Incest victim of Laestadian preacher tries to piece his childhood together

Faith covered over the evil that was done by a family member; "how things looked to the outside world" went before exposing aggravated sexual abuse

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By Katja Kuokkanen
     
      Towards the end of last year a case of continued aggravated sexual molestation of at least eleven underage boys was uncovered in the western city of Pietarsaari (Jakobstad in Swedish).
      The victims of the lay preacher of the Swedish-speaking Laestadian congregation were his grandchildren.
      The molestation took place in the 1970s and 1980s. The preacher died in 1988.
      The police have not launched an investigation into the matter, because the accused is deceased and the entire crime has fallen under the statute of limitations.
     
What makes the whole affair all the more upsetting is the fact that at least some of the parents of the boys were aware of the preacher’s doings.
      Yet they did nothing to help their own children. Saving the congregation’s face was more important than protecting the children from their predatory grandfather.
     
“Satan misled them." The victim of the Laestadian preacher finds it impossible to speak in detail of what happened in the city of Pietarsaari on the West Coast of Finland in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the fact that he was repeatedly sexually molested by his maternal grandfather, and of the fact that his parents knew what was going on and yet, amazingly, did nothing to prevent it from happening.
      Instead, the parents forced their son - who is now 40 years ofo age - to forgive his grandfather over and over again for his continued incestuous sexual violence.
     
Forgiveness was turned into a weapon, with which the family that had gradually turned into a closed sect-like inner circle protected its idol and his nasty secrets.
      On Saturday Helsingin Sanomat managed to reach by phone the victim’s mother, who did not want to share her views on what had happened. According to the Friday edition of the Österbottens Tidning daily, however, the mother admitted that her father was caught while sexually molesting one of her sons.
      The parents did not discuss with their son about what had happened, the mother stated.
      The grandfather was a known lay preacher. He was also a popular Sunday school teacher.
     
Only in November of last year did the man, who was one of the several victims of his grandfather’s incestuous attacks, open up and share what had happened in his childhood with his close relative Rolf Lampa, who lives in Sweden.
      The following day Lampa filed a report of an offence with the Pietarsaari Police.
      “This was the best thing that has happened to me. That I was able to leave the issue with someone else, who had the courage to take matters further”, the victim told Helsingin Sanomat.
      Österbottens Tidning also published a story by the victim’s brother in its online edition last week.
      The story reveals a family in which the parents whipped their children with switches and belts - or sometimes used a fist or even a hammer.
      The brother no longer resides in Finland.
      “My brother’s story is accurate. It was worst for the first four or five kids. Our family had thirteen members”, the victim says.
     
The family’s active congregational life included Sunday services, Sunday school, and the large revival meetings in the summer.
      It was important to covey the image that the family was "living in Christ”.
      Inside, however, the harmony was in tatters.
      The children had to fear the mother, the father, God, and the Devil.
     
According to the brother’s story and the reports from Rolf Lampa, the hub of the family’s power was the mother.
      In the evening the mother would sit by the beds of the children and go through what failings and mistakes each one of them had been guilty of during the day.
      Before the judgement, however, the family came together for dinner and coffee.
      After that the mother decided on the punishments to be meted out, which were then administered by the father.
      On one occasion the brother started bleeding, which caused the father to hit him even harder.
     
The most fearsome figure, however, was the maternal grandfather - the respected lay preacher. According to the brother, the grandfather was allowed to take the children into his car, the sauna, and the woods.
      He was allowed to sneak into the children’s bedrooms - even naked.
      The children had to forgive the grandfather. Forgiveness was part of the faith. Otherwise the sin would be transferred to one’s own shoulders.
     
When the incestuous goings-on were uncovered the reaction was fierce.
      The inner circle formed by the preacher’s descendants is still strong in Pietarsaari.
      According to Lampa, the circle wanted to continue doing what it had always done, namely to stay silent, even when the victims - now adults - wanted to talk openly about the violence and aggravated sexual abuse that they were subjected to as children.
      “From the congregation the victims always received a disinclined request ‘not to probe into issues that had already been forgiven’. When I filed the report of an offence with the police, there were attempts to brand me as a wife-beater and a lunatic”, Lampa explains.
     
The inner circle did not separate from the congregation to a sect of its own.
      In order to “remain on good terms” with the inner circle, the congregation operating in Pietarsaari’s Skutnäs allowed the circle to develop its own peculiar interpretations of the Bible.
      These were used to intimidate and bully the victims into keeping quiet.
      “The molester was caught early on, but the matter was covered up within the inner circle. According to the victims, the preacher could not control himself even when the risk of getting caught was high”, Lampa says.
     
The truth can set the victims free, says the 40-year-old victim, when interviewed by Helsingin Sanomat.
      “It can set my parents free as well”, he continues. “But first they would have to humble themselves and recognise their wrongdoings.”
      “I will not speak with my mother or my father before they acknowledge that what they did was wrong. It is not a problem to forgive, but they must realise that it was wrong”, the man repeats.
     
At the age of 15, the victim realised that faith cannot be about hatred, fear, and violence.
      At the beginning of the 1990s he was married and moved further away from Pietarsaari. He changed congregations.
      “My parents were part of a small sect of extremists. I now have four children and I teach them that there has to be joy in life. Otherwise there is no freedom.”
      Through therapy, the man wants to steer clear from isolating himself into a world of his own.
      Physical exercise has helped keeping the mind intact, but now “God wanted to put a stop to the secrecy and save the victims.”
      “The truth will triumph over the devil, who misled them”, the man says of the grownups, who failed to help him and the other molested children.
     
With the growing stir around the case, Jan-Henrik Sundqvist, the chairman of the Skutnäs Swedish-speaking Laestadian congregation, has gradually started to understand what has happened inside the community.
      The family of the incestuous lay preacher had turned into an inner circle resembling a sect, and did everything it could to cover up the grandfather’s evil deeds.
      “It is frightening to think that the parents did not understand any better and even protected the grandfather against the children”, Sundqvist admits.
     
Pietarsaari is a stronghold of the Swedish-speaking Word of Peace sect of Laestadianism, a conservative Lutheran revival movement that started in the middle of the 19th century.
      “The group’s members are still actively involved in the congregation, even in its leading positions. They are fanatic in the interpretations of the Word, and this has not been on a healthy level”, Sundqvist ponders.
      Still, Sundqvist is not prepared to expel the parents who protected the lay preacher from the congregation.
      “I wish the parents themselves would talk to the police, and in a way confess their crime”, Sundqvist adds.
     
The police themselves can do nothing about investigating the crime as such, for the events took place too long ago.
      “What contrives to make the whole affair so much more appalling is the fact that it was kept secret for so long, and that there were so many victims”, summarises Det. Insp. Ove Storvall from the Pietarsaari Police.
     
Finland is home to some tens of thousands of Laestadians of various groupings, including Conservative Laestadians and the Firstborn, and the movement is strongest in Lapland, Ostrobothnia, and parts of the north-east.
      Laestadianism is the largest revivalist movement in the Nordic countries.
      The Word of Peace grouping is also known in the USA and Canada as the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.1.2010

More on this subject:
 All-powerful leader dominates

Previously in HS International Edition:
  "I left the Laestadian revival movement" ( 22.3.2009)
  Conservative Laestadians´ lifestyle debate boils over onto the Internet (23.10.2007)

Links:
  Pietarsaari/Jakobstad (Wikipedia)
  Laestadianism (Wikipedia)
  Lars Levi Laestadius, 1800-1861 (Wikipedia)

KATJA KUOKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
katja.kuokkanen@hs.fi