S1E1: What the Hell Happened?

S1E1: What The Hell Happened

You are about to hear the personal experiences of Sarah Carter and Corinne Shark, told by them, in their own words. Sarah's husband is the former lead teaching pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois. At the time of his service, more than 25k congregants gathered at Willow Creek each weekend to worship. In 2018, multiple women came forward to assert that the founding pastor of Willow Creek had been engaging in sexual misconduct for decades. The fallout of this hit many lives, including Sarah’s. Corinne's husband is a former lead investigator for The Exodus Road, a non-profit whose website states they are “on the front lines of the fight to end human trafficking.” When the Sharks encountered a culture of inappropriate sexual behavior by organization leadership in 2017, they attempted to address it internally. They paid dearly for that act. 

This is Sarah's story. This is Corinne's story. Let the women speak.

To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram:
@heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne 

For more information about Spiritual Pyro, visit www.spiritualpyro.com. 

TRIGGER WARNINGS: sexual assault, sexual violence

Episode Transcript

>> Sarah (00:02):
for all the Match Strikers, this is
Spiritual Pyro.

(00:26):
Hi, and welcome. I'm Sarah.

>> Corinne (00:28):
And I'm Corinne

>> Sarah (00:30):
We've spent three years writing a book that was
set to release last year.

>> Corinne (00:34):
And then it didn't.

>> Sarah (00:35):
And then we went dark and didn't tell you why
until now.

>> Corinne (00:39):
But first, we need to catch you up on a little bit of the
backstory.

>> Sarah (00:43):
Yeah, we should probably tell you what happened.
Just so you know, we've taken our time writing this first
episode. There are parts of our story we've shared
before and parts we're sharing for the very
first time.

>> Corinne (00:55):
Some of what we share might feel heavy. You might
even hear our voices shake. That's okay.
It all belongs.

>> Sarah (01:02):
So meet us back here at the end of the episode. We're so
glad you're with us.

>> Corinne (01:06):
Grab a blanket and pull up around the fire.
Welcome to Spiritual Pyro.

>> Rebeca (01:30):
You are about to hear the personal experience
of Sarah Carter, wife of Steve,
the former lead teaching pastor of
Willow Creek Community Church in
Illinois. Told by her in
her own words. At the time of
Steve'service More than 25,000
congregants gathered at Willow Creek each weekend

(01:52):
to worship. In 2018,
multiple women came forward to assert
that the founding pastor of Willow Creek had
been engaging in sexual misconduct for
decades. The fallout of
this hit many lives, including
Sarah'until. Now,

(02:12):
she has not shared the details of what transpired
in her heart, mind and home
during those dark days. Today, she
breaks that silence in this step toward
reclamation by sharing her story
with you now.

>> Sarah (02:41):
Okay, so it was 2012. We were living in
Southern California. I was working as an artist
at a gallery, and Steve was the campus pastor at the local
church. Emerson was 4, and I was
pregnant with Mercy. That year, Steve
was offered a director of evangelism, and teacher at large
position at a megachurch in the Midwest.

(03:01):
The possibility of a new role, the chance to
develop lead, and the exposure to
global partnerships came at the perfect time for our
family. And we jumped at the opportunity.
Internally, my belief system was already
evolving as I began to deconstruct my own
faith. In some ways, my deconstruction had

(03:22):
already begun. in many
ways, I was not yet
fully accepting that my faith was
shifting and was doing everything I
could to convince myself that I could continue to sort
of ignore the looming questions and the invitations into
my own spiritual deconstruction, but also just
evolving faith and that I could kind of

(03:45):
keep powering through, keep being the good pastor's wife and
kind of keep everything running smoothly and on
track. I remember when it
wasn't long after we got the job offer that a friend
familiar with the church called to tell me I
better get myself together and commit to
being a constructive member.

(04:05):
She actually warned me not to do
anything to drag down the church's good
name. I answered
so earnestly that of course I was going to give it
my best shot at being
positive, attending weekend services and
supporting Steve. It's actually wild
how at the time that conversation didn't seem

(04:27):
strange to me. I was so certain
that I could continue being the good pastor's
wife. The church was one of the original
seeker sensitive megachurches and its ethos
oozed structure, control and
power from the ground up. It
orbited around one man and his
philosophy that the local church was the hope of

(04:50):
the world. So Steve hit the ground running and
began working 60 plus hours a week
while he was thriving in the strive to succeed culture of the
church. I was so lonely and struggling
with a really rough pregnancy. A much more
challenging beginning to the fresh
start that I had hoped for. I wanted so

(05:11):
badly to be able to be strong and
supportive and to not be a
problem. The pregnancy was so
draining and I really didn't have community
yet. And I was struggling with loneliness just trying to
find my place amongst aew. Everything.
New home, new neighborhood, new church, new
friends, new grocery stores,

(05:32):
new everything and, and not feeling
like myself was making it all the more
difficult to do. I
remember the senior pastor suggesting that rather than risk
delivering on a weekend church service, I
should schedule an inducement so that Steve could be there
for the birth of our daughter if there was any doubt

(05:53):
about where their priorities lay. That sums it up.
Nothing was more important than the church,
especially those weekend services and the tens of thousands of
dollars that they brought in. The shiny facade of
the church was beginning to fade for me and I felt like
I was being judged by the friend who'd warned me to behave
before we'd moved. I actually started to second

(06:14):
guess myself in many ways. I
was living incongruntly and had a really hard time knowing who I
was, what was me and what was
me pretending.

(06:39):
Anyway, fast forward a few years. The kids are
now 4 and 9. I was still working as an
artist. Although I didn't have a gallery space, I was
working on commission pieces for clients local and
throughout the country out of a home
studio. Steve was positioned to become the co
lead pastor as part of the organization's succession
plan. I was still struggling with

(07:01):
trying to figure out how my faith fit in this new world
and this new church, in this new system, especially as mine was
continuing to shift. In
a conversation we didn't see coming,
Steve's book publisher warned there were former
staff members of the church coming forward with
allegations of sexual misconduct

(07:21):
against the senior pastor. That information
sent me reeling. We
had no idea there'd been any sort of malfeasance
occurring in any capacity regarding the
pastor. It wasn't long after that that the Chicago
Tribune published an article about an
investigation they'd conducted examining allegations of
inappropriate behavior by the senior

(07:44):
pastor, along with quotes and
information surrounding the women's experiences.
Steve would actually come home and debrief some of his meetings.
In one, the staff were told that the allegations were
false attempts by the disgruntled employees to bring
down the pastor ahead of his retirement.
But without any reason to doubt them, many

(08:04):
accepted this explanation. While I chose
not to attend, Steve assisted the leadership team with a
churchwide meeting where they shared, a similar
explanation with the entire 20,000 plus
congregation. But my gut
told me there was more to the story, and I
started asking questions on my social platforms.

