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Reviewed by:
  • Shattering the Illusion: Child Sexual Abuse and Religious Institutions by Tracy J. Trothen
  • Margaret M. Wright (bio)
Tracy J. Trothen. Shattering the Illusion: Child Sexual Abuse and Religious Institutions. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. xiv, 198. $32.95

In the last thirty years a great deal of public attention has been paid to the subject of child sexual abuse and religious institutions. This attention has resulted in considerable debate about the role of the church in contemporary society. Tracy Trothen has written a comprehensive book about the policies several churches have developed to address the issues arising out of the debate.

In her introduction, Trothen indicates that this book was inspired by the Cornwall Public Inquiry into organized historical abuse in Ontario. She summarizes the activities of that inquiry and concludes that it and other public commissions like Badgely and the Mount Cashel Inquiry have led to [End Page 476] a recognition that those in positions of power sometimes abuse children. She states that “the destruction of the illusion of religious leaders and religious institutions as moral exemplars, incapable of evil, is necessary to the generation of effective accountability mechanisms. This book focuses on one such mechanism: the development of policy.”

In this book, the author outlines, and ultimately compares, the sexual abuse policies developed from 1960 to 2009 by a variety of (primarily Christian) religious institutions in Canada. These are the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Mennonite Church in Canada. She also has a chapter each on Islam in Canada and the Canadian Unitarian Council/the Unitarian Universalist Association. The author explains that the predominant focus is on Christianity because “it is overwhelmingly the largest religion adhered to by Canadians as of the last census.”

Each chapter is laid out consistently and includes an introduction to the governing structure of the religious institution and a description of the context in which it operates. Chapter headings include “Approach to Child Sexual Abuse, Including Relevant Statements, Policies, and Practices: 1960–80; 1981–91; and 1992–2009.” Chapters also have sections titled “Complaints Regarding People Who Are Not Church Personnel” and “Complaints Regarding People Who Are Church Officials and/or Employees” as well as a section “Third-Party Complaints” and a chapter summary. In her final chapter, “Gathering the Pieces,” the author raises questions about the possible weaknesses of some of the policies and some of the motivations behind the policies. At the end of the book she provides a valuable chart comparing the religions across the dimensions on which she focuses.

The author does a very thorough job of reviewing all of the relevant policies of the institutions featured in each chapter. The extent and detail of the policies are impressive. However, the reader is aware that these are policies and proposed practices. The reader is left wondering how to distinguish between the ideal and the real. The author makes it clear, on more than one occasion, that the churches’ policies are designed to comply with current civil and criminal law and, because of the financial repercussions of institutional abuse, are also responding to the demands of insurance companies. The author has not set out to evaluate the implementation of the policies, but she does go beyond simple statements of policy to raise questions about the reasons behind the policies and the possible weaknesses in some policy statements, leading to speculation about what these policies look like in action. She also notes in the research section, and repeats a few times throughout the book, that there was some resistance to the research: “[M]ost religious communities that received our emails or voicemails did not respond.”

One of the themes arising from the author’s description and analysis of the policies is that the religious institutions had to recognize the [End Page 477] phenomenon of violence against women before they were able to name child sexual abuse as a problem. She credits the feminist movements of the latter half of the twentieth century with creating a demand for action in this area. She also concludes that the institutions have had to come to terms with issues of sexuality in order to...

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