According to Reverend Murray fortune, one of the foremost experts on clergy, sexual misconduct, or CSM as it's known at its heart, CSM breaks sacred trust, as best I can tell, that was indeed the core of the trauma I was experiencing. While I'd never thought of him as my minister, I believed that we both cared deeply about our faith that he could help me from that place. And it broke trust in another way. trust in myself, Why hadn't I paid attention to the signals why I kept meeting with him and so on. Coincidentally, three months later, the church's board learned that the minister was addicted to lost his phrase, and called the denominations headquarters, the Unitarian Universalist Association, or UUA. The UUA sent an executive who met with more than 20 women all alleged victims of his sexual abuse or harassment. Before she left, she encouraged a few of us with enough clear evidence to file complaints. But we were all too frightened. Pausing here to talk about my use of the word victim. Labels can be such a trap, so confining especially a label such as victim. However, the minister was portraying himself as, and this is an exact quote, the victim of a man hating lesbian conspiracy. This phrase hit some nerve endings, which I don't have time to explain. It was actually a clever opening gambit in his manipulation of the congregation. Sowing the first seeds of what eight months later would be classified as a level six, level five conflict, level six being more. So me at the time, coping with the word victim, I checked the dictionary and it fit my situation. Plus, it's unnecessary label for formal complaints. Meanwhile, as the church rocketed downhill, most of the other victims quietly disappeared. My solution was to go to 16. When I got to Rochester, I didn't say a word to anyone, not even to Bowdoin Sensei, as he was known then, I thought Zen was for tough silence samurai types, that I should keep my mental problems to myself. Instead, it was practice, practice, practice, and it gave me such respite relief, and a clear sense that I was strong. At home banking on this strength I decided to do as the executive at at had asked and file a formal complaint. I knew it it'd be hard, but I thought I could sit my way through the pain. I also thought if one woman stepped up then it would be easier for a few more wrong again, no one did. They were still too afraid. Looking back at that fear we all shared it was for very good reasons. We humans are social animals. Our need for community is primal. And the vast, vast majority of CSM victims end up having to leave. Or if like me, you stick around. There's at best a constant undercurrent of hostility. While I felt this and occasionally tried to talk about it, well meaning friends thought I was being paranoid and I was afraid they were right. Years later, it was a relief to learn. It's pretty much universal that whistleblowers who remain in the institution are stigmatized. I don't have time to talk more about this, but it was very real and is a big part of why I'm so grateful to have returned to the Sangha. Back to the complaint. A few weeks after filing it, I got a letter from a law firm threatening litigation. I freaked out, but fortunately, Alan's a lawyer, and he said, if they were serious, it would have been an actual lawsuit that the minister was trying to intimidate me. While he did scare me badly for the rest of his life. Actually, I didn't back down. And my solitary complaint was enough so that when an investigating team came to town, all the women who had been too afraid to join the complaint, were able to give testimony with their names withheld from the minister. Meanwhile, the UUA assigned him another minister who acted as his advocate at church board meetings, but they refused to sign anyone to me that the UUA wouldn't give me anyone when he had a second minister on his side was bad enough. What made it worse was that their policy required a victim to speak up, they wouldn't allow anyone else to file a complaint or otherwise deal with his misconduct. Worst of all, long before he started hitting on me, they knew that a he'd been fired from his previous congregation for sexual relations with multiple congregants and B, he was now calling himself a sex a hall like. Similarly, when they eventually found him guilty based on my complaint, they sent the finding to him and the church's board president, but again, by their policy, wouldn't send it to me. Some years later, I realized I was just evidence to them, and they were yet more ministers dehumanizing, not just me, but thanks to their policy, all victims who had the wherewithal to speak up. I'm still angry for several weeks after sushi and I continued to dues as in, but given that many days, it was all I could do to brush my teeth. Within a month that went. There was one particularly bad day when the local paper happened to call hoping to interview me. I desperately wanted my side of the story heard. But my wonderful supporters, including Alan were clear with both the journalist in me that I shouldn't talk with them. A few hours later, I was standing next to the answering machine was the journalists voicemail, and I fold it up in a ball on the floor. I thought it was a nervous breakdown though. By that time my therapist had diagnosed me with PTSD. But I'm a geek, not a psychologist, and it took me years to understand that first, her diagnosis was correct and second, its implications. Expecting myself to sit in these circumstances was like pushing myself to practice with severe vomiting. That's actually what really bad PTSD can feel like to me vomiting up mental poisons of densely packed negative emotions and memories, impossible to untangle, let alone sit with. So I believe Buddhist practice was a never failing lifeline. And home I can see it was trauma obliterating that possibility. At the time this loss of faith felt cataclysmic, like a foundation kicked out from under me. As the months dragged on, there were various nasty incidents but they aren't worth going into with one exception. That was a mass mailing castigating those of us who questioned the minister's behavior signed by something like 20 local ministers and rabbis. I became terrified of clergy. My office was near a divinity school library and when I ran into men in any kind of clerical garb, collars, robes, etc. I'd panic and flee. So I began 1993 with brown hair, but by the end of the year, it had grown in white. Also, I went down six sizes and clothing. The only things that kept me going were Alan, our sweet children and a few dear friends. After six interminable months, the UUA is adjudicators found the minister guilty of conduct unbecoming when I heard the news Is I suddenly felt a weight I hadn't noticed before coming off of my shoulders. Then a few weeks later, the church's board sent the finding to the whole congregation. And I actually felt happy for two days. It ended when Alan told me there have been yet another mass mailing. It was anonymous postmark Boston, where the UUA is located in began, I'm told, with copies of my confidential complaint, followed by the minister's responses to it in which, at some length he portrayed me as deranged and chasing after him. I pitched back into a very dark mind state, powerless to defend myself and paralyzed by shame. Worst of all, I was terrified that maybe some of what he said was true. So it served as both public humiliation and gaslighting. The adjudicators did an investigation of everyone privy to the complaint concluded the minister was responsible and put further sanctions on him.