(08:25):
As a result, Steve was told by the senior
pastor to get control of
Sarah.
So I was ready to go to the map, drop every mor soul of information

(08:46):
I had, and set the whole place on fire. I was
furious that they were trying to keep me quiet. This
organization that I wasn't even employed at,
was trying to control my personal
platforms, my personal voice,
information that
pertained to more of the process that
was going on behind the scenes, more of the elaborate attempts

(09:08):
that were being made to try to manage the
stories, to try to manage the angles, to try to manage the
communication, the way that these women's
experiences were perceived publicly,
and to try to control the narrative.
But I held back.
Blowing it all up and burning it all down would have
been one way to go. It sure as hell would

(09:30):
have satisfied my rage and the indignation I felt at
being muzzled. But
this job put food on our table and paid our mortgage every
month. It was still important to
Steve, and we still had many people we cared about within the
community. Internally, I was terrified
of what would happen if we really tried to go up against this
machine and we lost. We could lose everything.

(09:52):
We would lose our income, we would lose our security,
we would lose belonging. We could lose our
reputations, our good standing,
our future opportunities. So much felt like it
was on the line if we were to cross them in the wrong way
and really take it to where I wanted to take it to which was to just
expose the truth, to just get it out there.

(10:14):
I m was tangling with a very dangerous system
and I didn't yet know just how serious the st were
about to become. Then
more accusations came against the senior pastor
and more supporting details were published in more
articles spaces including
Chicago Tribune and Christianity

(10:35):
Today. The church leadership hired PR
firms and lawyers to help combat the growing
unease amongst staff, congregants and the public
eye. My awareness of a larger
global sisterhood of women was growing too. The hash
MeToo movement was already well underway and the
believe woman phenomenon was spreading
worldwide. The juxtaposition of

(10:57):
support for women with events like the original
women's March in downtown Chicago, which I actually
marched in alongside thousands of women and supporters,
was in glaring contrast to what I watched
happen behind closed doors at the church where
they were protecting the abuser and
disbelieving the victims. We were

(11:17):
struggling to find a path forward as I was entirely
in support of the women and wanted to be so loud about
it. Steve was
trying to keep it all together, terrified of the
implications if he allowed himself to consider that their
claims of abuse were valid.
This put a massive strain on our relationship.

(11:37):
It really did. It was so hard to feel like we
not necessarily were on opposite side sides of the
issue, but were in opposite
positions as far as what to do about it.
I knew that Steve was so full of
integrity. I felt deeply in my
heart that I was coming from a place
of integrity. And the fact that we weren't in

(12:00):
alignment just made everything we were going through
that much harder. It made both of us feel that much
more lonely and confused.
And it made it really hard to just navigate our
normal family life, to know how to
function within our normal family, in our normal
home. How do we interact with our kids? What are the stories we're
telling? What are we withholding? How do we have these

(12:23):
really hard conversations with each other without
turning on each other, without getting us, either
of us, into a position where we felt like our backs were
up against the wall, really, how do we let each
other both exist as full
individuals within
this dynamic of just utter

(12:43):
devastation and disillusionment? As we're watching
the scandal unfold publicly on
all of these platforms, but then also
privately, the way that it was rippling through our own
relationship, our own selves, and within our family and
within other friendships as well. It was
an incredibly hard impacts and one that

(13:04):
took us a really long time to navigate our
way through.
But there was no denying the facts, and
he quietly met with many of the Women who'd come forward and

(13:24):
learned more of the context and story.
Their accounts only added to the stack of
evidence gathered against the senior pastor, making
it impossible to ignore the blatant
coverup happening in the organization.
At this point, we still weren't clear on why moreore wasn't
being done to investigate the claims and

(13:45):
why the leadership elders and HR protocol
had been so ineffective. After
even more articles and allegations were brought forth,
the church held another congregational meeting.
There, the senior pastor announced his decision
to retire. Yep,
retire. So cute, huh?

(14:06):
That way he retained control of the narrative
while relieving himself of public accountability.
What a perfectly designed system for
perpetually unchecked abuses of power.

(14:32):
After that, Steve came home and told me he spent the day with our
friend who'd invited him to join her in a legal
meeting with her, her lawyer,
an HR staff person, an
elder, a pastoral care staff
person, and a lawyer representing
the church. I remember I was
outside in our front patio watering the

(14:54):
flowers when Steve called
me to tell me that our friend had invited
him into that meeting. And I believe my friend,
but I was nervous about all the other people that were going to
be a part of that meeting. I didn't know
what Steve would be walking into. Was this a meeting that would
look. That was like a setup? It was

(15:14):
so hard to trust anyone at
this point who was affiliated with the church. And I was really
nervous that he might be walking into a situation
that would reflect poorly on him or that would
be almost like sabotage. And
I struggled to, like, really encourage him to do
it, to go. To say yes.

