Pastor Andy Savage criticized for minimizing sexual abuse of Jules Woodson as a ‘valley’

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Former Highpoint Church Teaching Pastor Andy Savage, who now leads Grace Valley Church in Collierville, Tennessee, is facing criticism for allegedly minimizing his past sexual abuse of Jules Woodson as a “valley” on his church’s website as his victim speaks out about the abuse again in a new film titled "For Our Daughters."

The film, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, claims that "sexual abuse in the evangelical church ties directly to the Christian nationalist quest to use the outcome of the 2024 election to deprive all American women of basic democratic rights."

“Grace Valley was started in Andy & Amanda’s living room in late 2019 with a group of friends after a very difficult and life-changing ‘valley’ season in Andy's life,” the church’s website states.

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“The Valley, although painful, served as a crucible of transformation for Andy. His values and convictions were challenged and galvanized. He truly embraced the growth God intended for his life through this challenging time. The valley is where the truth and grace of Jesus stripped Andy of many false and worldly identities and restored him to a lifelong pursuit of humility and serving. Andy is now a self-proclaimed ‘valley person’ and seeks to help people find the grace of Jesus in their valleys,” it adds.

“Notice how there's not a single word about his victim? Not a single word about how it wasn't a ‘valley’-it was ABUSE. This just infuriates me,” Gregoire wrote on X shortly before interviewing Du Mez about her approximately 30-minute film.

Savage criticized the #ChurchToo movement — a Christian version of the secular #MeToo movement which exposed sexual harassment and rape culture — as "very attacking" after he was forced to resign in 2018 over a 20-year-old sexual assault involving a teenage Woodson while he was her youth pastor.

Savage was forced by #ChurchToo activists to publicly discuss his past in early January 2018 after an online uproar over revelations by the now-adult Woodson, who told The Wartburg Watch that he coerced her into performing oral sex on him on a dark Texas dirt road some 20 years prior.

Savage maintained that the sex between him and the teenage Woodson was consensual. Following a time of reflection during a leave of absence after the story gained national attention, however, Savage said he came to a different conclusion which he believes required his resignation.

"As I've reflected during my leave of absence, I have come to see that many wrongs occurred in 1998. The first was my inappropriate relationship with Jules, which was not only immoral, but meets the definition of abuse of power since I was her youth pastor; therefore, when our relationship became physical, there could be no claim of mutual consent,” he said in a March 2018 statement. “Another wrong was the failure to follow due process afterward; Jules deserved, and did not get, a full investigation and proper response 20 years ago." 

When Savage finally apologized in front of his church, he received a standing ovation and comfort from congregants and leaders at High Point.

In "For Our Daughters,” Woodson recalled, with tears welling up in her eyes, how the way in which the church chose to address her abuse retraumatized her all over again.

“One of the kickers is that I remember them saying, we are saddened to see that Ms. Woodson has not been on the same path to healing as Andy. Are you kidding me?” she asked, incredulously.

“This didn’t affect him one ounce. He was celebrated. You don’t just move on after trauma. And when society and the church acts like it didn’t happen, disposes of the victims, then its retraumatizing all over again,” she added. “We’ve had the #MeToo movement, but we still see the same toxic crap happening in the Church. There has got to be equality. There has got to be women having a voice.”

Neither Savage nor other members of Grace Valley Church’s leadership team immediately responded to multiple requests from The Christian Post for comment.