The Silenced Truth
What does it mean that 93% of convicted sex offenders identify as religious? And what does it take for faith communities built on truth-telling to finally hear and respond to this fact?
The Silenced Truth documents what happens when institutions built on truth-telling decide some truths are too costly to hear — and what it costs the people they were supposed to protect. It names the betrayal. It names the looking away. And it makes both harder to continue.
The series began inside the Southern Baptist Convention, where survivors exposed decades of institutional cover-ups and forced a public reckoning. But the pattern is not unique to one denomination or one tradition. It lives wherever leaders have never been trained to recognize the threat — and wherever they have chosen not to look.
This series is for anyone who loves the church enough to demand better from it — and who believes that truth, however costly, is the only foundation worth building on.
The Silenced Truth is the storytelling arm of the Safe to Speak Initiative, which advocates for stronger laws to protect survivors. Learn more at safetospeak.info.
Episodes
3 episodes
The Predator in Plain Sight
On his first Sunday as a new pastor, Aaron encountered something nearly every pastor is unprepared to evaluate or handle — a repeat child sexual abuse offender attending his new congregation. Fortunately, his wife Amy had spent 20 years as a ch...
The Survivor Who Didn't (Jennifer's Story)
Jennifer Lyell is dead. But the battle over her story is not. In this second episode of The Silenced Truth, host Carolyn McCulley traces the devastating arc of Jennifer’s life—from a vulnerable childhood in southern Illinoi...
"You Always Knew!" (Tiffany's Story)
For decades, Tiffany Thigpen carried the weight of what happened to her as a teenage girl in a Jacksonville church. A charismatic preacher. A trusted pastor. And a pattern of abuse that powerful leaders chose to ignore. This podcast...