(15:35):
I know that his courage
in that moment was something that I really clung to because I wasn't
feeling brave. I was really starting to feel the impact
of and see the ripple, effects
of how our
being difficult, and I say that with
quotes are being difficult, in the eyes

(15:56):
of the leadership. Our refusal to just
go along with whatever they were saying we should go along
with was already becoming problematic.
And I was really, for the first time,
probably coming face to face with some of the.
How deep this scandal ran and
how elaborate it really was. And
so knowing that he was being invited into a meeting

(16:18):
u. with so many lawyers and PR people and,
and staff that at that point,
neither of us really trusted, from, from the church side.
And it was really because of
our friend who we know and we trust and we
believe that I found a way to find
peace with the fact that he was going

(16:38):
to be stepping into this meeting, into this space with these
people. He had no
idea what he was walking into, but agreed to go on
behalf of our friend. In the meeting,
he learned about a long process that
had already been underway in which our
friend had reported her own experiences of
misconduct by the senior pastor to HR

(17:01):
in which she had been continuously gaslit and
bypassed. My
heart broke for my friend and raged at the wrongdoing
she experienced. You know,
honestly, at that point
I felt so disoriented and so dysregulated
that I didn't really
stop to even think about the fact

(17:24):
that my friend had kept
such, such horrible
experiences to herself that she had
felt so afraid that she
couldn't even let
us in. It felt like everything was coming at us so
fast. There really wasn't time to slow down and
feel much. I know now, looking

(17:47):
back, I was in full on survival mode
and felt incredibly unable
to really process much outside
of the immediate emotion that was going to
keep myself and my family
the safest that we could possibly be in the midst of what felt
like now looming and ongoing threats

(18:07):
coming daily. And part
of what made that so hard is that they weren't necessarily
spoken threats. They were perceived and implied
threats. It was more in the implied
warnings that the
powers that be at any moment could take
away our stability, our security,

(18:28):
and for Steve especially, even just
his responsibility and his access
to his career that he had
worked so hard for. We were being kept out of
many other details and discussions. And if our friend hadn't
invited Steve to join her that day, we likely would have
had no idea the meeting had even happened.

(18:50):
I sat on the couch as he recounted the story, my
mouth open. I was absolutely
devastated. For
me, this was the ultimate turning point.
No longer was this an issue about what happened in the
past. Now it was current.
Now it was ongoing. Now it was happening. To
my friend, staying silent and doing

(19:12):
nothing was no longer an option.
Even then, though, we believed it was just an information issue
and that once the leaders had more context, they would
make an informed decision that protected the victims and held
those in the wrong accountable.
can we just have a moment of
silence for the ways that we hope for the

(19:34):
best? Because it's so earnest
and so trusting and
so naive.

(20:09):
@m this point, Steve and I were in complete alignment in the
fact that we believe the women, we believe their experiences, and
that we wanted to do everything we could to show
that support and to try to figure out ways
to navigate
this, this devastating
truth in a way that felt honoring and full of

(20:29):
integrity and opportunity for there to be understanding.
So together we talked about it and came to the decision
that we wanted to bring our concerns to the board of
elders. Steve set up the
meeting with the elders, and while he was there,
I stayed home and tried my best
to distract myself. I was so

(20:49):
anxious, but really I had such
an expectation that there. That this would be a path, that this would
be a bridge, that, that he was going to come home
and tell me that there was
understanding and that there was clarity
brought to the table. that the elders were open
to finding a more

(21:10):
honoring and authentic and
honest approach to the
experiences that these women shared and what
next steps needed to happen as a result.
He told them that he and I planned to post a statement that we
had co authored on his website supporting the women.
Most elders balked and doubled down on their stance of

(21:31):
the senior pastor's innocence. They iterated the
importance of Christian unity and warned him
that speaking publicly would cause confusion and hurt the
church. When Steve shared this
with me, it was suddenly clear that we were no
longer in alignment with their process in any
way. And in that moment, we became a
threat to their efforts to control the narrative.

(21:54):
We publish the post anyway.
We affirmed the courage of the women who came forward
with the allegations, and we said we
believe them. We asked for
honesty and accountability, and
then we braced ourselves for the repercussions.
And they hit swift and

(22:15):
deliberate.
So after the post went live, people went off
on social media. Most of it was affirming and
supportive. I received direct messages from people who
shared their own stories of abuse and survival in

(22:37):
churches all over. Many of them had
never shared with anyone before.
I felt so out of my depth.
I didn't know how to hold that
kind of pain and hold those stories well.
It felt overwhelming because I felt so
honored and trusted, and it felt overwhelming

(22:59):
because I had no idea what I was supposed to do
next. And honestly, this is part of
what can feel hard about being a
pastor's wife is you. You want to be there for so many
people, and you have the privilege of getting
to invited in to some more of the
vulnerable and m raw parts of a

(23:19):
person's story.
And while that's such a beautiful thing, we are also just
people, people who, for myself,
I'm still just a person. I
Im'm a woman, I'm a wife, I'm a
mother. And Im'm navigating my own
grief, my own overwhelm. And

(23:40):
walking that path and trying to do it well
was exhausting in a way that I had not
ever experienced before.
Of course, some individuals decided it was
their job to reprimand me.
Primarily, they did not think I was
behaving like a pastor's wife, ought to.

(24:01):
The calling to account publicly had upset the
balance, and I was acting in a way that was
causing disruption.

>> Corinne (24:09):
How dare I?

>> Sarah (24:11):
We had a few close friends who stuck by our side as we
confronted the leadership and begged for more honesty and accountability
from the elders and staff. We became
trauma bonded, kind of like a ragtag band of
repbel fighting for our lives.
But, there were also many who we'd expected to echo our
concerns and desire for truth that surprised

(24:31):
us and chose to stay silent or even tried to
shut us up. Suddenly we were treated
like liabilities or vigilantes,
depending on the crowd.
I remember one friend calling and screaming at
me because I was messing up her plans for how
she thought it all should go. She said I
was betraying her by stepping out of line,

(24:54):
and her tone toward me felt as if she was
punishing me for it. I was disinvited
to dinners and shunned from friend circles.
And like a real life scene from Mean Girls, there were
rumors and insults spread about me in numerous
circles. Inside,
I felt like the ground was ripped out from under me,
like no one was safe, like I was

(25:16):
being treated as the person who had done the harm
rather than as one of the ones who called it out.
Not only that, but so many of our friendships. At
that time, our lives and our families were
intertwined. We would do weekly dinners as
families, and suddenly, not only
were we losing those connections, but our

(25:37):
kids were too. It was devastating to watch their
friendship suffer because of this
massive thing that was going on that they didn't
have really any framework for and that they didn't really have
information for or language for. As we were trying to navigate
what's appropriate for them to know and what's not,
we also noticed that Steve was kept out of more leadership

(25:57):
meetings. His position had already shifted
from co lead pastor to lead
teaching pastor. As the other co lead pastor became
the lead executive pester, she was the final
decision maker, accountable to the elders, even though
the congregation still looked to Steve for direction because he was
the one up on the weekend stages.

