Michelle Caswell still recalls the nights when her boss prayed beside her bed, kneeling so close she could feel his warm breath on her face and she worried he’d try to kiss her.
Caswell was 31, working and living at 5Rock Ranch, a Christian ministry that promises refuge and spiritual guidance for single mothers, “the fatherless and the floundering.” Fresh out of drug rehab, she was hired as the women’s ministry director, but her boss, Michael “Scott” Bradley, quickly urged her to think of him as her father, she says. Caswell recalls how Scott claimed that she had stopped maturing at a young age due to multiple personality disorder, and that as her father, it was appropriate for her to sit on his lap, and for him to kiss her on the cheek and pray at her bedside each morning and night.
It’s been 15 years since Caswell left 5Rock Ranch in 2011. When she thinks back on those nights, it’s with a mixture of disgust, anger, and compassion for that young woman trying to fall asleep. How did she ever get used to that?…