The stolen truck analogy

A few weeks ago, Peter Schuurman and I were invited to speak at an Inter-Classis Safe Church Conference in Waterloo, Ontario hosted by the Christian Reformed Church. Peter talked about his experience at The Meeting House. I decided to focus on a big-picture question: what would happen if it was easier for sexual abuse victims to come forward? Thinking through all the stories people have shared with me, it’s clear that the process itself is rigged against victims from the start. Would better systems help prevent future abuse? As I did some research, I started to pick out a pattern. And then I came up with the stolen truck analogy, which seemed to hit a nerve at the Conference. Except for his name, all of this is true.

My brother-in-law John bought a new Dodge Ram pickup last summer, a 2023 model. The truck was stolen out of his driveway after he’d only driven it for a few weeks. His neighbour has a camera that caught the thieves on video – one on his porch with a replicator, which can steal the key fob’s information via wireless and transmit it to a device the second thief used to open the truck. They hotwired it and were gone in less than 60 seconds.

John reported the crime to police the next morning. His truck was the third Dodge stolen in that area in one night, the police told him. The officer was efficient and sympathetic. After 8 weeks, when the truck hadn’t been found yet, the police put the paperwork through to back up John’s insurance claim. It was annoying to get a 407 bill – the thieves had had the nerve to drive a stolen vehicle across Toronto – at 2am, when the 401 wouldn’t have even been busy! – but this charge was easy to fight. After an explanation, John didn’t have to pay it. Eight weeks to the day after the truck was stolen, John’s insurance company transferred the full amount of its cost into his bank account. Three days after that, the police called – they found the truck! It was on a shipping container in Montreal, bound for South Africa. Though he could have gotten the truck back, John no longer wanted it and opted to keep the money instead. As you can imagine, the whole experience was unsettling and stressful. A few personal possessions that had been in the truck were never regained.

Here’s what nobody said to John:

“Are you sure it was stolen? Maybe you lost it.”

“I can’t believe you let this happen. What kind of man are you?”

“Why didn’t you park in the garage? Why didn’t you put your key in a Faraday box so they couldn’t hack it?”

“This is no big deal. Just get over it. Everyone gets stuff stolen from them.”

“Don’t tell anyone else – it could lower your house price if people think crime rates are going up. Dodge might sue you if you tell people that there’s this flaw making their trucks easy to steal.”

Behind the numbers

According to the National Post, 120,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada in 2022. Headlines call it a national crisis. Presumably, every theft is reported and processed. Let’s say, 95 percent.

According to Statistics Canada, an estimated 460,000 sexual assaults occur each year in our country. Only 10 percent of sexual assault victims make a report to police – and of that number, only three cases out of 460,000 will result in criminal convictions (“Sexual Assault in Canada” by Holly Johnson, U. of Ottawa Press). That’s 0.0006 percent. Is there any other crime for which we’d say, oh well, no big deal, as long as one in every 150,000 perpetrators face legal repercussions for their actions, that should do it?

It’s not a fluke that 90 percent of sexual assault victims never speak with police. There are systemic reasons preventing them from coming forward – built into our culture and into our church cultures. It’s important to note that sexual abuse is not (only) about sex but about the use of power. Institutions are powerful. Anyone in charge of anything is powerful. If the person in charge within an institution does something wrong, the institution’s instinct is to protect that person. The victim, who has no power, does not get protection. Instead, all kinds of barriers and disincentives to speaking up are employed to stop the victim.

DENIAL: Are you sure your truck was stolen?
SHAME: I can’t believe you let this happen.
BLAME: Why didn’t you park in the garage? Why didn’t you put your key in a Faraday box so they couldn’t hack it?
MINIMIZE: This is no big deal. Just get over it. Everyone gets stuff stolen from them.
RETALIATION: Don’t tell anyone – it could lower your house price if people think crime rates are going up. Dodge might sue you if you tell people that there’s this flaw making their trucks easy to steal.

Now every analogy has its limits. Vehicle theft isn’t the same as physical abuse or sexual assault. John didn’t personally know the thieves, so there wasn’t a sense of personal betrayal. Though he did lose some trust in humanity as a whole, he didn’t have to face the thief. There was a small-t trauma: during those eight weeks while the police were looking for his truck, John felt a jolt every time he saw a truck just like his around town or on the highway; and sometimes he would tail it for a little while. He told me he scanned parking lots all summer, looking for his truck.

So the analogy has limits, but thinking through the stages of vehicle theft and its consequences as a crime helps us see how many systems are in place to protect and replace, essentially, machinery. Can we say the same for women’s bodies?

Do we have as many procedures in place to protect the precious young people in our churches as we do for our vehicles?

Living examples

Christian Courier readers will be familiar with the stories of Rachel Denhollander and Julie Macfarlane – both incredible women, lawyers, and survivors of sexual assault. Both women encountered obstacles on the long road to justice mentioned above: denial, shame, blame, minimization, and retaliation. The pattern repeats because it’s deliberate; decades apart, USA Gymnastics and the Anglican Church in the UK used the same tactics.