(26:18):
Although the former senior pastor was no longer
leading the congregation, he wasn't entirely out
of the picture. Steve worked so hard to
establish boundaries with him, but not everyone did.
During that time, we had to reassess what remaining in
the role would even entail. The church was
conflicted, confused, and there was a lot of work

(26:40):
that would need to be done from the top down in order to establish
a healthy system and environment. This was
work that we both wanted to do. At
this point, I was so wrapped up in
the beauty of what could happen
if the story shifted and
I held on tight, so tight fisted to that

(27:00):
hope that there could be something good on the other
side if everyone would just dig in
and choose to do the right thing. Even though I knew this was
going to be hard, we were asking so much.
Disruption comes with mess and
pain.
Some reason at that point, despite all the
evidence to the contrary that I had yet seen,

(27:22):
I still believed that together we could build something beautiful
with the ashes of the current reality.
Steve and the lead executive pastor then had
a really difficult conversation in which he
shared that their principles were no longer in alignment
and that because of their vastly different approaches to
leading through the scandal and fallout, we did not

(27:43):
feel integrity in him continuing to lead alongside
her. He came home and told me
that they'd both agreed to prayerfully consider if they were
still truly feeling called to lead the
congregation. And when they spoke
again, she confirmed that she felt
strongly called by God to continue leading
there, and he communicated that

(28:05):
he would not stand in her way, he would not stage a
coup, but that it meant he would
be resigning. She and a few
elders asked him to wait before making anything
official, and he agreed for the sake of the
church. And
then the article hits.

>> Rebeca (28:33):
M.

>> Sarah (28:48):
On a Sunday morning, the New York
Times published an article detailing
the firsthan account of a former assistant to
the former senior pastor who had gone on
to become the publisher at a major
Christian publishing house. In it,
she shared multiple experiences of his
misconduct and their sexual encounters from decades

(29:10):
earlier when she'd worked for him at the church.
The article actually included copies of notes and
correspondence between them. It was like a
bomb went off. After that. Our
phones were blowing up with texts and calls from people
freaking out over the article. Steve
and I were stunned. We didn't know
what to think. We didn't know what to do. We

(29:33):
were frozen. Not only that, but he
was scheduled to interview Ira Glass from this American
Life at service that morning.
Not long after the article dropped, the lead executive
pastor called an early meeting ahead of the
service. For Steve and I,
this felt like the last

(29:53):
possible opportunity for the
leadership to change course and do
the right thing. We both understood that depending on
what they did next, we would be making one of the
most impactful decisions of our lives.
Would we be living with integrity and perhaps walking
with the church as it embraced honesty and healing?

(30:15):
Or would we be living with our Integrity and
no paycheck. My
stomach dropped at the thought of what it would
mean to really, truly not have a
paycheck. We didn't have a lot
in savings. School was starting up the next
few weeks. We hadn't done back to school shopping yet. Would

(30:35):
we even be able to do that? How are we going to
make it? I couldn't let myself think about it for too
long. I had to trust that somehow the
leadership was going to shift and do the right
thing. And I clung desperately to that hope.

(31:00):
Pretending nothing had changed wasn't an option for us.
It was, however, exactly what was
proposed by the leadership at that morning meeting.
The instruction was to go ahead with the service and
not acknowledge the article. Steve ran to
the bathroom and threw up.
At that moment, he realized the leadership was not

(31:20):
changing course. They were not going to do the right
thing. And that meant
he could no longer wait it
out. He could no longer cling to hope that things were changing.
It meant that he was resigning and we would
be maintaining our integrity
but losing our security.

(31:43):
He went back and begged the lead executive pastor to change her mind
and support the congregation through the wound.
However, he was overruled. He told her he
was sickened and opposed. Yet nothing
changed. He knew then that his only
option was to resign in protest and to tell the truth
publicly in his voice. He came

(32:03):
home and together we wrote his resignation letter. Because
this wasn't just him quitting a job.
This wasn't just him walking away
from his career and his calling and
his life's work. This was
us saying, we cannot
abide by this system that refuses

(32:24):
to do the right thing and that chooses to
continue to cause harm, not only to the victims who'come forward,
but also what it communicated to every other victim
that sat in the pews and listened online
that was there now and would be to come.
We chose to publish it on his website on purpose,
so there was no way for the leadership to warp his words

(32:46):
or control the narrative. We needed
the world to bear witness in real time.
It felt like the most honest option,
even though we were terrified. The thing is,
we didn't have another job lined up. There
weren't other safeguards, and we had no
idea how we would make it. But
we also knew we couldn't be a part of something willing to

(33:09):
ignore the truth and allow harm in
exchange for self preservation.

(33:34):
So we used our travel points to get a hotel out of state
for the night because we didn't want to be home when the
resignation post went live. We knew we'd be targeted by
journalists and media outlets, not to mention
people from the community who would have questions that we
were not ready to answer. Three
days later, the church leadership held another congregational

(33:54):
meeting. In it, the lead executive pastor, the
same one who had told Steve weeks before that
she felt strongly called by God to continue in her
role, shared that she had been feeling God calling
her to step down for a while.
She and the board of elders announced their
transition from their roles. I'm

(34:14):
proud of the steps that Steve took,
the ones that we navigated together. All those late
night talks, phone calls,
moments spent crying and trying desperately
to find a way through that allowed us to maintain
integrity, and that provided care and love
and support for the people who'd been harmed, as well as

(34:34):
a path forward for the church and the community.
I'm proud that his choices and his
courage helped to expose some of the root
unhealth and that it induced a subsequent
response from leadership.
I wish it hadn't taken my husband having to do
something that thrust us and our family into such

(34:54):
uncharted, scary territory, But
I also honestly don't think much would have
changed if he'd not done it.
Meanwhile, the community was an upheaval.
Our collective hearts were broken.
Our family lived a few miles from the church campus,
and there was no escaping the chaotic fallout in

