How purity invites fraud
What explains the deep relationship between sex abuse, charlatanism, and religious purity movements? Sarah Posner, writing on the Duggar family and its connections to the world of separatist Christian homeschooling, details not just the accusations of sexual misconduct made against Josh Duggar but also those made against Bill Gothard, the leader of the fundamentalist movement with which the family has long been closely associated.
Gothard, who founded the Institute for Basic Life Principles and its homeschooling arm, the Advanced Training Institute, is accused by dozens of female former staffers of inappropriate and abusive behavior; he stepped down last year. The details of the complaints against Gothard are more squalid than horrifying. We see in them the marks of an organization with a narcissistic central figure unconstrained by dissent or oversight. More troubling, however, are the stories of young people victimized by family members or friends and blamed, in accordance with Gothard’s “principles” of female modesty, for their own assaults.
The revelations of ATI’s culture of abuse and victim-blaming are of a piece with emerging stories of abuse and cover-up in the wider evangelical and fundamentalist worlds, and they come after more established stories of abuse and complicity in the Catholic Church. But Gothard's ministries were focused especially on sexuality. This fact forces the question of how abuse and fraud flourish in those corners of the church most devoted to an ethic of sexual purity.
