Practical Theology

ISSN: 1756-073X (Print) 1756-0748 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yprt20

Healing the ravaged soul: tending the spiritual

wounds of child sexual abuse

Susan Shooter

To cite this article: Susan Shooter (2017): Healing the ravaged soul: tending the spiritual wounds
of child sexual abuse, Practical Theology, DOI: 10.1080/1756073X.2018.1416780

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1756073X.2018.1416780

Published online: 20 Dec 2017.

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 PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, 2017

BOOK REVIEW

Healing the ravaged soul: tending the spiritual wounds of child sexual abuse, by
Sue Magrath, Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2016, 156+xvi pp, £16.00 (PBK), ISBN: 978-
0-7188-9470-2

The spiritual dimension of healing in therapy and counselling has long been overlooked, even
intentionally avoided, because it is an arduous path to take. In Healing the Ravaged Soul, Sue
Magrath seeks to rectify this neglect. Here is a valiant and successful attempt at introducing
us to the specifically spiritual wounds of child sexual abuse. Survivors of abuse, she writes,
‘struggle daily with deep theological questions about a suffering humanity and the nature of
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God’ (15). She goes on to address the questions of faith which cannot be dodged if we are
serious about pastoral care, for when we sit in the presence of a traumatised survivor
looking for answers, platitudes just do not cut the mustard.
The author clearly has stayed the challenging course with many survivors. Drawing on her
experience as a spiritual director and pastoral counsellor in a mental health setting, enables her
to write with insight about the stumbling blocks to faith that survivors encounter; she under-
stands how it is pointless to expect them to ‘surrender’ themselves to the divine. The book
offers survivors a spiritual resource, with healing exercises to use as they negotiate their way
through the maze of painful issues. A strength of the book is how Magrath describes the
effects of trauma that survivors must cope with, such as enduring shame, using real case
studies. She leaves us in no doubt about the hell survivors are left to live through on a daily
basis. For readers who have no prior exposure to such accounts, prepare for some uneasy
moments.
Considering that child sexual abuse is perpetrated on one in three girls and one in seven
boys, and we are therefore surrounded by abuse survivors (1), this book is an essential
reading for anyone in a pastoral role. I would particularly hope that pastors/counsellors/thera-
pists sit up and take note of the section on anger (43–46), and consider carefully their willing-
ness to face the eviscerating power of the outrage abuse survivors feel – and must process – if
they are to move into healing. It is not for the faint-hearted, and such work should not be
undertaken without serious commitment, training, and supervision.
The reappraisals of unhelpful church practices and reinterpretations of theological concepts
which Magrath offers in her chapter ‘Will the Real God Please Stand Up?’ (96–132) are at their
most powerful when she recounts an actual incident. From the window of the consulting room,
she and her client, Terri, watched a mother duck as she prepared for the storm that was rising.
The duck stretched herself to gather in every single one of her ducklings beneath her wings to
protect them. Terri turned and said, ‘My mother should have protected me, shouldn’t she?’
(110). Knowing from earlier in the text that Terri’s mother was aware of the abuse perpetrated
on her by her stepfather, the anecdote made my spine tingle. The metaphor of Psalm 91.4 has
never had such a powerful expression.
Another striking passage is when the author reaches out of the Christian tradition. She offers
the protective gods of Hinduism, Shakti and Kali, as useful images for those survivors whose
caregivers failed them, who ‘long for someone to be ferocious on their behalf’ (111). The
point is that we must not be frightened of calling on spiritual resources of other traditions
when necessary. I am reminded of Chung Hyun Kyung’s controversial invocation at the
World Council of Churches of the spirits of ‘Han’, the spirits of grief, with whom the Holy
 2 BOOK REVIEW

Spirit identifies and weeps, and then releases (Kim 2004). Allowing the Holy Spirit a backbone,
and calling on her power, might help us out of this crisis in our culture.
Magrath’s interpretation of Christ’s sufferings requires comment. Christ on the cross as an
example of his solidarity with victims is tricky. One of the healing exercises in this section
encourages survivors to gaze at a crucifix and reflect on Christ’s sufferings and his compassion;
then to imagine this Jesus ‘looking into your eyes and feeling your pain’ (128). Yet can anyone,
even Christ, really feel our pain for us? On the next page, she goes on to warn how survivors
isolate themselves from the pain of others to protect themselves. Reading this, I had the
impression that survivors have been allotted a role as ‘bearers’ of another’s compassion and
must not slip out of it. But compassion is a shared concern, something we do together, not
an event where the receiver must behave in a certain way; it is an act of being with
someone in as equally a deep pit as you are. This is real presence. James Poling’s article
‘God, Sex and Power’ (2005) grapples with ‘incarnational’ theories of atonement in relation
to abuse. He argues their problem lies in the inequality of power that remains between God
and humanity. With Magrath’s frequent employment of the image of God as the parent who
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knows what is best for the children, she retains a little of this paternalism which the rest of
her book seeks to avoid. As noted above, this is a tricky territory.
Thankfully in the final chapter, she returns to the importance of compassion, namely that of
her clients. She recounts how some of her clients work as teachers, and with struggling stu-
dents they are able ‘to be present to the child’s pain, so that he or she [feels] heard and under-
stood, something very precious and rare’ (140, my emphasis). Magrath, like others who truly
hear the voices of the abused, concludes that survivors who have trodden the perilous road
to healing find the enormous capacity to sit alongside a broken world without judgment,
without forcing an opinion, just to be there. We are left with the hope that when survivors
seek the way of healing for their ravaged souls, grace abounds, and this hope is redoubled
when pastors, healers, counsellors and friends make that journey as companions. This book
is a good route map to guide us on the pilgrimage.

References
Kim, Kirsteen. 2004. “Spirit & ‘Spirits’ at the Canberra Assembly of the WCC, 1991.” Missiology: An International
Review 32 (3): 349–365.
Poling, James. 2005. “God, Sex and Power.” Theology and Sexuality 11 (2): 55–70.

Susan Shooter
Former Vicar in Diocese of Rochester, and priest in Diocese of Truro; freelance writer
shooter160@btinternet.com
© 2017 Susan Shooter
https://doi.org/10.1080/1756073X.2018.1416780