If charges were brought, church leaders wrote letters requesting leniency, or urged victims’ families to do so. Families were pressured to forgive perpetrators, and “even children as young as three were forced to meet their abusers for ‘reconciliation.’” One woman was informed by church leaders that her husband’s urge to molest their ten-year-old daughter could be attributed to her own failure to meet his sexual needs; she was told to take her husband back, lock her daughter’s bedroom, and have sex with him regularly.
