More than half a dozen employees reported harassment from Galli or Olawoye to a manager or HR between the mid-2000s and 2019. But neither leader was written up, formally warned about their inappropriate behavior, suspended, or otherwise punished. There is no record that Christianity Today took any corrective action, even after repeated complaints of nearly identical offenses.

Disclosure: This story was reported by CT news editor Daniel Silliman, edited by senior news editor Kate Shellnutt, and published without prior review by ministry executives. Neither editor had access to personnel files or meetings regarding the allegations or investigation. You can read president and CEO Timothy Dalrymple’s statement here.

For more than a dozen years, Christianity Today failed to hold two ministry leaders accountable for sexual harassment at its Carol Stream, Illinois, office.

A number of women reported demeaning, inappropriate, and offensive behavior by former editor in chief Mark Galli and former advertising director Olatokunbo Olawoye. But their behavior was not checked and the men were not disciplined, according to an external assessment of the ministry’s culture released Tuesday.

The report identified a pair of problems at the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism: a poor process for “reporting, investigating, and resolving harassment allegations” and a culture of unconscious sexism that can be “inhospitable to women.” CT has made the assessment public.

“We want to practice the transparency and accountability we preach,” said CT president Timothy Dalrymple. “It’s imperative we be above reproach on these matters. If we’re falling short of what love requires of us, we want to know, and we want to do better.”

In separate, independent reporting, the CT news editor interviewed more than two dozen current and former employees and heard 12 firsthand accounts of sexual harassment.

Women at CT were touched at work in ways that made them uncomfortable. They heard men with authority over their careers make comments about the sexual desirability of their bodies. And in at least two cases, they heard department heads hint at openness to an affair.

More than half a dozen employees reported harassment from Galli or Olawoye to a manager or HR between the mid-2000s and 2019. But neither leader was written up, formally warned about their inappropriate behavior, suspended, or otherwise punished. There is no record that Christianity Today took any corrective action, even after repeated complaints of nearly identical offenses.

“The culture when I was there was to protect the institution at all costs,” said Amy Jackson, an associate publisher who left what she said had become a hostile work environment in 2018. “No one was ever held accountable. Mark Galli was certainly protected.”

The misconduct at CT may not rank with the worst examples exposed by the #MeToo movement, but the ministry has never measured itself by those standards.

“In the midst of our ugly world,” Galli wrote in 2015, “Christianity Today offers an oasis of the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

At the same time that Galli was developing the “beautiful orthodoxy” branding for CT, he made inappropriate comments about women. Three people recalled him talking in the office, for example, about how he liked to watch female golfers bend over. Galli denies the specific comment but said he probably referred to the women on the golf course as “eye candy.”

Remarks about women’s bodies and even the occasional stray hand can be seen as merely “boorish,” said online managing editor Andrea Palpant Dilley, one of the people who pushed for the external assessment. But that behavior has had an impact on the women who work at CT.

“There is a physical fear with sexual harassment, but the bigger fear, for me, is I’m afraid of the diminishment and disrespect,” Palpant Dilley said. “It’s a threat to my professionalism, and that is fundamentally a threat to my ability to flourish and trust that I can be respected as a woman at CT.”

HR Complaint Brought Backlash

Richard Shields, HR director from 2008 to 2019, declined to comment on any specific employees or allegations for this story. But he objected to the idea that HR had fallen short.

“I always took complaints seriously and very, very confidentially,” he told the CT news editor. “I’m very confident that we used the processes we had in place very consistently, very thoroughly, very effectively.”

CT policy dictated that HR document any allegations of misconduct and then report to the executive team. The executive team did not, however, have clear corporate guidelines laying out the consequences for violations, according to Harold Smith, president and CEO from 2007 to 2019.

It wasn’t until after the start of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo social media movements that CT leadership started to review policies and train staff on sexual harassment.

“We were playing catch-up,” Smith said. “And regrettably it was the women who brought this issue to our attention … who were sadly caught waiting and waiting for some resolution.”

When people made allegations, HR opened files and took notes. But then nothing happened, leaving many current and former employees with the impression there were no consequences for any misconduct short of a felony.

