Enough Is Enough: How Churches Perpetuate Abuse and Trauma Against Teenage Girls

I’m supposed to be asleep right now, but I can’t shake the disgust I feel after watching a video today. A pastor made a pregnant teenage girl stand in front of the entire church congregation. He humiliated her publicly, shaming her for being pregnant. To make it worse, this abusive spectacle was filmed and broadcast live for the world to see.

This wasn’t accountability. It wasn’t correction. It was abuse

And it happens far too often.

Why do we think this is acceptable? Why do we make young girls the face of shame and blame while letting the fathers of their children remain invisible, unaddressed, and free from accountability? Why do some churches continue to perpetuate this harmful double standard?

I can’t stop asking myself: Where in the Bible does it say this kind of shaming is godly?

The Bible teaches about love, grace, and care for the vulnerable. I think of Jesus refusing to let the woman caught in adultery be stoned, protecting her from her accusers and calling out their hypocrisy. And yet, far too many churches seem more interested in breaking young girls down than building them up.

Let’s be clear this isn’t about righteousness. It’s about power. It’s about control.

Forcing a pregnant teenager to stand in front of a congregation to "confess" isn’t accountability; it’s humiliation. It doesn’t just harm the girl standing there it sends a message to every other young woman watching: *Your worth is tied to your mistakes. Your body is a symbol of shame. And if you fall short, we will destroy you.

This is especially true for Black girls. In far too many churches, Black girls are disproportionately slut-shamed and judged, treated as though their very existence is a problem to be fixed. This stems from deeply entrenched racist and sexist stereotypes about Black women’s sexuality stereotypes that cast Black girls as hypersexual and deserving of harsher discipline.

And the trauma doesn’t end when the church service does. Public shaming creates scars that linger for years, if not a lifetime. It pushes young women out of their faith communities, not because they lack belief, but because they cannot reconcile a loving God with the abuse they endured at the hands of His so-called servants.

Let’s call this what it is: systemic abuse.

The church, a place that should be a refuge, often becomes the very institution that inflicts the deepest wounds. Public humiliation, slut-shaming, and using children as moral scapegoats are not acts of love or righteousness. They are acts of violence.

If churches truly cared about their communities, they would protect their most vulnerable. They would create spaces for healing and support—not spaces of shame and condemnation. If they wanted to reflect Christ’s teachings, they would extend grace and compassion, not wield humiliation as a weapon.

It’s time for us to hold these institutions accountable. It’s time to stop the abuse. It’s time to challenge the culture of slut-shaming and public humiliation that targets our girls—especially Black girls while letting boys and men off the hook.

I should be asleep right now, but I can’t rest knowing that this is happening. No girl no child deserves to be treated this way. Not in church. Not anywhere.

Enough is enough.

Rant over !