A 15 year old girl was made to apologize for her sins in front of her whole Church congregation after being raped by a fellow congregation member. Leaders of the Trinity Baptist Church in Concord, NH told Tina Anderson that she “should be happy she did not live in Old Testament times, because she would have been stoned”.Right, I know that this is not strictly speaking related to fertility or trying to conceive, except that Tina got pregnant after being raped twice by a man whose children she was babysitting. The first rape happened when the rapist was allegedly going to give Tina, then 15, a driving lesson. This was in 1997. Tina was raped a second time soon after that, when the rapist made his way into her house when she was home alone.

Her pastor told Tina that the rapist, a prominent member of the Baptist congregation, might carry 99 percent of the responsibility for raping her, but the other one percent was on Tina, and she should apologize for her sins, and for getting pregnant before marriage. The rapist himself was not made to do anything similar.

The story goes on as the girl’s parents shipped Tina off to another location to carry her baby to term, only to give it up for adoption after giving birth. She was kept in isolation from the outside world, and took 13 years to finally be able to not only realize that the blame was not on her, and that she could prosecute her rapist.

With the help of an organization for victims of church abuse, Tina pressed charges and her rapist, Ernest Willis, was finally arrested. The case is going to trial, but the rapist was released on bail.

These cases make me so angry. Rape is always the rapist’s fault. The rapist is always 100 percent responsible for his actions, and it is saddening to see that this church condoned this criminal’s actions, and blamed the victim. If we can’t feel safe and protected in church, then where can we?