The GRACE final report on Bob Jones University

On December 11, 2014, over two years after BJU had announced that they would hire GRACE,  GRACE issued their 301-page report on BJU. The entire report can be found here. We’ve created a nine-page outline and brief summary of the report that you can read here.

The day before the report came out, Steve Pettit made an announcement about it in chapel, which we discussed here. An even more thorough analysis of his announcement, by someone who has had more experience analyzing such things, can be found here.

As you can see from the outline and summary, the first 42 pages of the report are introduction. The last 70 pages or so are appendices.

The actual results of the investigation starts on page 43 and goes through page 220. This is where you’ll find many quotations from abuse survivors. The footnotes are important to read too.

A brief glance at the outline and summary will show that the report emphasizes the following:

Chapter 3: Institutional Responses to victims of sexual violence — Messages of blame and shame

Chapter 4: Trauma and Vulnerability — The University’s poor response to symptoms of PTSD; their emphasis on Matthew 18 confrontation and a form of “forgiveness”

Chapter 5: Safe Disclosures — The University conflated counseling with discipline, held no significant standard of confidentiality, and lacked in training for resident counselors

Chapter 6: Reporting of Sexual Offenses — The University apparently colossally failed  in their reporting obligations, especially prior to 2010.

Chapter 7: Spiritual Impact — Many of those who received trauma counseling at BJU were left feeling that if they couldn’t be sinless and flawless, God would not accept them.

Appendices for Chapter 5: More information about the conflation of counseling with discipline.

Appendices for Chapter 6: Appendices 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 give case examples of sexual crimes on and off campus, both before and after 2010.

If you don’t have time to read all of the report, these sections will give you a good overview of the problems.