Recovery from abuse and church hurt can be long and painful with many setbacks.  But progress can happen with support from safe listeners.

That was the message from speakers on Saturday — day two of the Restore Conference at Judson University in Elgin, Ill.

“My husband and I took one step forward only to take at least 10 steps back,” said speaker Lori Anne Thompson, a survivor of abuse by the late Ravi Zacharias. “It took forever to not lose ground.”

Similarly, Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), said he was despondent after he learned the truth about Zacharias and quit his job.

“My childhood hero was a liar, bully, and sexual predator,” Weitnauer said. “. . . Why would God bring me to work for a sexual predator and corrupt ministry? I felt so rejected and hopeless.”

Julie Roys, founder of Restore and The Roys Report (TRR), which organized the conference, also shared her struggles not to quit reporting in the face of painful opposition and the temptation to become like the people she investigated.

“Many of you feel betrayed by those you expected to support you, a sense of futility about the work that you’re doing,” Roys said. “And there are moments when you feel your work or advocacy is molding you into someone you don’t want to be.”

But Thompson, Weitnauer, Roys, and other speakers offered hope to the approximately 200 survivors of church abuse, ministry leaders, and advocates attending Restore. Conference videos are in the works.

“Grieving can be really, really, really complicated,” Thompson said. “But grieving does come to an end.”

Katharine Spires, who traveled from Louisiana for the conference, said she could relate to the speakers’ stories. She came wondering when the sadness of her own struggles to expose abuse would end.

“I call mine a year of being frozen,” said Spires. “I came here hoping and praying for peace. I would like to find some meaningful stopping point, if that exists, when I can stop being so sad . . . Being with people who get it and totally understand what you’re going through is huge.”

RZIM victims share their stories

Referring to her talk as her “magnum opus” and the last time she’d speak for the foreseeable future, Thompson started by relaying her story of childhood abuse. She said that abuse made her vulnerable to Zacharias’s predation later on.

“My father was released from prison, but I was not,” she said. “As an adult, I was repeatedly revictimized by men in places of power and fiduciary duty, men that I once dearly loved and deeply trusted.”

Thompson recalled that after the abuse, Zacharias in 2017 got the world to believe she was the aggressor. “I lost my home, my occupation, and nearly my life itself,” she recalled. “Justice was a joke and so was hope.”

But in 2021, TRR reported Thompson’s story and Christianity Today reported that Zacharias had abused multiple massage therapists. Then, a third-party investigation concluded that Thompson and the therapists’ allegations were true.

The years when Thompson wasn’t believed were agonizing, Thompson said. She had only her counselor and attorney as trusted confidants and support.

“It took me at least a year-and-a-half not to be hemorrhaging and another year-and-a-half to be safe and stable,” she said. “I had no hope left so I had to borrow theirs.”

In addition to therapy, she journaled, meditated, prayed, and exercised. And slowly, she recovered.

“Take the time to feel what safety looks like,” Thompson told the survivors at the conference. “You should be able to dribble the ball in such a fashion that you can still look around and see where things are at.”

Each journey of recovery looks different, said psychologist Phil Monroe, who also spoke at Restore. But before anything else, he advised self-compassion. Stability is the next goal, he said. And then, life after trauma is an opportunity to rewrite your story.

“Somebody took your story, hijacked it, told you things that weren’t true, gave you false vocabulary, told you — you were the problem,” Monroe said. “Begin your story again . . . It’s the work of writing and rewriting the narrative of you.”

Weitnauer confessed he thought at first that Thompson was extorting Zacharias and Julie Roys, who reported her story, was a “liar” and a “clickbait journalist.”

But then he compared everything RZIM and Zacharias had told him against TRR’s documentation and found 87 discrepancies. Soon afterward, Christianity Today and WORLD Magazine reported further allegations against Zacharias.

“As I read those articles, my heart sank,” he said. “. . . I was reluctantly, but totally, convinced. And I felt that I had a responsibility to take action.”

In January 2021, Weitnauer resigned from RZIM and spoke out about what he believed. The experience isolated him and he grew disillusioned.

“There were times I was in so much pain, I didn’t know if I would ever get better,” Weitnauer said.

And yet he found some things to do that helped, like going to the gym, meeting with a counselor, leaning on family, and getting honest with his emotions and with God.

“Even though I was yelling at God, I continued to sense that God was with me, and that God loved me,” Weitnauer said.

