This is a situation that has me so angry. I'm going to start with the most innocuous bit of the whole saga that shows how callous, uncaring and evil this RP pastor is and then start walking though what led to this situation.
Background: RP Pastor Phil Pockras is the pastor of Belle Center OH, RPC (the fact this is in Great Lakes - Gulf Presbytery should come as no shock as the level of narcissism is befitting only those who remain in that presbytery).
Two long-term members of Belle Center were arrested recently, according to https://www.facebook.com/LoganSheriffOhio/posts/4447913998599956
Paul Soma, for 2 Counts Gross Sexual Imposition and his wife, Dana Soma, for Endangering Children
I will talk about the charges in a later post, but look at the response. Their pastor, for decades, Phil Pockras is "feeling heartbroken". Not for any victims, not for the faithful RP wife who obeyed her abusive and allegedly sex predator husband to the point of fleeing from the police with him, but for himself and for his church.
For his church - "Major distress in our church", but note that he is ready to accept pity for himself. Major red flags here. In this situation, you have sexual assault victims, a member of the church accused of sexual violence and another accused of child endangerment and his sadness is primarily for the affect on his church. (And since the pastor is the spiritual equivalent of the church, against, this is all about him.
I'm also fascinated what is behind this response, but I think there will be much more to work through on this one in later part(s).
I don't want to leave you too much in the dark about where I'm going with this. I want to point out that there is a lot of history of Evangelical/Reformed churches creating a safe space for abusive men and how their wives are not only victimized, but gaslighted and spiritually coerced into aiding and abetting criminals.
For example, Katie Sitler, wife of convicted pedophile Stephen Sitler and member of Doug Wilson's church in Moscow ID, was first encouraged to marry him knowing that he was a convicted pedophile, presumably to cure him. After they had children of their own, she allowed him to molest the children, despite being appointed as a court observer [seriously??] to prevent him from doing just that.
One of the reports that came out of Sovereign Grace Ministries was a wife whose husband was molesting their teenage daughter. She was discouraged from going to the police (the elders also failed in their duty as mandatory reporters to report him), and instead they recommended she make herself more sexually available to him and lock the daughter's bedroom door at night. When she was finally fed up enough to be part of a lawsuit against SGM, the statute of limitations had run out.
What I think is heartbreaking is when women and children are gaslighted into a crazy system where they have to choose between their religion (i.e. patriarchal authority and blind submission to whatever the authority says, even if it's wrong) or their morality (I'm sure these women know in their heart that what they are doing is wrong, but every authoritative voice in their life says otherwise).
As the comment suggests, Phil Pockras is not some innocent observer to criminal behavior. He, the GLG Presbytery, and to a lesser extent, the RPCNA, have created an environment where abusers flourish and are protected from scrutiny. Abuse-suffering children are not believed (I can attest to this!). Abuse-suffering wives are not believed, or even if they are believed, they are told that God wants them to suffer for his sake. Both wives and children are taught that God cares more about the "institutions" of marriage and family (meaning patriarchal authority), than he does about the people in those relationships. (It's a bait-and-switch, but that is where they double down)
Edit: It seems pretty obvious what gender matters in Belle Center, evidence for the comment above:
To be clear, many women commented that they were praying for him, too, but I guess they don't count.
Also, I found the charges. The date of the offense is listed as 1/1/2012 for both Paul and Dana. There are no other details, but this is very concerning, given that nine years have passed between the time of the offense and the time that arrests were made.
25 comments:
This will sadly always and forever be the case in groups, churches or denominations which exalt their tribe/institution over and above Christ.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt this is what almost all of NAPARC in fact does. Just one of countless real life examples I can point to...
I will never forget our former RP pastor declaring in a sermon as he pressed the "true level of sanctification" in his congregants....."What is the ultimate orientation of your life?' as he paused for rhetorical effect he declared if the orientation of your life does not center around the church then you as a Christian are way way off base. I can site many other similar examples, but this one sums up the ultimate zeitgeist of NAPARC and the RPCNA specifically.
Make no mistake, this is a lie from Hell, wrapped up in biblically sounding appeals to elder/church authority, tradition and the like. No on the contrary, when we look at actual scripture the ultimate orientation of our lives as Christians is God through Christ alone.
