As a young girl, Marianne Yppel was plagued by recurring thoughts and dreams of herself and other children being raped, and her annual physical examinations brought on fear.
It was only in 2020, after months of therapy to address anxiety and depression, that the inexplicable sense of fear slowly began to fade. The then 17-year-old recalled memories of being sexually assaulted by a fellow church member when she was three or four years old.
Yippel, now 21, has filed an unusual lawsuit alleging that a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, created a culture of abuse. In her complaint, filed Monday in Kent County Circuit Court, she claims she was harmed as a child, but bases her case on memories she recalled later in life.
“It happened almost 20 years ago and has had a devastating effect on me ever since,” Ippel told NBC News, “which is why I can speak with confidence about the facts and the extensive treatment I have received.”
Marianne Yippel says therapy helped her recover memories of the abuse she suffered when she was 3 and 4 years old. Photo courtesy of Marianne Yippel
Her lawsuit names as defendants Grace Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids and related organizations, including the Christian Reformed Church of North America, a Protestant Calvinist Christian denomination also based in Grand Rapids. The lawsuit alleges the church has a responsibility to prevent abuse and charges that the church created an environment in which Ippel believed deacons had “unfettered access to one-on-one meetings with young children, including Plaintiffs, who trusted him and the Defendants to provide a safe environment for education and counseling.”
Ippel is seeking a jury trial, damages and a court order requiring the church to investigate other people who may have been victimized by the alleged abusers, review church practices and policies, and provide “appropriate training” to those in positions of authority who care for minors and other vulnerable people.
“Churches are supposed to be places where people feel safe,” she said.
Grace Christian Reformed Church did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Christian Reformed Church of North America did not comment specifically on Ippel’s allegations but said it has “developed rigorous policies and procedures” aimed at keeping children safe and encouraging prompt reporting of abuse.
Lynn Cadigan, an Arizona attorney who has represented victims in sexual abuse lawsuits by the Mormon and Catholic churches, said memory-restoration lawsuits could test the limits of such cases because they require judges and juries to scrutinize the credibility of accusers.
Yippel is the only person to come forward publicly against those accused in the lawsuit, but her lawyers believe there are others who have had similar experiences and could help corroborate her story.
“Memory recovery cases are difficult because you may need corroborating evidence, especially with young children,” said Cadigan, who is not connected to the Ippel case. “It requires a thorough investigation of the perpetrator, whether there were other victims or witnesses, whether the perpetrator had the opportunity to do this.”
Abuse allegations
Yippel says it wasn’t a conscious decision to repress traumatic memories from her childhood — she grew up in a loving family and did well in school.
“I was the typical kid who was considered a really good kid,” she said.
But deep inside, she says, she felt uncontrollable anxiety and didn’t tell anyone she was suicidal. When she was 16, she began receiving counseling. Through psychotherapy, including a technique called “lifespan integration” therapy, which involves tracing a timeline of memories to heal past trauma, she says she began to piece together what had happened.
Marian in 2006. Courtesy of Marian Yppel
In the lawsuit, she alleges that a deacon took her by the hand and led her to the church’s basement after a Sunday children’s service in 2006. She was wearing a pink, green and white summer dress, according to the lawsuit. He allegedly sexually assaulted her and then forced her to go back upstairs alone, while her parents were distracted.
According to the lawsuit, Ippel’s parents gave her cookies after church. “Around the same time, Marian’s mother remembered noticing blood on Marian’s underwear,” the lawsuit states, “but did not understand why this was happening.”
The butler named in the lawsuit died in 2010 at age 66.
The Christian Reformed Church of North America said it was not aware of any other complaints against the deacon but would investigate any allegations if they were made.
“The victims will forever be in our prayers,” the church said in a statement. “We commend them for their courage in coming forward when the abuse may have occurred years ago. We are investigating further. The Christian Reformed Church of North America wants all of our congregations and programs to provide a safe and welcoming environment for children and all members of our communities.”
But Ippel said the incident with the deacon was not the only abuse she recalled. When Ippel was 4 years old, while on a church mission trip with her family to Guinea, the 12-year-old son of another missionary family began sexually abusing her, according to the lawsuit. The boy, identified by the initials MH, had allegedly been abused by another child from the church several years earlier and had previously been reported to the trip organizers, the lawsuit said.
Ippel said in 2020 that therapy helped him recover his memories, and that he spoke with his parents, who reported MH’s alleged abuse to his parents, the mission trip organizers and the church’s human resources department. A few weeks later, the family spoke with the pastor, who referred them to an office within the church that handles abuse, according to the lawsuit, but staff told the family they had not been informed of allegations of another child misbehaving in Guinea. The office then apologized to the family and offered $500 for counseling fees, but the family declined the money, according to the lawsuit.
