"Kidnapped In My Own House": Shannon Burns’ 5-Year Nightmare [WATCH]

Canadian radio host speaks about her experience as a survivor of child sexual assault and how conservative Christian values were weaponized to justify the abuse.

This story includes references to topics such as sexual abuse, violence, child abuse and religious trauma. Viewer/reader discretion is advised. 

Shot by Parker Wales, Liv Brolley and Ryan Brownrigg. Edited by: E. E. Oliver. Special thanks: O'Grady's Restaurant On Church.

Throughout history, there has been an epidemic of sexual assault inside conservative Christian churches. Between 1950 and 2020, the French Catholic Church’s clergy sexually abused about 216,000 children. And a 2019 investigation into the Southern Baptist Churches revealed over 380 individuals were accused of sexual misconduct, resulting in 700 victims since 1998.

But the epidemic spans beyond church walls, with many perpetrators weaponizing biblical and Christian values in an effort to justify child sexual abuse.

That’s what happened to Shannon Burns, a prominent queer Canadian radio host who was raised in the Canadian & American Reformed Churches, where she says she was taught that women should be subordinate to men and that homosexuality is a sin. With these beliefs in mind, and having never been taught any meaningful form of sex ed, Shannon’s stepfather molested her from the age of 13 to 18.

While her stepfather—who has since passed away—was convicted and did serve time, Shannon’s story illuminates how the principles of many conservative Christian churches—including dealing with sex crimes internally rather than reporting to the police; teaching patriarchal governance structures; and comparing homosexuality to bestiality—create a climate where children, and particularly queer women and girls, are vulnerable to sexual abuse.

In the third episode of “Beneath the Grid,” Shannon, now 32, speaks with intense candor about what happened to her and what needs to change inside the church so fewer children are subjected to sexual abuse.

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Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: So we're here in Toronto at O'Grady's in the heart of the gay village. Tell me a bit about what you do and how you gained such a following?

Shannon Burns: I've been working in radio for over 10 years, and I'm lucky enough to host a radio show based out of Toronto that airs all across Canada. 

SM: I love it. And obviously we're here to talk about something serious, your experience growing up in the church. Before I even start asking those questions, I want to just say, as a man who's never experienced sexual abuse or rape, I know I'm coming at this from a different perspective, so if I ask anything that is off or makes you uncomfortable, you need to take a break. Go ahead.

SB: Got it. You’re good.

SM: And yeah, just super grateful for you being here. And I think it's extremely courageous and also so important, because it's such a pervasive issue that's so infrequently talked about. So with that, why don't we start, tell me a little bit about your upbringing, what that was like, and the experience you had in the church.

SB: Yeah, so I grew up outside of Toronto. I grew up born into a really conservative Christian community. You're really indoctrinated from the start of what your beliefs are supposed to be. And then like so many people, I figured out that I was queer. And right away there's a lot of shame and guilt that comes with that. You're taught your whole life that that's not something that you can be, and that's a sin and it's bad. So of course, there's a lot of confusing feelings that come with it.

SM: Tell me a little bit more about what they teach as it relates to conceptions of gender, of what it means to be a strong girl and subsequently a strong woman.

SB: Yeah, so the church that I grew up in is called the Canadian Reformed Church. It's a sector of the Christian community. It's under Calvinism. A lot of the things that we get taught growing up is that men are superior to women. Men hold the positions of power in the church. Everything would be left up to the husband, who is the leader. So there's a lot of gender imbalance. A lot of the times, I remember in high school, they would really emphasize finding a husband. And that would be a priority as much as finding a job after school. So that was always something that I thought would be my life, but yeah, after high school is kind of the time where I discovered my sexuality and went on a very different path than I probably would have ended up.

SM: So you're 13 years old, you're in Canadian Reformed Christianity, you know, in this wild religious world. As much as you're comfortable talking about it, what happened?

