket covered in snot. I had been crying so hard that my nose ran uncontrollably. “She beat you that morning for wetting the bed,” my grandmother continued as […]
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