"Groups, individuals or even organizations claiming to be a church who primarily uplift institutional identity and institutional fidelity as a chief value for all its members, instead of primarily uplifting Christ, are engaged in Churchianity more than they are Christianity."
NAPARC and the RPCNA are in point of fact teaching a "different gospel' and Galatians chapter 1 is very applicable to them.
I will go ahead and site one more example. A case where abuse and elder corruption was going on and the real victims were blown off by the session with the phrase....."its not about you, this is about the church!"
With my 20 plus years in several NAPARC denoms including part in the RPCNA, I could go on for hours with countless examples like this.
Bottom line>>
"Groups, individuals or even organizations claiming to be a church who primarily uplift institutional identity and institutional fidelity as a chief value for all its members, instead of primarily uplifting Christ, are engaged in Churchianity more than they are Christianity."
For anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear....Leave the RPCNA and NAPARC post haste, get yourself and your family out of there!
This hits very close to home for me. I know these people from a long time ago. I remember Phil Pockras speaking one time about how all of his wife's health issues were coming from a heart of bitterness toward him. The tone was that her sin was the problem.
Even though I have done so much reading/listening/commenting about various abuses in churches, I am shocked to finally see something like this exposed in the RPCNA. I'm not surprised that it's there, just that it's finally getting exposure.
Does anyone know if Paul Soma was an elder at one time?
It looks like the minutes have been taken down, so I can't confirm, but I don't think he was an elder or deacon.
Dana looks so beaten down in her picture. I knew her when she was young and seemed like a happy young woman. Unfortunately, she was already learning extreme subservience at that time, under the authority of the narcissists in charge of our church.
I see in that picture the effects of men using women as child-bearing servants, and God only knows whatever else. That is the real picture of how the reformed community "protects" women and children.
This is what I'm struggling with in Part 2. I had the same impression of her. I feel there are two victims in this story - the first victim is unnamed, but the person who came forward to tell their story, and the second victim is Dana, who has been spiritually, emotionally and possibly physically abused.
He was never an Elder to our knowledge.
Even after death, it is of the utmost importance to protect the image of abusers at the expense of their victims who must now suffer the emotional abuse everyone remembering how much of a "loving father" Paul Soma was. This obituary is disgusting and anyone who is willingly associated with it should be ashamed.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/paul-soma-obituary?id=36140506
WOW! I hadn't heard anything. He came to mind this past weekend and I was thinking that it had been a long time since I checked the status of the cases. It appears that both he and Dana pled guilty. She was given one year community service and he was sentenced to 9 years.
I think it's a cultural thing more than specifically RP to only say good things about those who have died, especially their families.
He was not. We were once members there.
My wife and I were members at Belle Center RP Church for about a year and a half before leaving in March 2020. We sensed that something was off with the Soma family. Paul always had a very silent but strange disposition and my wife noticed that the Soma’s youngest daughter never spoke a word almost like she was afraid to. I also learned that in the past another church member there named Andrew Probst who was a Bluffton police officer had been sentenced to prison for having sexual relations with a 14 year old girl. Andrew’s brother who was the church treasurer during our attendance was kicked out for being caught having sex with a girl out of marriage. Shortly before that, another member was caught cheating on his pregnant wife. Way too many problems in a short amount of time for a church that consisted of less than 50 people! Glad we left when we did.
Glad you were able to see issues and get out of there. I think a lot of Evangelicals are duped into thinking that the leaders have everything under control, and that all Christians are trustworthy. Wolves are everywhere and patriarchal churches are breeding grounds for wolves and even work to keep sheep ill-equipped to handle them.
I'm assuming you saw all this coming into the RP church as an outsider. For those of us who were raised RP, it's more of a boiling a frog analogy - we're slowly exposed to more and more of the dark underbelly, but it doesn't seem so bad when it's just a little worse than what was there before.
Exactly. It took a bit longer to convince my wife as she had been in the RPCNA since her early teens. Eventually we both agreed enough was enough. From almost the beginning, I saw Phil's church as more of an authoritarian cult with a "beat you into submission mentality" if you would, and far less grace based than I was used to in my baptist upbringing. We became members almost immediately after we were married. The incident with one of the members cheating on his wife happened shortly after. In conversation at a church fellowship meal the topic was brought up by Greg Probst (Andrew Probst's father). He said to me in a threatening manor (in front of my wife) that if I ever did that I would be dealt with! What a way to welcome new church members just married! That was just one example of the odd degrading things that were said to either my wife or myself regularly.