SB: So when my mom got remarried to my stepdad, I was really excited because I had lost my dad a few years prior. As soon as he came into our house and moved in, that's when the grooming process started. And I think at the time I just thought that he was treating me extra special and he would talk about wanting to form kind of a special relationship with me that was different than with my siblings, and he would say things like, “I'm the only one who understands him.” And he would talk to me about his relationship with my mom and the difficulties that they were having. But through that time, he really started to earn my trust, and I really cared for him, and I really liked him a lot and he eventually took advantage of that. So by the time that I was 13, he started sexually abusing me and, yeah, it started with a kiss, and then he would progress to other things, and every couple months he would introduce a new thing that he wanted to do, and over that five and a half year period, from when I was 13 to 18, you can only imagine how horrifying the whole situation got. I always knew that I was being sexually abused, but I never knew how to get out of it. And because he was so manipulative and brainwashing and scary, he would tell me things like if I told anyone, people wouldn't believe me or they would think that him and I were having an affair on my mom. So I had such a huge fear that my mom might think that this is something that's consensual. Or if he did get caught or get arrested that maybe down the line he would get welcomed back into the family and he would come back even angrier and who knows what he could do in that situation. So I think there's just a lot of fear, especially when you're that age and you're so naive that you just don't know what's going to happen. And I remember thinking, “If he can sexually abuse me, what's stopping him from kidnapping me or killing me or killing a member of my family?” So I was just going to bed every night in such fear and just not knowing what is gonna happen next. So then it just turned into a routine of everyday abuse for over five years. 

SM: Everyday abuse.

SB: Yeah.

SM: Terrifying and horrific. So sorry you went through that. What had the church taught you about reporting something like this?

SB: Growing up in the church, you don't really learn a lot about sex ed and a lot of conversations about anything that's really sexual besides to not have it. So there was never any conversations about sexual abuse. Any sort of situation that I had heard about that in the Church, it was that somebody had abused someone, maybe they went away for a little while and then they were welcomed back in. And we're taught as Christians to be very forgiving, so you do hear situations about somebody committing a crime or doing something horrible, and then they repent and they're welcomed back in. So that was always just such a strong fear of mine that if I did say anything, I thought maybe it would end up being something that they tried to deal with internally because the church is known for doing that without actually going to the police.

He also was close with a lot of the men who ran our church. I thought, okay, I'm just a little teenage girl and I don't know how things will go if I try to face this adult man who's friends with all of these other adult men, and those are the people that I would want to go to to explain the situation and to go for help, so it was, yeah, it's really scary to try and deal with all of that.

SM: That must have been such a mind F, really, growing up. I mean, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, five years, your entire teenage existence under this roof from your stepdad. How do you think, through those years, that emotionally affected you? Like, that is trauma.

SB: Yeah, it really is. It's just a very traumatizing thing to go through because of the abuse that I was going through, but also just keeping such a big secret. I was living in the same house as my three other siblings. My mom was living there, and not a single person in the house knew what was going on or that he was sneaking into my room in the middle of the night.

Lying by omission to so many people about what was actually going on was just a really difficult thing to have to navigate for so many years. And then also through this, I'm discovering that I'm a lesbian. So I've also been dealing with the guilt and the shame that comes with that because I'm in a church that teaches you that being that type of person or even just acting on those types of feelings is very sinful and very wrong.

SM: Did he ever weaponize Christianity and what you had learned through the religion of Canadian Reform Christianity to make you think this was okay?

SB: Absolutely. It was a huge part of the way that he would groom me was by using examples from the Bible or using being a Christian as an example.

So he would help me with my homework, and any sort of situation or Bible story I would give him as an example, he would somehow find a way to twist that and turn it into him talking about his love for me. He would want to do all these sexual things to me, and I would say to him, I'm like, “This is a sin. You can't do this to me. You're married to my mom.” And he would say, “Well, we love each other, and God would understand because we're in a situation where you and I can't be together. We can't run off together and be married. God is giving us permission to act in this way because we don't have another option to be together.” So he would just use religion as a manipulation tool to try to justify his reasoning and his actions for abusing me.

