Supporting Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse: A Mimetic Theory Approach for the Local Church

Offering a model of care that the church can use with survivors of sexual abuse, this supportive book is backed up by Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory throughout.

The book proposes that the treatment survivors receive in churches could be greatly improved if instead of adding to a survivor’s sense of guilt, difference or isolation or trying to change survivors’ thoughts, feelings or behaviour they adopt the role of God as benevolent other. It shows that by adopting these beliefs churches can move past unintentional scapegoating of sexual abuse survivors and into a healing community where survivors feel included on churchgoers’ journeys towards health and wholeness.