(35:17):
our everyday lives. I couldn't go
anywhere without being stopped, questioned,
asked to pray, ask to repent, ask
to fix and resolve and absolve.
I even started to grocery shop in a different
town to avoid the whispers and to find
some semblance of anonymity as I

(35:37):
suddenly felt so exposed.
On top of that, my anxiety became impossible
to manage, and I barely left the house.
The kids struggled to find any semblance of routine,
and as a family, it felt like we were drowning.
And the thing is, we weren't the first to
leave. Other staff had left ahead of

(35:59):
us, but we really never heard why.
Later we learned that during the exit interviews, many of them were
handed NDAs in exchange for severance or
references or other support. While we
understand what a complicated and
nuanced decision it is,
we ourselves could not find peace with signing

(36:19):
anything that would silence us or steal our stories.
While Steve had been threatened that if he left, he would
be leaving with nothing. In the end,
and largely due to public pressure, they did
provide a few months severance and even let him keep his
laptop. Up until
this point, that experience had been devastating. But

(36:41):
the months that followed were even worse.
We attempted to stay in Illinois in search for another
job, but it became impossible to heal
while still living in the midst of so much
pain and grief and angst.
The weight of communal grief, the
anger from those who judged us and did not
understand the reasons for our decision, and the

(37:03):
inability to find support emotionally,
spiritually and financially were too great
to overcome by staying where we were. We
could no longer afford our home, had no
idea where Steve would work next, and needed the
support of family near us as we tried to
process, heal and walk our kids through their

(37:23):
own grief. M We
eventually made the difficult decision to move, leaving the
Midwest and settling in a rental in Phoenix,
Arizona. It's where I'm from and where much
of my extended family still lived and having their
support and help was crucial as we tried to pick up
the pieces of our lives that remained after leaving the
church.

>> Corinne (38:07):
M.

>> Rebeca (38:28):
M you are about
to hear the personal experience of Ken
Shark, wife of Eric, former lead
investigator for the Exodus Road, told by
her in her own words. TER
R is a nonpr proffit whose website states that
they are on the front lines of the fight to
end human trafficking. When the Sharks

(38:51):
encountered a culture of inappropriate sexual
behavior by organization leadership in
2017, they attempted to
address it internally. They paid
dearly for that act.
After eight years of work to
process this experience and find a path for it to

(39:11):
do some good, Kne now takes
her step toward reclamation by
sharing her story with you here.

>> Corinne (39:34):
It was the final days of 2015.
Remember 2015 when everything
felt possible and solvable and
hopeful. Those were good times
when my husband and I clinked champagne glasses
and celebrated our 11th hour victory of
reaching the fundraising requirement we'd been working toward that
would allow us to move our family to Thailand.

(39:56):
We were all in no plan B.
We were convinced nonprofit work in Thailand and
upping the ante of our involvement in anti trafficking work
was our next right step and that any obstacle
could be overcome. We were not taking no for an answer
from God. Eric was relentless in his
fundraising efforts and I was purging our

(40:17):
belongings and packing black and yellow bins with non
negotiables. We had long since moved out of our
rental and in with family. We even sold our
car. We had pushed every last one
of our chips into the center of the table
and dared God to match the bet of
our faith.

(40:55):
Years of Christian industry work had left us beaten up
in Red Bear. We'd walk down every
other road we could think of to stay in some sort
of ministry work. Campus ministry,
megachurch vocational ministry,
Christian higher ed church,
volunteerism at multiple churches,
parachurch ministries, etc.

(41:17):
M every single time we'd see
behind the curtain, it would break our hearts
and leave us with impossible choices.
Every time we'd leave believing there had to be a
place we could belong. It had been years since
we had first heard about the organization.
We started out following

(41:37):
their blogger trips where they
hosted well known writers
overseas to expose them to the truths
of trafficking. And we started out
being donors. We were so eager to give
our money every month because we believed in them
doing such good work. The international nonprofit
sector was our last hope. We had always wanted to

(41:59):
live internationally with our kids. Thailand was never
on our radar, but it was the center of the anti trafficking
movement at the time. And so what better way to learn
than to go straight to the center of the sector?
Well, turns out there are much better and more
appropriate ways to learn than to insert
yourself into a sector you have no education

(42:19):
or experience in expecting to have a
role. All the years of
sitting front row in church during sermons filled
with saviorism sentiments like if not you,
then who? If not now, then when?
Well, it had me raising my hand so fast, here I am.
Send me years of gathering

(42:40):
prem meme note cards of quotes with
platitudes like God doesn't call the equipped,
he equips. The called had me believing I
could do anything if I was passionate enough and willing
enough. Turns out I would learn. There
are plenty of educated and qualified
professionals who took the time to get equipped.
They are already there. They're doing the work. And

(43:02):
passion is a false equivalency.
Marginalized communities deserve better than bleeding
hearts equipped with nothing but good intentions.
So when I tell you how we boarded that first flight
out of Phoenix fresh off all our
hardest goodbyes and our son Garrett,
masked because he had been sick and still add

(43:23):
a horrendous cough that was earning, dirty looks
from everyone around us, you know we were
determined. When I tell you how we
ran pushing our trolleys stacked high,
teetering with bins and suitcases and carry
on weaving through the crowds from the domestic
terminal to the international terminal at
LAX like we were parting the Red Sea,

(43:46):
barely making our connection. And then our daughter
Carson throws up in the aisle on the plane
trying to get to the bathroom not 15 minutes
into our Trans Pacific flight, you
know there was no obstacle we were not
overcoming. When I tell you I was on my
hands and knees in the aisle
helping the flight attendants clean up my

(44:08):
child's vomit, me wiping it off some
businessman's nice leather shoes as he scowls
down at me on the floor, Me casually
flinging my lavender essential oils up and down the aisle in
hopes of masking the scent. You
know, there was no turning back, no
plan B. This was it. It
was all as. Ah. My kids now loathe

(44:30):
me saying part of the adventure. Thailander
bust, baby. We were all in.