I hear Belle Center RPC lost more members since we left, I think it's only a matter of time before that group disbands.
I figure Phil Pockras will find a good time to declare victory and retire. He'll leave the steaming pile of crap for the next pastor to try to clean up and most likely the church will go on life support and close because it's not in Indiana.
The church I was at... the elders knew not to threaten me because I was well-connected and I knew what was going to get overruled by the higher courts. Instead, they made sure to undermine and emotionally abuse me at the local level.
I hope you and your wife are able to find a grace-filled church while you heal from the Great Lakes-Gulf spiritual abuse.
There is a difference between only saying good things about the dead and making statements about the dead and speaking blatant untruths that actively harm their victims. They could have chosen to not speak to the issue at all.
I think definitionally, a "loving father" would not commit crimes against his children. It just seems like a very hard place for the victims - on the one hand, their abuser is out of the picture, but it seems that those on the outside who are stuck in denial don't really have to process it when he's gone. They can refuse to acknowledge the truth in a way that wouldn't make sense if he was sitting in jail.
Did Paul Soma die in prison? Was his cause of death covered up? he was very young, this is very odd
He did. At one point I was told that he was hospitalized and near death. His cause of death was never mentioned but I would only speculate it was suicide. He had just begun his nine year prison sentence.
I do know that child molesters are at or near the bottom of the prison food chain. I don't want to speculate that it's suicide if it could have been prison vigilante justice.
Dana was not innocent. And Paul was murdered in prison.
She pled guilty. I think our society does not understand trauma and ends up exacerbating the problem. Paul was a narcissistic abuser who coopted a religious system that enabled his narcissistic abuse and trapped Dana. Remember that the RP church didn't explicitly approve divorce on the grounds of abuse. Instead it put these decisions in the hands of pastors. Phil Pockras is an enabler of abuse and lived literally across the street from Paul and Dana Soma, so he was not unaware of the abuse, and neither was he innocent in trapping Dana in an abusive environment. The patriarchal teaching of the RP church is essentially, "women go to hell for refusing to submit to their husband's lawful commands. Submitting to your husband's unlawful command is minor, but you better know what you're doing unless you disobey and go to hell."
So, I think the patriarchal peanut gallery likes to throw the women under the bus either way. It's okay for them to submit to their husband's child abuse, unless the husband is prosecuted, and then, somehow it was their responsibility all along to protect the children. Protect the children when the church will excommunicate them for it. Protect the children when they will likely suffer spousal abuse for it. Protect the children when the state won't find enough evidence to do anything about it.
As the saying goes, "for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." It took a village for Dana to ignore the abuse of her husband.
There's more. Someone explained this to me. If Dana filed for divorce prior to him being charged, she would not have been charged with endangering her children. However, if she filed for divorce, the family court would have, most likely, given Paul and Dana joint custody, which would have meant that she had no ability to protect the children from his molestation. So, in strict legal terms, she's guilty, but likely she is guilty of trying to protect her children by the only means she knew how - physical presence in the house where he was abusing them. https://stopabusecampaign.org/protecting-your-child-from-sexual-abuse-in-custody-cases/
Keep in mind that the victims of her crime asked the court for leniency. They did not ask leniency for Paul. It suggests that she was trying to protect them the best way she knew how within the toxic Belle Center culture. https://www.examiner.org/dana-soma-sentenced-to-community-control/
"Logan County Prosecutor Sarah Warren represented the State of Ohio and recommended the court include a term of incarceration as part of Mrs. Soma’s sentence. The victims of the crimes disagreed with that recommendation. Numerous others contacted the Court and sought mercy for Mrs. Soma."
Thanks for this link. I hadn't heard what had become of Dana. Knowing what little I do (and hoping, as I do, that she was indeed between a rock and a hard place), one year of probation doesn't seem like too light a sentence; it should be fully served by now. I hope it was (and is continuing to be) also accompanied by a lot of therapy, support, and love from a good network of carers.
And do we actually know that Paul was murdered? It's entirely plausible, but so is suicide.
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