Recognizing Abuse
The Christian Reformed Church, which has about 230,000 members in North America, was aware of a history of abuse within its member churches, according to the lawsuit.
The church first commissioned a study in 1989 on forms of abuse against its members, finding that 28 percent of adults said they had been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused, 15 percent said they had physically, sexually, or emotionally abused others, and that children under the age of 12 were “at highest risk” of abuse. It is unclear how much of the abuse was committed at the hands of church members.
In 1994, the church established an Office of Abuse Prevention, tasked with providing member churches with “the resources necessary to prevent abuse and address the ugly realities within the church.” Five years later, a church agenda stated that reports of suspected abuse were received weekly from member churches across the country.
“Although concern for the victims has grown, people remain perplexed as to how to deal with the perpetrators. There remains a high probability of impunity or of the incident being covered up when the suspect is a member of a patriarchal family or a church leader who is popular, well-known and supported by a support network,” the church’s 1999 agenda acknowledges.
Church is supposed to be a place where people feel safe.”
SAID Lawsuit Plaintiff Marianne Yippel
The following year, the church announced that it had received 125 cases related to reports of abuse, and subsequently noted “unfair” case handling.The church does not have a top-down hierarchical approach, placing most authority at the local church level, where councils of deacons and elders elected by the laity make most decisions, and while there are church ministries that provide resources to raise awareness of abuse, it is up to each member church to take advantage of the support of the larger church.
Michigan enacted a law in 2002 requiring religious clergy to report abuse.
“Churches must hold perpetrators accountable for their wrongdoings, sometimes years after the crimes have occurred,” the Christian Reformed Church said in a 2005 agenda, a year before Ippel alleges the abuse began. “Churches must work to learn how to restore people to one another, to the church, and to the Lord.”
Mr. Yppel’s lawyer, Megan Bonanni, who has represented other sexual assault victims, including in lawsuits against the Catholic Church and notorious sports doctor Larry Nassar, said problems within the Christian Reformed Church in general have been well-documented for years. Ms. Bonanni believes other victims will eventually come forward like Mr. Yppel.
“I know there are others out there,” Bonanni said.
Recovered memories
The concept of recovered memories, especially as it relates to childhood sexual abuse, has been debated in the field of psychology regarding its reliability.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a wave of cases of children alleging abuse attracted national attention and, in some cases, went to trial, where jurors were warned about the dangers of therapists and interrogators implanting false memories in impressionable young people and of children being pressured to fabricate their own memories.
One of the first cases to make national headlines was the arrest of the principal of McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, along with her family and several teachers, for allegedly abusing children in their care. After a years-long investigation and trial that included interviews with hundreds of children who said they had been abused or forced to perform bizarre rituals, charges against five of the defendants were dropped for lack of evidence, another was acquitted, and charges against the last were dropped after the jury could not agree on a retrial.
John Wickstead, a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego who specializes in episodic memory, told NBC News that the problem with memory is that false memories can appear equally well as real memories.
“It may be true,” he said of the memory, “or it may reflect a false memory unintentionally planted by the therapist. The tricky issue is the memory itself, the quality of the memory, and the sincerity with which the memory was held, none of which will help determine whether it really happened or not.”
Researchers say that people generally don’t remember anything that happened before about age 3.
But Wickstead said it would be a mistake to treat what emerges in therapy as categorically true or false, adding that in a lawsuit “the jury’s job is to unravel this and determine what is true based on the supporting evidence.”
James Hopper, a clinical psychologist who followed Ms Yppel’s case, said some stressful events can be imprinted on the brain, and research showed this could be true even for events that happened when a person was three or four years old.
Marian on October 17, 2005. Courtesy of Marian Yippel
Events stored in memory may not be recalled at a particular time, but if they are recalled at all, it is primarily dependent on a situation or trigger, such as being in a similar emotional state, such as fear or helplessness, he said.
Cadigan, the Arizona lawyer, said therapists in memory recovery cases would also face intense scrutiny on the stand and that a jury, not a judge, should decide whether an accuser can be believed. Even if there is just one accuser, going public can encourage others to come forward, “so we can see what really happened,” he added.
Ippel is adamant about what happened to her and is willing to come forward.
“This is not something I need to defend,” she said of her past.
“When you think about a 3-year-old, you realize they don’t really have a voice,” Ippel said. “That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for me to continue this work. Now I have a voice.”
