Letter to a pastor

Content warning; this contains mentions of a gray area of CSA by a parent, domestic abuse, and a mention of the word rape in regards to a different relationship, but the rape is not described. This is the first time I’ve spoken publicly about this situation because of the nature of it, and I’ve omitted any names and descriptions of places or people involved so they can’t be identified. This is written under my pen name for the sake of my privacy and the privacy of anyone who might be involved. This is my personal recollection of a few moments in my history.

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You may remember me, pastor, and you may remember that you were once a close friend of the family. First, you knew my grandfather. The two of you were great friends, and you spoke at his funeral when he died. I was about fourteen then.

At that time, I was dating a boy I went to high school with. I’d lost my virginity to him, although I hadn’t initially wanted to. Our relationship evolved into one that was often coercive when it came to sexual things, although I did consent often. It became worse and worse as I turned fifteen, and I found myself in a heavily manipulative abusive relationship. Sexual violence, physical violence, verbal abuse, and gaslighting.

While I was dating this boy, I had a decent relationship with my father, who you also knew well. My father wore a crucifix at all times under his shirt, and he loved coming to church, although he’d stop going when no one wanted to go with him. It was always your church, pastor. The fundamentalist Baptist church down the road.

One day, after I came home from visiting an amusement park with my boyfriend, I had some concerns. I thought I’d had an STD at the time, and I was nervous. Conversations or questions about sex were forbidden in my home, and I felt I had no one to confide in about it for fear of getting in trouble.

My father, who was likely drunk that day as he was an alcoholic, invited me into his office. I sat on the edge of his bed to tell him how my day went, and he began a very vulgar conversation about sex. I became uncomfortable when he asked me intimate questions about my sexual activity with my boyfriend. He wouldn’t listen to me when I expressed my discomfort, but I supposed he was just finally having ‘the talk’ with me.

Something felt wrong, but he gained my trust by noting that my mother was the one who would become angry, so if I confided in him, she wouldn’t have to know and I wouldn’t get in trouble. And then he offered to check me for an STD.

He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I won’t get into the details, but when he led me into my bedroom and manipulated me into letting him examine me, I laid there for some time after, confused. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you hear about; it was close, it was similar, and combined with all the times he would open my bedroom door without knocking and stare at me while I was in my underwear, I knew something was wrong. I felt sick — a similar feeling when my boyfriend raped me.

You know the rest. He called you after I told my mother, and you invited him to come to the church with me to talk that evening or the next. My mind’s a bit fuzzy on time. PTSD will do that.

It was dark inside when you unlocked the doors. I sat on a wooden bench in the entrance way as the late afternoon sun painted shadows across the carpet. It was silent as my father carried an open case of beer with him, hunched over and depressed as he followed you into your office. We were the only ones there.

Eventually, you invited me back to talk alone. My father sat where I’d just stood from, and I joined you in your office. I don’t know what he told you, I don’t even know if he told you the full truth. All I know is this; you told me he wanted to be saved, and he was downtrodden and could be saved if he came to church.

You told me that I could end up in Hell for just hugging my boyfriend or holding his hand. I don’t remember much else because I tuned you out. You wanted me to come to church with my father on Sundays. The very same father who had violated my boundaries in a way a father should never have done. You promised to not use anything we talked about as inspiration for your sermons.

My father made me come to church that Sunday. Just me and him. Your sermon focused on sexual temptation, women who wore short skirts and shorts, and how men had to resist temptation. It was a test from God or something to resist, I don’t remember exactly. I didn’t particularly care. I just felt like, after our conversation, you betrayed me. I felt like I was the one who had done something bad. I felt like I was at fault or I was the bad one, and my father had your sympathy.

I was diagnosed with PTSD from the abuse I endured from my boyfriend at the time, and the situation with my father was in the back of my mind because it was too confusing to process. As an adult currently enduring trauma therapy, I now see the festering scar that whole situation left. That situation triggers my worst PTSD symptoms, and to this day, this moment, after speaking it honestly and in full detail to my trauma therapist, my symptoms are flaring worse than ever.

My PTSD symptoms have robbed me of the last several years of my life. I’ve become chronically ill; I have dysautonomia and GERD, which I suspect were aggravated or caused by years of stress, a lot of it related to a panic disorder and PTSD. Do you know that I can’t even leave my front door without great distress, and I crash as soon as I get home even if I’m speaking with friends?

I want you to know this; that terrible day when I was a teenager, when I spoke to you, has remained with me all these years. You sympathized with a man who went on to verbally abuse me severely, tear me down, scream at me, and threaten to hit me a few times, although he never did. He acted like he hated me. But you didn’t know any of that. You only knew of the time he crossed a boundary between parent and child that should never, ever be crossed. A boundary that I struggle to even speak the details of because it’s borderline sexual abuse, but not quite. It’s in such a gray area that I’ve never been able to process it.

I’m in my thirties now. I just wanted to tell you how painful you’ve made my life, and how you contributed to a terrible self-image. And if my father did not tell you the truth that day, you know now, and you know the gravity of your words to me.

I hope this makes you think about what you’ve said and done. You’ve always put the church, God, before everything else, even if it’s caused pain. At my grandfather’s funeral, you dared to offend my whole family by standing by his coffin and offering to hold a service for anyone who wanted to be saved that day. At my grandfather’s fucking funeral, you made it about you. Do you know how upset you made my family with your selfishness? While we were grieving?

Do you have any idea how traumatizing that situation was with me and my father? Do you now see how some things are more important than coercing more people to go to your church on Sundays?

I hope you think about all of this now, and I hope you feel ashamed. If you don’t, I question whether you’re truly a ‘good Christian’ or just a selfish man with an end-goal in mind to control people.

Thanks for showing me reality, by the way, and for turning me away from the church. Being a Pagan has brought me more warmth and love from my spirit guides than you ever could have hoped to.

Sincerely,

A person who never wanted to be saved anyway.

©2025 Shane Blackheart