Purity Culture's Hidden Scars: A Survivor's Journey from Silence to Truth
When labor icon Dolores Huerta recently disclosed experiencing sexual violence while building the farmworker movement with Cesar Chavez, it resonated deeply with many. For Reverend Dr. Angela Yarber, Huerta's words—"I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences"—triggered a physical and emotional response, awakening a long-buried trauma.
The Weight of Purity
Yarber's story begins at a small Christian liberal arts college in South Georgia, where purity culture dominated campus life. Holiness was the central tenet, with virginity serving as the ultimate measure of spiritual worth. As a freshman, Yarber was crowned campus queen with "True Love Waits" as her literal campaign platform, a promise engraved on a silver ring she wore as a symbol of her commitment to remain pure for God until marriage.
"This message of purity was ingrained so deeply in my body, heart, language, and dress that I didn't even have the capacity to recognize sexual assault when it happened to me," Yarber writes. Her closeted queerness hadn't yet challenged this worldview, leaving her unprepared for what would unfold.
The Night That Changed Everything
The assault occurred during the summer after her sophomore year, just before the September 11 attacks. Recovering from outpatient surgery to remove potential skin cancer from her shoulder, Yarber was on strong pain medication when a campus ministry leader insisted on staying overnight "to care for her" while her roommate was away.
Despite initial resistance—"Ms. Purity Movement would never allow boys to stay overnight in her home"—she reluctantly agreed after he emphasized the potential dangers and her need for male protection. That evening, wearing a modest yellow halter top chosen specifically to avoid causing "brothers to stumble," Yarber took her medication and fell into a deep sleep.
She awoke to find the ministry leader on top of her, his hands under her shirt. "Through a narcotic-induced haze, I tried to push him off me as one of the stitches on my shoulder blade split," she recalls. Rather than anger or self-preservation, her immediate reaction was fear of being seen as impure and damaging the movement they both served.
The Aftermath and Silence
After the assailant fled, Yarber dropped to her knees begging God for forgiveness—for allowing a boy to stay overnight, for wearing the halter top, for her "sins of the flesh." When he returned minutes later, he forced her to pray with him, declared God had forgiven him, and demanded her silence to protect their shared movement.
The only physical evidence was blood on her pillowcase from the torn stitch, a scar she still bears 25 years later. As a 19-year-old movement leader, she told no one—not friends, pastors, professors, or counselors—convinced she had caused a spiritual brother "to stumble" and that her impurity would tarnish their cause.
Decades of Deconstruction
Recognition took nearly 20 years, a Ph.D., teaching women's and gender studies, marrying her wife, becoming an international speaker on marginalized women's issues, and publishing ten books. "Even as a respected voice for women's rights in publishing, academia, public speaking, and writing, it still took 20 years to recognize my own sexual assault," Yarber acknowledges.
The purity movement's deep conditioning required decades of deconstruction to reach the truth: "I now know that, of course, I had done nothing wrong that night in my bedroom. What that man did to me was not my fault."
Movements and Monsters
Yarber draws powerful connections between her experience and Huerta's disclosure, noting that "too many women's bodies have been sacrificed at the altars of men's movements for social change." She challenges the myth that predators are always obvious monsters, emphasizing that most attackers are known and often revered.
"Movements that center morality or justice are not immune to abuse; they are often structured in ways that protect it, especially when we refuse to see beloved leaders as anything but heroic," she observes. The very structures meant to uplift can become mechanisms of silencing when questioning leaders becomes taboo.
Yarber concludes with hard-won wisdom: "I used to think monsters were easy to recognize. Now I know they can look like the people we trust most—the ones who pray with us, lead us, and tell us who we're supposed to be." Her journey from silence to truth underscores the pervasive impact of purity culture and the courage required to break its hold.
