Hidden Abuse in the Baptist Church Part I: 20/20 Episode

Why no mention of Hephzibah House???!!!

On April 8, 2011, ABC's 20/20 aired an episode entitled Shattered Faith which featured the personal accounts of many abused women and children within the Independent Fundamental Baptist affiliated churches ("IFB").  The investigator (Elizabeth Vargas) focused on young girls who were sexually abused by fathers, pastors, and other men within their churches.

Though grateful that the media has acknowledged the abuse that the Church at large seems to ignore, Vargas made no mention of the abuses at the infamous Hephzibah House in Winona Lake, Indiana.  The private home for "troubled girls" promises parents and pastors a protected Christian environment in an effort to help save these daughters from troubled lives at home.  Parents who enrolled their girls there never dreamed of the harsh conditions and inhumane treatment that their daughters would suffer there.

Join Jocelyn and Cindy for a discussion of these difficulties faced by young women in authoritarian and hierarchical groups in Christianity.  Explore  how the abuse of power through gender hierarchy justifies and creates the perfect prescription for abuse of all those who fall beneath the abusive leaders on the food chain -- a religious system that sometimes devours their own women and children.