Naming the Boundary Violations
Clerical sexual misconduct involves both abuse of minors and sexual exploitation of adult women. In both, clergy-persons have disregarded the responsibility, as the person with greater power, to observe their own personal, ecclesial and professional boundaries. Such misconduct can also be described as the clergy-person's dismantling of the boundaries to which the other has a right, and trampling over these lines to gratify themselves.Boundaries Are Morally and Legally Defined
Each religious body has a legal code based on ecclesial law. This code includes many provisions, among them, the conditions for membership in the believing community the basis for discipline of members and procedures for due process, hearings, trials and appeals.A clergy-person who sins by sexual misconduct with minors or sexual exploitation of an adult violates both the moral boundaries as defined by doctrinal definition of sin, as well as the denominational code of ministerial conduct.
When a pastor engages in a sexual relationship with a married parishioner, he has violated boundaries defined by religious law, and the recourse for the victim is most realistically the due process and complaint procedure of the denomination.
However, what is sin according to a denominational code may not be a crime in the eyes of civil law. And what is a crime in the eyes of the law may not be defined as sin in a church code or doctrinal tradition.
Professional Boundaries: Employers
When a pastor is also the employer of a parishioner with whom he has a sexual relationship, another boundary violation is implicated. Here, civil law governing employer-employee relations can hold a pastor, as employer, to the standards which govern professional relationships in any secular work-place. All employees--including those who work for religiously-sponsored institutions-- are entitled to be protected against hetero-and same-sex sexual harassment and pressure to provide quid-pro-quo intimate relationships.States vary widely in their enforcement of civil standards on clergy-persons who are employers in church-sponsored settings.
Professional Boundaries: Counseling
Violation of professional boundaries occurs when the clergy-person engages in a sexual relationship with a parishioner while acting acts as the person's spiritual mentor, confessor, pastoral counselor or retreat master.State legislatures have not yet provided clear laws which hold clergy-counselors to the same ethical and professional standards as professionally licensed therapists, psychologists, social workers. Thus, turning to civil courts for these boundary violations does not always provide a viable means of recourse.
Responsibility for Boundaries
Clergy-persons, as those with great authority and power over children and parishioners, have the primary responsibility to maintain their own personal, religious and professional boundaries. In unequal power relations, the primary responsibility lies with the more powerful person--here the clergy-person-- to observe personal boundaries and reverence the boundaries of the other.—> Next Page