(44:51):
And our first few months of 2016 were
magic. Everything was new and
exciting. We leaned hard into the
honeymoon phase of our new X pat life
and didn't care how ridiculous we looked. We piled
our family of four on a single moto. We bought street
market pants. We bought coffee at every, aesthetic
roadside cafe, and we took pictures

(45:13):
everywhere. We made all sorts of new friends
and had new experiences and loved every
minute of it. Until we didn't.
Until we started noticing some deeply
concerning red flags within the organization we were there to work
with. But it wasn't our battle, we'd tell
ourselves and each other. Not

(45:34):
our battle. The phrase was on repeat
in our conversations. We're new here. We're
just here to learn. We're just going to stay in our own lane.
We're just going to focus on our own work. We've learned
this lesson too many times before. It's not
our battle
until they made it our battle.

(45:54):
Sexual jokes made by my husband's
supervisors became sexual jokes
about women in organization leadership,
women in the local Thai office,
women on work trips, and eventually
about me. Graphic
descriptions about supervisors engaging in

(46:15):
sexual misconduct became descriptions
targeting women in the organization's leadership,
women in the local Thai office, women on work
trips, and eventually me.
With every instance, Eric would speak up against
his supervisor's behavior, get laughed
off, and the severity would increase.

(46:36):
The jokes would get more graphic, the
sexual scenarios would get more violent,
and the fabricated stories, well, they would
get more personal. It wasn't our
battle until it was.
Until the risk of speaking up no longer outweighed the damage being
done, the sexually violent culture being
perpetuated, and the very real risk of someone

(46:59):
getting hurt. Until
we decided we would not allow our silence to
be complicit in someone else's harm at the hands of
the very men who pretended to be protectors.
Until we decided we would not stay silent
in the face of predators masquerading as
heroes. We had moved to Thailand to be a

(47:19):
part of a solution, and here we were
face to face with part of the problem. The
call was coming from inside the house. It was
as if his supervisor enjoyed making
him angry. Eri would tell me
stories each day after work of the things
being said, the actions being
Simulated the jokes being made

(47:42):
just to get him riled up, just to
see him get upset. There'd be comments
made about me about my Instagram
photos. I remember specifically there was
one photo of me that I had posted following
a trip that I had just taken with a friend. And my
mouth was open in a big
grin with laughter. It was

(48:04):
one of my favorite photos.
But when it was spoken about in Eric's
office by his supervisors,
it was all about how I was asking for
it. The jokes were
about me, about other women
and what they would like to put in our mouths.

(48:25):
If our mouths were going to be open like that, surely
we were asking for it. There would be jokes about
me having an affair with my neighbor while Eric was
away on a work trip. They would laugh as he
would get upset, and they would start to
talk about what I would be doing with my neighbor the second
Eric walked out the door.

(48:46):
And then there was a lies about me supposedly
sending, nude photos
to my husband's supervisor,
supposedly covered in soap suds
in the shower. This
was office fodder.
I was office fodder. And

(49:07):
that's just what was said about me. No woman
was safe. No woman was off
limits. The comments made about other
women, especially Thai women,
were increasingly more violent. And
every time Eric came home and told me a new
story from the office, I grew more

(49:27):
and more worried that eventually something was actually going to
happen to someone.
The worst story was a
joke that was being made about putting
a bag over a thie woman's
head so that they didn't have to see her
face when they sexually assaulted

(49:47):
her. In my
mind, if a man is willing to
joke that violently about what he wants to
do to a woman, chances are
at, some point he might actually do it.

>> Rebeca (50:07):
M.

>> Corinne (50:15):
Eric Stresa at work continued to rise through
2017 as his work conditions continued to
deteriorate. I stopped going into the
office or being around the team. We both knew the
organization's leadership needed to know what was happening,
and we both knew it was going to have to be us to tell
them. So we began documenting and building
a report we would eventually submit to the organization

(50:37):
in the fall of 2017.
We didn't want it to be our battle,
but wasn't this part of the work? We signed up for
intervention, exposing sexual
misconduct being part of a solution instead of
letting silence perpetuate the problem. We just didn't know
it would be an inside job. We didn't know the report we
would file would be the strike of a match that would take

(50:59):
Us from being an asset to being a liability
overnight, that our life would go
up in flames because we dared to speak
up. To tell the truth. We
didn't know doing the right thing was about to cost
us everything. bless our naive little hearts.

(51:26):
5.
This was not our first rodeo. We were no
strangers to disillusionment on the heels of Christian
work coming into the nonprofit space. And yet
we were fools for hope, absolute
suckers for our cause. You'd think we would have seen this
coming, but alas, we could not have

(51:48):
imagined the backlash that would follow.
We genuinely believed that doing the right thing
matters and, ah, that if they just had all the information,
surely they would want to resolve the situation.
If they just knew what was going on, then they could
remove those causing harm and protect the good work they
had spent so many years building. I mean, if nothing

(52:09):
else, they'd want to not be complicit
and not be liable. If they just knew, they
would, I don't know, do something.
Well, they did. They conducted a brief
internal investigation and
then immediately terminated Eric's contract.
Change the locks on the office doors, told the

(52:29):
staff not to talk to us under threat of losing their
jobs and withheld our pay and moving
expenses until he agreed to sign
an NDA. That's right.
We were stuck in country,
effectively with no one to hold our work gisa
but not enough money to leave. And they knew it.
They knew we'd have no choice. Their attorney

(52:51):
was threatening us. Our friends and family were scared for
our safety. Local staff took the risk
and warned us that our house was being watched. We were
terrified. Were our kids in danger?
Were we?
During our last month in Thailand, my mom, Eric's
mom, and Eric's oldest sister came to visit

(53:11):
as they had been planning for months.
We made signs to hold at the airport and brought flower
necklaces and bracelets for their
arrival. We wanted them to have the full
experience, even though our lives were on
fire. That night, my mom bought us
dinner. I remember it was pizza because our

(53:31):
pay was still being withheld and we didn't have enough money in our
bank account to cover it.
They walked right into the fire with us.
And still we took them to the night market
and the grocery store. We took them out to eat
at all the quintessential spots and did our best to show them
our life. To let our kids just have their

(53:52):
grandma, their nana, and their auntie
for a week and a half. But
they showed up knowing what was going on, and they knew Eric
and I were dying inside.
I know it Took everything my mom
had to get back on that plane and return home.

