What spiritual abuse is, and where to get help

Recognition

What it can look like

A belief or practice is not abusive merely because it is strict, unfamiliar, supernatural, or disputed. The central questions are how power is used, whether meaningful choice is preserved, and whether harm is enabled, justified, concealed, or made harder to escape.

• Claimed exclusive authority

  A leader claims unique access to God, spirits, healing, revelation, enlightenment, purity, destiny, or hidden knowledge and treats disagreement as proof of corruption.

• Threatened consequences

  Disobedience is tied to damnation, curses, illness, possession, karmic harm, loss of family, spiritual ruin, or danger to loved ones.

• Control presented as care

  Private access, touching, sex, labor, money, fasting, sleep loss, isolation, confession, or surveillance is framed as treatment, purification, discipline, initiation, or spiritual progress.

• Constrained choice

  Questions are punished, outside information is restricted, decisions require approval, leaving is made dangerous, or consent is obtained through fear and dependency.

• Institutional protection

  Complaints are handled inside the authority structure, survivors are pressured to forgive or remain silent, accused leaders are moved or shielded, and reputation is placed above safety.

• Identity-based shame

  A person's sexuality, gender, disability, caste, family role, doubt, trauma response, or ordinary need for help is recast as sin, impurity, disloyalty, or evidence of spiritual failure.

Possible effects

There is no required reaction

Research base

What the studies support

1. Spiritual abuse as coercion and control

   Oakley and colleagues describe spiritual abuse as coercion and control in a spiritual context, including manipulation, enforced accountability, secrecy, pressure to conform, misuse of scripture, claims of divine position, required obedience, and isolation.

   Oakley, Kinmond and Humphreys, Understanding Spiritual Abuse in Christian Communities (2018)

2. Belief and doctrine can become part of a control repertoire

   A peer-reviewed UK study found that perpetrators can use spiritual abuse alongside other coercive-control tactics, or use belief and doctrine to create a more total form of religious coercive control.

   Mulvihill et al., Criminology & Criminal Justice (2022)

3. Coercive control is associated with trauma symptoms and depression

   A systematic review identified 68 studies and found moderate associations between coercive-control exposure and both post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression. The review supports trauma-informed mental-health care while noting limits in the evidence base.

   Lohmann et al., Trauma, Violence, & Abuse (2024)

4. Spiritual harm can be distinct and difficult to name

   A 2025 systematic scoping review of clergy sexual-abuse research found that spiritual harm has intertwined spiritual, emotional, and psychological components, but is still defined inconsistently across studies.

   Durkin et al., PLOS One (2025)

5. Religious-trauma prevalence is still being established

   A 2023 U.S. survey of 1,581 adults estimated a substantial burden of religious trauma. It is one study, based on self-report and a debated construct; religious trauma is not a DSM diagnosis and the estimate should not be treated as a clinical prevalence rate.

   Slade et al., Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (2023)

Direct support

If you need help

If you are in immediate danger, contact local emergency services if doing so is safe. If your device may be monitored, use a safer device when possible. No single service below specializes in every form of spiritual abuse; choose the entry point that fits the harm you experienced.

• Global directory

  Find A Helpline

  Country and topic directory whose operator says participating helplines verify their information directly. Check each service's confidentiality terms before contact.

• Sexual abuse · U.S.

  RAINN

  Call 800-656-HOPE, text HOPE to 64673, or use online chat. RAINN reports confidential, 24/7 support in English and Spanish.

• Coercive control · U.S.

  National Domestic Violence Hotline

  Call 800-799-SAFE, text START to 88788, or chat with an advocate. The service also publishes device-safety guidance.

• Crisis support · U.S.

  988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

  Call, text, or chat 988 for free, confidential crisis support, 24 hours a day. Spanish service is available.

• High-control groups

  International Cultic Studies Association

  Education, professional directories, events, and support resources concerning psychological manipulation and high-control groups.

• Religious doubt or exit

  Recovering from Religion

  Peer support for people dealing with religious doubt, harm, family conflict, or transition. It is not an emergency or clinical service.

• Safeguarding · UK

  thirtyone:eight

  Independent safeguarding advice, training, and resources for abuse in faith settings, including spiritual abuse.

Listings are informational, not endorsements or clinical referrals. Services, hours, reporting duties, and privacy practices vary by jurisdiction and can change.

Aligned work elsewhere

Additional resources

This archive publishes only records that reached a conviction or an official finding. That standard leaves out a great deal of serious, carefully assembled work. The projects below do not meet our intake bar — most collect allegations, institutional disclosures, or organisational data rather than adjudicated outcomes — but they are aligned in purpose and are often more complete than we are within their own scope. Listing them is not an endorsement of any individual entry they contain, and an appearance in any of them is not a finding of guilt.

• Diocesan disclosure lists · U.S.

  ProPublica — Credibly Accused

  Names released by 178 U.S. Catholic dioceses and religious orders, gathered into one searchable place. “Credibly accused” is each diocese's own judgment, not a court's, so these names cannot enter this archive as records — and ProPublica notes 41 dioceses have released nothing at all. Last updated January 2020; ProPublica describes it as a historical snapshot.

• Nonprofit filings · U.S.

  ProPublica — Nonprofit Explorer

  IRS Form 990 filings for U.S. nonprofits, with a free JSON API. Useful for establishing an organisation's legal identity, finances and continuity. Note that churches and their integrated auxiliaries are exempt from filing, so dioceses and parishes typically return no financial data.

• Statutory inquiries · UK

  IICSA (archived)

  The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse closed in 2022; its reports on the Anglican and Catholic churches, religious organisations and settings, and residential institutions remain available through the National Archives.

• Treaty-body findings · global

  UN treaty bodies

  Concluding observations from the Committee on the Rights of the Child and others. For states that have never held a domestic inquiry, these are often the only adjudicated findings that exist, and several records here rest on them.

External links are provided for research. We do not control these sites, cannot vouch for individual entries, and their inclusion criteria differ from ours — see Method and Data Bias.

Evidence intake

Submit a documented case

Submit court records, official inquiries or findings, and verifiable published journalism. Do not include minor-victim identities, private allegations, medical records, contact information, or material that is not already public. Nothing is published automatically; every submission enters a private verification queue.