Thoughts On “Hitting Submit”

So, we finally hit submit on a manuscript 3 years in the making, and eeekkk!!

My last post was about a collaboration between myself, Mary Byler, Rhoda Witmer, and Jasper Hoffman on a research study about the frequency of child sexual abuse within conservative religious groups. Because Plain Anabaptists are insular groups that often are not included in research, we specifically wanted to reach out to them for this project. We spent a ton of time working on a survey that would ask not only about experiences of child sexual abuse, but also about the language used by others in the participants’ lives to discuss child abuse and the impact child sexual abuse had on our participants’ lives. I am grateful for the unnamed consultants who helped Mary, Rhoda, Jasper, and I in developing this survey, and I hope for a world where they could all safely be identified one day. Maybe the work that Mary, Rhoda, and Jasper have done will help make that happen.

I’ll be honest that, when this started, I would have been happy with 100 participants. Here we were, asking about a taboo topic, a topic that our actively practicing Plain Anabaptist participants would very likely have been punished for talking about if anyone had known. And, to keep those participants completely anonymous, we were doing it all online. But, within just a few months, we had close to 400 participants. We had close to 400 people, both practicing and non-practicing in their childhood religions, who were willing to answer our questions about childhood sexual abuse and how it affected their lives. I hope they know how honored I am that they were willing to share those things with us; I know Mary, Rhoda, and Jasper are as well.

And now, a little over 2 years after starting data collection, we have “hit submit” on the manuscript that we hope will be published in one of the journals available to both academics and professionals in child welfare. It’s a little surreal. We still have a long way to go – it has to be reviewed by other professionals, who will get to recommend whether or not the journal should publish it. I’m sure we will need to make revisions; we may even have to submit it to another journal. But this initial version of the manuscript is done, and I hope it honors the participants who were willing to share their experiences with us. We’ve also posted it at Research Gate, where it can be read for free by anyone with an account, here, and hopefully the SSRN (Social Science Research Network) will post it in the coming days as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot of about why hitting submit on this manuscript has, well, hit so hard. Even though I am a faculty member at a small school that focuses more on teaching than research, it’s not my first publication. Some of it, again, comes down to being honored our participants were willing to take the risk to participate in the study. Some of it, honestly, comes from the fact that it just pisses me off that I hear people demeaning and diminishing the work that Mary, Rhoda, and Jasper have done. I didn’t do this by myself, folks, and I would not have done it without them, especially Mary who has been working toward a study like this for years.

But some of it comes from the realization that there are other academics who have made decisions that have actively hindered the ability of practicing Anabaptists to speak out against the abuse they experienced. People in “my” field, people whose responsibilities include educating, people who have the ability to build their careers in so many different directions, have actively chosen to align themselves with the powerful and to build a reputation and a life off of covering up the abuse of children.

This entire blog grew out of the fact that Jeanette Harder has profited from recommending a booklet that tasks 11-year old girls with preventing their older brothers from lusting after them. She has recommended facilities like Whispering Hope, which even a cursory online search reveals has a sex offender “treatment” program that includes bringing the sex offender’s wife in to teach her how to make her husband happy so he won’t sexually assault children. This is a licensed social worker teaching in master’s level social work programs who is supposed to be good at program evaluation…and this is what she recommends?!!? (When I reached out to her about it, she did say she didn’t really vet the facilities…but she still recommended them.) She is not the only academic who has done things like this, things that actively harm abuse survivors who are both practicing and non-practicing Anabaptists. (I am looking at you, Donald Kraybill.) But she, given the code of ethics she is supposed to follow as a social worker, should absolutely know better. AND, she is considered an expert in program evaluation, which makes this even more horrifying.

So, as I reflect on hitting submit on this manuscript, I want to acknowledge that our participants took a risk when they decided to take part in this study. I do not know who they are, but I want to honor and acknowledge that. I want to shout from the rooftops about the work that my co-authors did and shut down any attempt to lessen their efforts. This project would not exist without them…especially Mary, who is first author on the manuscript for a reason. But, I also want to acknowledge the fact that this study should have already been done. There are people who have been doing research “on” Anabaptists for years. At least one of them is a social worker. So, why is this study needed? Why hasn’t it already been done? Because, for years, academics have been toeing the “party line” to keep in the good graces of the ministry and other powerful Amish. Rather than uplifting the voices of Anabaptist survivors, they have used a variety of tactics to silence them. I am never going to be OK with that.