Persecution from the church

Also sharing her story at Restore was Naghmeh Panahi, the former wife of Pastor Saeed Abedini. Panahi led a global campaign from 2012-2015 to free her husband from an Iranian prison, with Christians’ support. But when she revealed that her husband had abused her, Christians turned on her.

“I lost my marriage. I lost my income. I had stones thrown at me,” she said. “I was literally by the side of the road and all the religious leaders were either kicking me or quietly walking by.”

Panahi had shared portions of her story at last year’s Restore. But this year, she shared new details from her recent book, I Didn’t Survive: Emerging Whole After Deception, Persecution, and Hidden Abuse.

Panahi immigrated from war-torn Iran to the United States with her parents, and became a Christian at age 9. Then right after 9/11, Panahi returned to Iran to be a missionary. She got to be part of a revival of house churches and saw Muslims hungry for the Gospel.

The churches were egalitarian, with no titles, stages, or prestige. Panahi said Muslim women feel safe in such churches, where men honor women’s leadership.

These weak, broken women who have been shattered by the Iranian regime, Jesus is using in one of the hardest countries of the world.

It’s women leading the church in Iran. Men in house churches honor them.@NaghmehSPanahi #Restore2023 #IDidntSurvive pic.twitter.com/WAS9Ju0GZ9

— Julie Roys (@reachjulieroys) October 14, 2023

Panahi told a story of a 25-year-old woman who was arrested and tortured, but wouldn’t share a single name of the 500 people she was discipling. “That’s what it means to be a leader,” she said. “You’re literally laying down your life for the sheep.”

Panahi said the church in Iran makes the American church pale in comparison.

“Anyone that comes from the house church in Iran or China, when they come here, they’re like, ‘. . . People are gathering in buildings, but the church is dead,’” she said.

Miriam Ibraheem, Panahi’s best friend, was supposed to also speak on Saturday, but, at the last minute, was unable to attend. Panahi relayed that Ibraheem was given a death sentence for her faith by radical Muslims in Sudan, which made her a hero among Christians. However, Christians abandoned Ibraheem when she wanted to divorce her abusive husband.

But Panahi said that even though the church may turn its back on abused women, God never does.

“God cannot resist his people being broken,” she said. “He will step in. And so, both for the persecuted church and the abused, my heart is for them.”

Don’t Quit

Julie Roys closed the conference by addressing the trials, opposition, and temptations she and others encounter when calling out abuse and corruption in the church and standing with survivors. She also relayed her own struggle with persevering through personal attacks, fabricated stories about her reporting, and a distressing failure.

“I was just trying to keep my head above water,” Roys recounted. “Emotionally, I was spinning. It was so, so tough.”

Roys said a former blogger, who had become a friend, called her during her crisis and suggested she quit. He noticed her own tribe was turning on her, she recalled. He told her she had exposed the pattern abusers use, so anyone open to the truth should have gotten it by now. And he feared if she continued, the pressures may warp her into someone she didn’t want to be.

But Roys shared how she felt called to her work, and how God had redeemed what seemed the worst of circumstances before.

The very thing Roys thought would end her career — getting fired by the Moody Bible Institute for speaking up about unethical practices — actually launched The Roys Report. She also said God used the hurting people she met through her reporting on Harvest Bible Chapel and Willow Creek Community Church to launch the Restore Conference.

“And I bet some of you . . . if you looked back over your life, and even this chapter, you might be able to see God’s hand working redemptively,” Roys said. “Maybe not yet . . . But I would just encourage you to hang on to Jesus.”

Roys also likened God’s work to purify the church today to the Protestant Reformation, saying such movements take time and perseverance. She also argued that corruption in the church is the most serious threat to this country, but most Christians don’t even know it.

“How many times have we heard that the hope of the world is Jesus and his means of rescuing the world is through the church?” Roys asked. “And we’re supposed to be the salt of the earth. We’re supposed to be a light on the hill. And we’re Sodom and Gomorrah!”

Roys ended by urging others to not lose hope.

“Some of you — I know because I’ve talked to you — are hanging by a thread right now,” she said. “I would just encourage you to see the way God has been working in your life, doing what he said he would do . . . He takes evil that was done against us, and he works it for good. And if he’s calling you to a certain work, I’d encourage you to do it with all your might as unto the Lord.”

Rebecca Hopkins is a journalist based in Colorado.