Roughly five years ago, a teenager at a private Christian school became pregnant. Visibly pregnant. And that was the problem right there. The girl chose not to have an abortion because it violated her religious beliefs. Because she didn’t do that, though, the school punished her for having premarital sex: She wasn’t allowed to receive her diploma on stage with the other graduates. It raised a lot of questions about the message sent by that Christian institution: Weren’t they basically incentivizing students to get an abortion in that situation?

I thought of that story when I heard about Mara Louk, a senior at Visible Music College, a Christian school in Memphis, Tennessee.

As reported by NBC News‘ Tyler Kingkade, Louk was sexually assaulted by a classmate last year. At the very least, she hoped that by reporting the assault, the school would make sure that student wasn’t in any of her classes and not a threat to her own well-being. She also reported the crime to police.

The police said they didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. That in itself is one issue, but the bar for punishment was significantly lower at the school, where Louk wasn’t expecting an expulsion. She just wanted the school to enforce some kind of distance between the two, so he couldn’t hurt her, in addition to other steps they might take.

Instead, they did even less than the bare minimum.

The accused student was someone Louk had confided in, and when he was brought in for questioning, he told school officials that she had slept with her ex-boyfriend prior to the night of the alleged incident. Louk denied that ever happened.

Still, the school used that information against her.

The college wanted Louk to sign what it called a “pastoral care contract,” confessing to breaking rules on premarital sex. According to a copy of the contract reviewed by NBC News, Louk would be required to finish her degree online, barred from campus and prohibited from talking to other students about her alleged assault.

“We strongly believe that these restrictions will aid in bringing some needed structure, and will ensure that you are able to address the spiritual and emotional issues behind the infringements,” the contract stated.

So because Louk went to school authorities about an alleged sexual assault, they punished her for consensual sex with someone else… which she denied. Because of that, she refused to sign that contract admitting she broke the premarital sex rules. She later finished the semester online before dropping out entirely and moving back home. She was only nine credits short of graduating.

Her predicament raises all kinds of legal and ethical concerns.
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(This, one again, demonstrates how Christianity if patriarchal in nature, and how women are blamed for any sexual wrong doing, while the men have no consequences.)