Dear Biblical Studies folks, as we have our day of reckoning, please hold space for different kinds and severities of sexual misconduct among the members of the field. There’s been a lot of misconduct, but Joosten, Pervo, and Hayward are in a league of their own.

When we through around names of members of the field with a history of misconduct alongside the likes of Joosten or Pervo, we run the risk of flattening different misconducts into a single undifferentiated monolith to the detriment of survivors.

It is important that we do not lose sight of the different experiences and traumas that affect different survivors. A child sex abuse survivor is not the same as an adult who is the target of a sexually harassing verbal remark. We need to allow there to be differences.

This does not mean that we are required to rank different sexual misconducts on a scale of severity. This is unproductive, as sexual misconduct all stems from the same as place. They are all EFFECTS of the same disorder. However, this does not make them all the same.

This is why I recommend that we never lose sight of the survivors, and their embodied experiences. By focusing on who was hurt and how they were harmed, we contextualize all of these misconducts within an ethic of care for victims/survivors.

For my part, I will never stop bringing up Joosten, Pervo, and Hayward because people remain shockingly unaware of the sheer prevalence of child sex abuse in ways that I do not think is true of other kinds of misconduct.

I want to continue to shine a spotlight on the children here and appeal to our sense of collective grief, shame, and culpability in their victimization. When we are too quick to move on to other topics, I worry that the voices of children—the often voiceless—will be lost.

I hope that we all allow ourselves to dwell for some time in this state of grief and discomfort—to sit and listen to the unnamed voices of the children, and not only to those children that Joosten harmed, but to all our peers and colleagues who were once those children.

Many child sex abuse survivors in the field are only now, perhaps for the first time, being heard and believed. Let’s listen.