(54:13):
She's told me many times since
of how scary it was to leave
me. Knowing what was going on in our world,
knowing what was going on with the organization.
She wanted to stay. She thought she could protect
me somehow. She also just
wanted me to get on the plane with her and leave.

(54:34):
To run, to escape.
I was so busy surviving,
I don't even know if I could have seen just
how dire the situation was.
But we still had a few more weeks. We still
had farewells and we still
had details and loose ends to wrap

(54:55):
up. Our dear friends had planned a
phenomenal farewell party for us.
No one says goodbye like missionaries, let
me tell you. We showed up that
night to our friends house full of
joy and love, sentiment
and gifts, food, and every friend we
had ever made during our time there.

(55:17):
It really was incredible. Not
everyone was against us.
Not everyone had abandoned us.
We teared up walking into that party,
seeing that we actually did have support,
even if no one in that house knew how high the stakes were
for us in that moment, we

(55:39):
resolved to enjoy that
evening. We were not going to let the organization
take that from us too. Our daughter
and her friends all huddled on a salah
in the yard. A thatched roof little
hut that they had all piled on and were
taking pictures, laughing and crying

(55:59):
and telling stories. Our son and
all his friends were playing soccer in the field across the
street from the house, the one that would get all muddy
every rainy season, leaving the boys
head to toe, covered in dirt and grass
and grime.
We spent the night laughing and smiling and

(56:20):
telling stories and toasting like it was all gonna be
okay. Like this was all part of the plan.
Like we were just returning home,
like every other expat family
eventually does.
I remember one of my dearest friends sitting with
me on the floor and putting her hand on

(56:40):
my shoulder and saying, you're handling this
all so well.
She can't see. She can't see what's
happening inside me.
And it wasnt the time for that. So I
let her believe that I was strong.
I let her believe that I was handling it all

(57:01):
so very well.

(57:25):
Eric's former partner was so angry about how
we were being treated and told Eric in confidence
about some evidence he had on the organization that he would use
if he needed. He told Eric about how he wanted
to give the CEO the chance to do the right thing.
He was ambiguous at best, but we couldn't
help but wonder what could be so bad that he would Leverage

(57:46):
it against the organization in this situation related to
us. Well,
2017 gave way to the beginning of 2018,
and we just desperately attempted to shield our
kids from the fear and flames of our lives
burning down around us. We packed up our
lives and said our goodbyes and bit
our tongues and held our breath long enough to

(58:09):
get our boxes into a shipping crate and our bodies onto the first
of four flights home to the States. We were
comatose, shells of ourselves.
The fear and trauma and stress and sustained levels of
cortisol had taken their toll. We were
tombs, lifting off the tarmac and into the
clouds, fleeing the city we had called home for two

(58:29):
years. But not just because of
the report we filed. Turns out
there was more.

>> Rebeca (58:42):
M.

>> Corinne (58:52):
24 hours before we boarded our flight home,
Eric's partner showed him the evidence he'd been holding
on to. The evidence he had against
organization. Evidence his
wife had convinced him that Eric
deserved to see. That since it was
his last day in country, he'd go ahead and

(59:12):
show him. He handed Eric his phone
and told him to press play.
Eric recognized the setting. It was video
taken at a staff retreat they had been at the previous
summer. And then Eric
recognized himself
unconscious, being sexually

(59:33):
assaulted by the very
supervisors we had reported
being filmed by the very partner
whose phone he held in his hands.
The very partner who would then tell him
about the baggie of powder he heard the
supervisors joking about having for

(59:53):
shark at that retreat.
The retreat where Eric had always assumed
he had food poisoning. The retreat
where Eric told me about being so
sick he had blacked out. And
the next morning, so afraid he'd get
left by his team with no cell service

(01:00:14):
and wouldn't make it home. The
retreat where Eric walked in the front door of our
home afterwards, pale and
sweaty and looking like death, talking
about how he has never been sick like he was at
that retreat. So sick that he was
scared. All

(01:00:35):
that time, we had thought the fire burning down our
lives and forcing us to leave Thailand was just about the
report we had filed. We had no
idea the blaze had been lit long
before and that we were already at the center of
it. That, according to Eric's
partner, the CEO, had asked him not to show
Eric the footage because it could destroy the

(01:00:56):
organization. That 24
hours before we would lift off above
those northern hills, his life
would be changed forever.
They'd hoped we'd leave without
ever knowing the truth. And we
almost did.
When I tell you how we were so afraid for

(01:01:19):
our safety that we made sure to tell certain
friends what we had just learned just
in case we didn't make it home. You know, we boarded
that first of four flights and sat like corpses in our
seats. When I tell you how
devastated our kids were to leave their friends and the lives they
had built and how they cried the whole way, you
know we were protecting them from the full weight

(01:01:42):
of why we had to go home.
And when I tell you how I wanted to
hide in the bathroom at the Bangkok
airport, stay forever in the
food court and Seoul and let the moving sidewalks
at sky harbor in Phoenix carry me backwards so I
didn't have to face not having a
house or a car or a job or

(01:02:04):
a life to come home to so I could
just stay suspended between worlds.
You know, I woke up in the guest
bedroom of my parents house the next morning,
the room that was mine as a teenager,
and I blinked back disoriented tears
wishing it was all just a really horrific
dream.

(01:02:34):
M
But it wasn't a dream. It was our
terrifying reality that had me peeking out the
front window at my parents house to be sure we weren't being
watched. Because we had been.
All the references to our house being watched in

(01:02:55):
Thailand still lived in my body.
I was constantly checking my computer and my phone
settings to make sure foreign IP addresses
weren't accessing our laptop remotely
because they had. That had already
happened and the fear of that
happening again still lived in my body.

(01:03:18):
As terrified as I was, I
kept having to remind myself this
was my husband's worst nightmare
and it ignited my fight response
and the fiercely protective resolve
like I had never known.
He was always the one fighting for others.

(01:03:39):
He had been the one standing up to the
misconduct again and again and
again and finally he had come
to the end of himself. He was
exhausted and he was in
shock and I decided it was
my turn to fight for him.

