Churches would rather protect their institutions and leaders from scandal than protect victims.

Shes absolutely right! The churches haven't supported assaulted victims well at all in the past! I knew a high school girl who had been molested by her youth minister, and the congregation got mad at HER. "You're causing us to lose an excellent youth pastor!" She and her family left, the youth pastor stayed! He should have been tarred and feathered! As for forgiveness? Hell no! First, help the victim, help him/her to heal. Then, some years later, discuss forgiveness! And fire the person in the church who is a pesophile and press charges. Helping the victim get justice (incarcerate the pedophile) will do more to help healing instead of a lecture on forgiveness. I'm not surprised if this isn't the reason people are leaving the church, and I don't blame them!!!

Catholic church, abusive priests; do we need to look any further to know this?

Holy crap is bullshit.

Yeah..and they're NO GOOD at marriage counseling either.

No matter what, the solution is for the wife to be more obedient and to "love and forgive" her abusive and/or cheating husband. It's all about passive submission to the will of men, sweeping things under the rug, victim blaming.

After one church counseling visit, where my husband blamed me for everything, denying anything he'd done, I never went back.
Instead, I divorced him.
Best idea yet.

She changed churches.

No big surprise, and if you are anything but cis gender they prey-oops, there's that freudian slip again- pray for god to 'fix' you. I AM surprised this doctor got away with the behavior for so long. That is appalling.

I came from a large religious family, and no one even talked about sex period. No Sex Ed at school. No "Birds & Bees" talk from parents or any respectful adult, so it becomes impossible to talk to anyone about anything sexual. So this imposed shame causes most young victims to just keep it to themselves.

Is it even possible for a repeat offender to "truly repent" on every occasion?

I know first hand this is true.

First of all, some of the creepiest men I've ever met were members of the church I used to attend, so church is certainly not free from predators.

Secondly, in my experience, whenever there was a scandal involving sexual harassment/assault, the church leaders attempted to handle it "in house" and avoid bringing congregation members to justice involving the more conventional avenues, like the police. Just look at the Duggar family, they are a perfect example of this twisted situation.

To paraphrase Elizabeth Esther, author of a memoir about escaping a religious cult, when all things are considered evil, hardly anything is ever considered truly evil. And “withholding” forgiveness from an abuser, who may have already repented of his sin to God and to his mentors, is a sin of its own.

The consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder are frequently minimized, if not ignored completely.

Denhollander continued:

[Christians] can tend to gloss over the devastation of any kind of suffering but especially sexual assault, with Christian platitudes like God works all things together for good or God is sovereign. Those are very good and glorious biblical truths, but when they are misapplied in a way to dampen the horror of evil, they ultimately dampen the goodness of God. Goodness and darkness exist as opposites. If we pretend that the darkness isn’t dark, it dampens the beauty of the light.

This is the idea behind the verse from Romans 8:28, “All things will work together for the glory of those who love God.” Some Christians would say, then, that any depression or anger a victim feels after an assault is the result of a refusal to trust God for healing and restoration.
If only it were that simple.