When Larry Nassar, doctor to Olympic gymnasts, sexually abused Denhollander, she was in denial. She kept thinking, “this can’t really be happening, right? Someone would have stopped him if this was inappropriate, right?” (What is a Girl Worth? 52). It’s a lot harder to make sense of an invisible crime. Nothing obvious – like a truck – is gone. Are you sure your truck was stolen? Victims begin to doubt themselves.

Seven women came forward with allegations of abuse against Nassar before Denhollander did. Each case was denied. Years later, once the investigation finally began, evidence came forward showing that Nassar’s employers, Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics, had “systematically buried reports of sexual assault against member coaches in a file cabinet instead of reporting them” (305). This is organized denial. It sounds creepily similar to the “Naughty Boy’s Cabinet” unofficially kept by the Church of England of evidence of abuse and to the secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors maintained by leaders in the Southern Baptist Church (as reported in Christianity Today). You’ve heard of organized crime? This is organized sin. It’s collusion. It’s defined as an accessory to the crime. It’s the reason why both parties were named, along with Nassar, in the court case as perpetrators.

Blame & retaliation

While detectives were building a case against Nassar – after the allegations had been publicized but before the court case began – there was a lot of public support for him. He was “portrayed on social media and in news reports by his friends as the real victim” while Denhollander was called “bitter and angry – she just wants money and attention.” As if, she says, “I was somehow benefitting from upending our lives and turning the sexual assault on my body into casual conversation” (What is a Girl Worth? 223). Attacks on her character and narrative continued during the trial – in the courtroom and outside it.

“The Anglican Church,” MacFarlane learned, “will go to the wall with an aggressively adversarial and highly legalistic strategy even where they are fully aware that the abuse complained of took place” (Going Public, 75). In addition to pleading the statute of limitations (which Canada no longer has any restrictions around for cases of sexual assault), the Anglican Church tried to get the case dismissed by claiming consent. It’s “repulsive and absurd,” Macfarlane said (she was 15 years old when the abuse began), “but that does not stop it from being deeply shaming and humiliating” (35). Blame can also include clothing critiques, derision for not reporting sooner, for not taking enough precautions and the long-held assumption, “conclusively disproved by research” … “that women routinely lie about sexual assault and present false claims” (79).

As difficult as it might feel, the #MeToo movement was a gift to the church. The balloon of appearances was punctured. Now we can see the messy reality of sin more clearly. It is awful, but it’s crucial – so repair work can begin.

I was driving my daughter to a tournament in downtown Toronto recently, and we hit a slowdown on the Don Valley Parkway. After inching along for a few kilometres we finally reached the reason for the delay – construction.

“You know,” my daughter said reflexively, “I used to think that someday all the roads would be fixed. Like, they’d catch up on everything.” She’s 17 and just started driving so she’s been noticing road-related things more. “Then I realized,” she said, “that all these roads and bridges always need work! They’re never done! There will always be construction! That was the day I became an adult,” she joked.

In one sense, the work of abuse prevention will never be done. There will always be more repair needed in this broken and hurting world. But we do not labour alone. God is with broken and hurting people, and he is with the good people working behind the scenes to stop, prevent and address spiritual abuse.

A beautiful future

The people who stole my brother-in-law’s truck were not joyriders. It was planned. They were part of an organized crime ring that figured out how to override anti-theft protections and use a vehicle’s own computer system to steal it. That means that not only does law enforcement have to change its methods but manufacturers and all levels of government.

That’s why, in early February, Prime Minister Trudeau and the federal government met with auto manufacturers and police for an Auto Summit to address the recent rise in vehicle theft, which has doubled in the last decade. That meeting doesn’t roll back the clock to prevent the theft of my brother-in-law’s truck, but it will help prevent future crime.

In the same way, we need more than one solution to preventing abuse in the church; we need entire systems providing support to victims even as we dismantle the systems harming survivors. We need people with gifts in advocacy, healing, raising awareness, listening, research, policy-writing, running workshops, designing posters. We need the equivalent of Neighborhood watch, insurance providers and first responders. We need the equivalent of the person next door with a camera on their porch. We need friends who listen over coffee to half-remembered stories. We need a team making sure there are fewer stories like that in the future.

I’ll end with the stolen truck analogy, one final time. And I hope you hear in these words a glimpse of a beautiful future for the church.

This is what didn’t happen:

It didn’t take John 24 years to report the crime. He didn’t have to wait until he heard of someone else who had their truck stolen before he came forward.

He didn’t have to go to the police station to make a report or argue with the insurance company or testify in court in order to prove his victimhood. He didn’t have to face the criminals, not that night or years later when they went to trial. He didn’t have to awkwardly avoid the criminal at church.

He didn’t have to wait 30 years for justice or get a law degree to make sure the perpetrators were prosecuted. My brother-in-law didn’t need therapy or need to find a new group of friends because the old ones thought getting robbed was his fault.

He didn’t move because neighbours started ignoring him. He didn’t develop an anxiety disorder or insomnia.

He still drives, though he never did buy another new truck. He still parks his car and the family van in their driveway.