Survivor Said That Joiner Would Do Things Like Chewing Her Already Chewed Gum as Things Got More Physical
The survivor shared that over the next year, Joiner became more physical with her. “I protected his ego and didn’t move my leg when he pressed his knee against mine while editing videos at his house late at night,” she said. “I didn’t recoil when he put his foot on top of mine under the table at Sunday lunch.”
She said that she “told him it was understandable that he wanted to go on long drives with me and hold my hand [and] I didn’t tell him how gross I thought it was that he liked chewing my already chewed gum.”
The survivor continued to describe more of how Joiner groomed her:
I didn’t tell him how shocked and terrified I was when he kissed me the first time. By that point, he’d confessed many of his sexual fantasies to me, but at 19, I truly did not know that was something a father figure could do…until he did. By then, however, the grooming was complete. Reggie had fully conditioned me to silence and compliance. He had spent the year leading up to that kiss consistently isolating me from family and friends and ensuring my complete dependence on him and him alone by inserting himself or his family members in every role: father, friend, sibling, confidant, employer, and pastor. That first kiss felt like being shoved down a dark tunnel slide. I lost whatever agency I thought I had. I disappeared from the world. It took me 8 years to finally get the traction I needed to stop falling deeper, and another decade to climb back up and fully reenter the world. During those dark, lonely, suffocating years, I experienced what too many people experience at the hands of an older man who is supposed to care for them like a father. I swung between desperately wanting to escape and needing Reggie’s love and approval to survive.
She claimed that Joiner’s relationship with her wasn’t his only one. In fact, she said that “Reggie was in extramarital sexual relationships with multiple women before, during, and after his relationship with me.”
“Not wanting to be responsible for an executive pastor’s suicide,” she later said in her statement, “I put my head down and continued playing my role. I excused his behavior. I made sure he knew I still loved him.”
“I convinced him, and myself, that it was perfectly normal for him to call me 30+ times in a row if I wasn’t answering,” said the survivor, “or to receive photos he’d taken of me when I didn’t know he was around, or to wake up and see him watching me sleep in the middle of the night when I thought he was in a different state. (Yes, all real experiences).”
Survivor Claims Joiner Started a Similar Pattern With Her Younger Sister
The sexual relationship with Joiner ended shortly after the survivor turned 27. “I was able to find my footing, to get some traction in that dark tunnel,” she said. “I finally found the strength to end the sexual relationship. However, around that time, I noticed my own sister, who Reggie recruited to work for him out of college, disappearing.”
Convincing herself at first that Joiner wouldn’t do to her sister what he did to her, the survivor said “my sister’s story is hers to tell, but I can say that it follows the same pattern.” She claimed the “reason Reggie initially targeted my sister was likely because he felt me pulling away and needed to ensure my silence and his control of the situation.”
“Like many survivors of abuse, I did not realize I was being abused while the abuse was happening,” she explained. “I thought it was love. Like many survivors of clergy sexual abuse, I presented it as a consensual affair at first.” But now, she said, “my friends’ and my counselors’ reactions gave me the permission I needed to question Reggie’s framing of the relationship…I am fortunate that the first people I told all seemed very clear on what it was: abuse.”