For some, reports to HR actually made things worse. For one woman, an HR complaint brought so much backlash that it changed her experience at CT.

Her name, like the names of other women who experienced sexual harassment, is being kept confidential, following CT’s policies for reporting on abuse. The details of each story have, however, been confirmed with multiple sources who observed the same incident, learned about it firsthand at the time, or saw identical instances of harassment.

When this woman was hired on as an editor in the mid-2000s, someone joked that she was only brought on because a senior editor wanted to have sex with her. She didn’t report that to HR, but a colleague did. After that, the woman heard regular comments from men at CT about how she was too quick to see sexual harassment in everything.

Galli in particular began asking her if she was offended when he held a door open for her, she recalled. He would make a banal statement about gender, she said, and then add, “Are you going to report that?”

It made her believe that if she reported anything, she would be treated as if she was crying wolf. “It was pretty chilling,” she said.

A short time later, CT’s advertising director, Olawoye, came into her office and shut her door. He told her how good she looked, she recalled. Then he started talking about how unhappy he was in his marriage and put his hand on her leg.

She did not report it to HR. She did not think it was worth the risk.

“It’s hard for people to come forward with claims of harassment—very hard,” said Sonal Shah, assistant director of employment law services at HR Source. “Most complaints go unreported, so if you’re getting multiple complaints, then the problem is likely more serious and more pervasive than you realize.”

Multiple women who worked at CT between 2000 and 2019 said it was not even clear to them whether HR was responsible for sexual harassment complaints. The state of Illinois mandated sexual harassment training for all workplaces in 2019, and CT now requires employees to complete an annual online course. Before that, the women recalled, the general impression was that HR wasn’t interested in sexual harassment allegations and only dealt with hiring, firing, and retirement plans.

The HR director, Shields, was also associated with a group of senior men at the ministry who played golf, including Galli, Olawoye, and several others. A number of women said they decided not to report harassment because he seemed more likely to sympathize with men in leadership than young women making accusations.

“I was told not to expect anything from HR,” one former employee said, “but just go to other women.”

Women Helping Women Avoid Sexual Harassment

Women in the office organized informally to protect each other against unwanted attention from Olawoye, who was known at CT by his nickname “Toks.” Several described warning new hires that he did not respect personal boundaries, but frequently invited himself into women’s offices, shut the door, and engaged them in long, personal conversations.

Some even made a pact to pretend to have meetings with each other to create an excuse to politely end conversations with the higher-ranking man.

Despite those efforts, three more women had identical experiences of harassment. Each independently said that Olawoye commented on their physical appearances, told them his wife was not as attractive as she used to be, and mentioned he wasn’t having as much sex as he would like.

“My whole body tensed up and I wanted to throw up,” one woman recalled. “I was just like, ‘Uh, uh, uh, I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to talk to this person alone ever again.’”

None of these women reported the incidents to management or HR. One said she felt like she dealt with it personally, and the others said they were embarrassed and didn’t think it would help.

They may have been right. When others did report Olawoye for inappropriate behavior, they found they were treated as if they were the problem.

One woman told her manager that Olawoye was staring at her breasts during meetings. The manager’s response: “It helps if you wear a scarf.”

The manager, who is a woman, confirmed that account but noted that she did not receive training about sexual harassment when she was promoted and did not know to file a formal complaint.

Another manager, a man, did file a complaint. He went to HR and said that Olawoye was spending an inordinate amount of time talking to a college intern. He seemed to be asking her inappropriate questions—whether she had a boyfriend, whether she’d ever had a boyfriend, and whether she’d like to have dinner at his house.

A few days later, Olawoye stormed into the office of the manager who reported him and demanded an apology. He had learned who made the complaint and was irate about the possibility of an “awful mark” on his record.

The manager did not file any more HR complaints during his time at Christianity Today.

There is no record that Olawoye was formally reprimanded for that incident or that it left any sort of mark on his record.

Olawoye’s tenure at CT ended after he was arrested by federal agents in a sting operation in 2017. He was attempting to pay for sex with a teenage girl. He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.

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