(01:03:59):
In the weeks that followed, I would hover over my
keyboard, fingertips quivering, body
shaking, pouring over every word as I
typed out what we had just experienced.
The organization's emails followed us home,
continuing to remind us to be
quiet, insisting Eric must
have been drunk victim, blaming

(01:04:21):
him for what had happened to him,
reducing the events at the staff retreat
to lewd an inappropriate
behavior, all the while laying down
the first bricks of the narrative they would be
building about us that we were the problem.
It became clear that the only card we held was the

(01:04:42):
truth and the only protection it could offer
us is if we laid it on the table and refused to keep their
secrets. Calling their bluff and pushing
back against their threats felt like our
only way to keep from drowning.
Staying silent and doing nothing was not an option when we decided
to file the initial report. So it sure us all wasn't going to
be after we had nothing to lose but our pride

(01:05:05):
and nothing to gain but our integrity. So
I strung trembling words into sentences and the
heaviest sentences into paragraphs. Lined up those
paragraphs on my social media grid and I
clicked post. Immediately,
responses began pouring in. Support,
shock, I believe, views and keep going

(01:05:26):
friends in Thailand Message to report
how the sector was buzzing with the news and how the damage
control campaign from the organization was already gearing
up. We expected that. What we didn't
see coming was the number of responses that said not
surprised, not surpr
###pr wait, so people knew about
this issue? Have other things happened?

(01:05:48):
Have other people been harmed? Why are we just
now hearing about it? Why has no one done anything
or said anything? Well, we know why.
We know how it works. We know how it feels to be
afraid. We know how it feels to have to weigh the
cost. And we know how it feels to lose.
The organization response was swift and

(01:06:09):
deliberate. A press release went live
positioning the situation as a sad day at the
office that they were victims of a disgruntled former
employee calling me a liar and dismissing
me as just the wife because of course,
this is how it works. The social
media waves rolled on through so much

(01:06:29):
support and love and care and so much
silence. Crickets both from men
who felt super uncomfortable with the idea that
men could be assaulted, to those who were
making it clear that in their minds we should
have kept quiet. We should have waited. We should
have done it differently, we should have asked
permission. But we know how it

(01:06:52):
works. Share Too soon and the critics say you're being
emotional or reactive. Share Too late and the
critics wonder why you waited so long, why you're holding on
to the past. There's no good time to
stand up to a bully. There's no good way to
push back against a system designed to preserve
itself. The trauma of it all coursing through

(01:07:12):
our veins left us with our head on our pillows at the
end of the night, shaking, holding
hands, having each other's back
come what may.
Soon after I packed a bag to meet a friend out of
town, Eric prepared to fly back to Thailand
to file a police report. We didn't know what the

(01:07:33):
path forward would require, but we knew we would need the
assault to be documented in country in case we'd ever need the
legal record. Eric planned to
meet former colleagues one to
help interpret his account at the police station
A friend's apartment to secretly stay at and moto
to borrow to get around town unnoticed.

(01:07:53):
Meanwhile, I was buried in snow up north at a retreat with
a dear friend who knew I desperately needed the esc.
It was the middle of the night in a little
Airbnb when the messages popped up at my
phone screen from an old acquaintance doubting
my story and accusing me of
sharing for personal gain. she threw
punches I did not see coming.

(01:08:16):
Punches that made it clear we were being spoken
about in circles we once thought were
safe. That night, I
had my first panic attack. I
spiraled alone in the dark until dawn
and I spent the rest of the trip just trying to get
home. The connection of those who had gone
silent and those going for my jugular

(01:08:38):
blindsided me. The felt, betrayal
within relationship was more
devastating than any threat of legal
action ever could be.
Years later, the text message came in from a friend
in another hemisphere with another story.
And that led to another story and
another and another. More

(01:09:01):
was happening within the same organization.
People were ready to share. Some by
name, some anonymously, all
pointing to the same patterns, the
same abuses of power and the same
silencing tactics. We were not the
only ones. Over

(01:09:21):
many, many months I worked on co authoring an open
letter representing a group of people who had been harmed by
the organization and wanted to take action
by sharing their stories and shining light on what
had been kept in shadow. The letter went
live. Another press release would call us
liars and dismiss us as simply being out

(01:09:41):
to destroy their good work.
The open letter ended up connecting us to journalist Matt

(01:10:02):
Carroll who was interested in what was going on within the anti
trafficking sector and set out to collect hours of
interviews to his series of investigative
articles. His Puletszer winning work on
the Spotlight team that broke a story of child
sex abuse within the Catholic Church helped us all
feel like our stories were in such safe and

(01:10:22):
capable hands. He was no stranger to
threats and attempts to silence, so his care
toward each person interviewed was absolutely life
giving. The articles published and while the
waves may have seemed small, they felt seismic
to everyone involved. It is no small
thing to make someone feel seen and

(01:10:42):
heard. Action had
been taken on behalf of my family, on
behalf of others harmed, and on behalf of the
larger sector doing good work. There was rest
in that, healing in that. And
that's when the creative winds picked up. That's when the
desire to make something beautiful out of the healing started

(01:11:03):
to swirl. That's when Sarah and I started asking
ourselves, and eventually each other, what there might be for us
to make together? I mean what are the
chances the two of us would go through the hardest
seasons of our lives at the same
time and that we'd have been uniquely
able to walk each other through the darkest nights,

(01:11:23):
lighting our candles, texting our
with you? And then what are the chances we
both end up with nowhere to go but back to the
desert where we'd walk her healing trails
until our wounds became scars and our scars
became tattoos. What are the
chances we'd find our way to this bonfire
here and now with you?

(01:11:46):
So much happened and so much has happened
since and this is where we're gonna talk about it.

>> Sarah (01:11:54):
If you made it to the end and are still with us,
we know that was a lot to hold. But we
also know we dont hold it alone.
Meet us back here for episode two.

>> Corinne (01:12:05):
And bring your matches.

>> Rebeca (01:12:19):
You've been listening to Spiritual Pyro with
Sarah Carter and Corinne Shark on the
1C Story Network. For more about this
and all of our shows and books, please visit
just1c.com
that's J u s t
o n e c.com.

>> Singer (01:13:05):
The 1C Story Network.

>> Rebeca (01:13:07):
For the love of stories.