September 20, 2005
by Linda Bloom

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Sexual harassment remains a problem within the United Methodist Church, and laity need more education about the issue.

Those are among the preliminary findings from a sexual harassment survey distributed early this year by the denomination's Commission on the Status and Role of Women. A previous survey in 1990 defined sexual harassment as any sexual-related behavior that is unwelcome or offensive or fails to respect the rights of others.

The Rev. Gail Murphy-Geiss, a Colorado clergywoman and past president of COSROW, presented data from the survey responses during the commission's Sept. 15-17 annual meeting in Cambridge.

More than 6,000 surveys were mailed to people in a variety of positions within the church, including local church pastors, seminary faculty and students, bishops and district superintendents, general agency and jurisdictional conference staff, annual conference staff and lay leaders, and staff/parish chair people of local churches.

Of the roughly 1,300 responses, nearly 85 percent were from women and about 60 percent from laity. The mean age was 51.

The responses showed a significant difference between clergy and laity in terms of awareness of United Methodist policies on sexual harassment, according to Murphy-Geiss.

"Gender did not make any difference in awareness," she said. But she added that few women knew where or how to report harassment.

A full 67.3 percent of the respondents said they had experienced or observed harassment "of any kind." The type of harassment ranged from leers to unsolicited touching to pressure for dates to, in a few cases, attempted or actual sexual assault or rape.

Seventy-two percent of the clergy respondents said they had experienced a form of sexual harassment themselves. That compared with 51.3 percent of students, 50.6 percent of church employees and 38.9 percent of laity. The number of men reporting harassment was actually higher than that of women, but Murphy-Geiss believes that may be because men are now more aware of the various types of sexual harassment.

The most prevalent type of harassment reported was unsolicited sexual comments. About 51.3 percent of clergymen responding also reported a problem with unsolicited letters or e-mails of a sexual nature. Although there were complaints about anonymous spam, those were not included in the survey report, Murphy-Geiss explained, because the spam was not directed at a particular person.

More than half of the incidents of harassment occurred at local churches, with about 60 percent of the perpetrators of the harassment identified as lay members, compared with 35 percent of clergy.

The most common response to the harassment was to ignore it, although 47.3 percent did tell the person to stop the behavior. "Sometimes you have to endure the hassle," one respondent wrote.

Although a few respondents complained that the survey was a waste of church money, others talked about incidents that led them to leave their church, conference or even the denomination.

"A parishioner harassed me for three years with verbal abuse," one respondent wrote. "When he started to get physical, my husband wanted to go to the police for a restraining order. I called my D.S. (district superintendent) to let him know. My D.S. said that if I went to the police, I would never work again."

The problem continues beyond the local church. "It took 20 years of complaints from seminary students before this pastor was investigated and removed," a respondent said.

Murphy-Geiss suggested that COSROW conduct focus groups and interviews across the country on the subject of sexual harassment. "Let's have people talk a little more about what their experiences have been," she said.

The full survey report is expected at the end of the year.

United Methodist News Service
Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.