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Thomas Wendi C.

February 1, 2007, commercialappeal.com

More than two years ago, Beth (not her real name) was interviewed by the now-disgraced Bellevue Baptist Church minister Paul Williams.

She thought it odd that he wanted to know specific details of her childhood sexual abuse before she could be cleared to work in the church's nursery.

Her heart told her something was strange, but she silenced her doubts, as sexual abuse survivors often learn to do.

But now, she knows that her intuition can be trusted.

On Sunday, Bellevue released the results of its month-long investigation into the "moral failure" longtime minister Williams confessed to the head pastor, Steve Gaines, last summer.

"Paul Williams engaged in egregious, perverse, sexual activity with his adolescent son over a period of twelve to eighteen months," the report said of the abuse that happened 17 years ago.

"The molestation of a child is bad enough, but to continue on in a ministerial capacity with responsibility for sensitive areas of our church life is without excuse," it continued.

With that, Beth felt a sense of vindication, not of the sort that leads to gloating, but the kind that boosts self-confidence. (She's using a pseudonym because The Commercial Appeal does not reveal the names of sex abuse survivors.) Beth was right, and now she knows it for sure.

When a child is molested or raped, the abuser doesn't steal just innocence. Snatched away is the certainty of self that others take for granted.

Children may ask themselves what they did to make the abuse happen. Was my smile suggestive? Was I too friendly? Were my no's said too quietly?

And when adults dismiss the abuse -- as happened to Beth as a child and as it seems happened with Williams' own son -- the self-doubt only grows, even to the point where the victim might wonder if the abuse was an invention of his or her imagination.

"If all the important people in your world acted like you were wrong, or you were overreacting, that can linger with you" even into adulthood, said Kim Campbell, intervention services director at the Memphis Child Advocacy Center.

"It's a really confusing thing, to not trust your own body, not trust your own judgment," Campbell said.

Williams told several people that the abuse ended soon after it began, when his conscience would no longer allow him to keep victimizing his own son.

And at Williams' attempts to keep the father-son relationship intact, Beth can only laugh.

"Paul said he checked every year or so to make sure all was right between him and his son," the report said.

Here is the warped mind of a predator -- that the harm done could be mitigated by an annual chitchat.

The surprisingly scathing report makes clear that at least for Williams' son, the damage was hardly done.

Williams confessed to Gaines in June, but Gaines amazingly stayed silent for six months. His pitiful excuse: He'd never dealt with such a situation before.

The pastor's hand was forced in December by Williams' son and two of the son's friends.

"They asked Pastor Gaines for an explanation, in light of scriptural qualifications for ministers, as to why Paul should be allowed to continue as a minister on the church staff," the report said.

Men cannot be a deacon at Bellevue if they smoke, but somehow, keeping a known pedophile on staff didn't present a clear and present danger, at least until Williams' son stepped forward.

"I just can only imagine what it was like for him to have to go forward against his dad," Beth said. "If Dr. Gaines had fired Paul back in June, it would have been much less painful for (the son) and his family."

The son and his family are in counseling, and Williams told the church that he is too.

Beth hasn't made it that far. She's not ready to commit to months, if not years, of rooting through the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of the man who had also molested several other women in her family. She wouldn't even tell Bellevue about her contact with Williams. "I don't trust them, I'll be honest with you," she said.

Even today, decades after Beth was abused, there are just a handful of people who know what happened. However, she did vent her frustration in an anonymous letter on savingbellevue.com.

"Some of you have screamed 'Touch not mine anointed,' " Beth wrote, a reference to the psalm twisted into a rebuke of anyone who criticizes a man of God.

"What are we to do," Beth wanted to know, "when 'mine anointed' have touched us?"

Williams' son has bravely answered her question. He shattered the veil of secrecy and shame that surrounds sexual abuse.

The son, now an adult, married with children of his own, dared to speak out against the anointed, his own father.

And the anointed, at long last, is anointed no more.

Contact Wendi C. Thomas at (901) 529-5896 or e-mail.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local_columnists/article/0,2845,MCA_25341_5319497,00.html