SM: So we found a 2013 report from Canadian Reform Christianity, and they had a special committee report on promoting biblical sexual morality, right? And part of that said that since these sexual sins, including all manner of fornication, adultery, homosexuality, transgenderism, lesbianism, bestiality, pornography and other violations of the seventh commandment are condemned by the word of God, right? So they're placing lesbianism, so-called lesbianism, homosexuality and bestiality in the same group.

SB: A lot of people that are still in this community associate being gay, they put it on the same level as things like bestiality. So it's very frustrating to see people think that being gay is just as horrible as being a pedophile, having bestiality. It's horrifying. 

SM: The sexual abuse happened under your home roof from 13 to 18, literally a house of horrors, it sounds like. And tell me about how it ended.

SB: It was the summer going into my second year of college, and we had gone camping as a family. And this was the first time that my whole family had been together, my siblings and my mom. And he hadn't been there. While he was back in our hometown, he had ransacked my room and he found my journal where I talked about being gay and I talked about him abusing me. And he started blowing up my phone. He was so angry. That fear really just overtook me, and I finally reached a moment where I thought, okay, I just have to tell my mom what's going on. So I ended up just pulling my mom into our vehicle that we had on our campsite while my siblings were all hanging out around the campfire. And I just broke down, and I told her. I said, “Your husband's been sexually abusing me for the last five years.” And obviously that was a shocking thing for my mom to hear, but in that same breath, she believed me, which was incredible, and immediately just took the steps that it took to contact the police. She really handled the situation perfectly and divorced him, and I never had to see him until I sat across from him in court.

SM: Do you think there's any possibility that she knew what was happening? I'm thinking, five years under the same roof. How did he get away with that?

SB: Yeah, that's a great question, and a lot of people have that question. Because she was working constantly, she was running a restaurant. He always had a reason for everything that was going on as well, so if he was sneaking into my room in the middle of the night and somebody just saw him up, he told us all he had insomnia and after school when he would be there when I'd get off the bus and I would have to go to his room where he would abuse me, that's because he was taking an afternoon nap. So there was always just a reason for everything. My mom says, “Something didn't make sense, but I didn't know what it was. But then the second that you told me, it was like a puzzle piece coming together.”

SM: When you were living in fear, what were your coping mechanisms?

SB: I sometimes say I felt like I was kidnapped in my own home, but people didn't even realize that I was. So I really just became like a hermit and I would be home all the time because if I wasn't then he would get really upset, so because I was just constantly in my room for years at some point it felt I was always watching movies and always watching and absorbing pop culture which is probably why I got into the industry that I'm now in. I also spent a lot of time on Tumblr. That was a big saving grace for me as well because especially as I was discovering my sexuality, there was a huge queer community that was on Tumblr that was a lot people that were in the closet. 

SM: Based on what you learned about what it meant to be a woman inside the church versus what you learned on Tumblr, tell me about what you've learned in this space and how you re-understood gender roles.

SB: With my coming out experience, I ended up losing all of my friends that I had in high school. I lost my best friends. I was supposed to be in a friend's wedding party and I was removed from that after she figured out that I was queer. So what was really great about finding, then, an online community shortly after is that I could really just jump from one to another, and I ended up surrounded by people who said, “Hey, we actually love you for who you are and we encourage you to live authentically and to not have any secrets.” In the church that I grew up in, they understand that you're born a certain way, but it's a challenge that God has given you to overcome. So if you act on the sin, that's where the sin comes in and that's what's not good.

SM: Tell me mentally what that does to you, when you have friends, pastors, teachers, family all telling you that who you are, if you act on this, is sinful.

SB: A lot of times, I would have feelings for a girl and immediately feel bad about it. I would feel really bad about myself and think that it was wrong, and because I grew up homophobic, I was a homophobic person. I thought that that was not what you should be because that's what I was taught. 

SM: You grew up homophobic? 

SB: Yeah. Oh, I didn't think, when they taught me in school, “Oh, you shouldn't hire gay people at your job,” I was like, “Okay, don't hire gay people at your job.” You just go along with everything that they say because you trust these leaders.

SM: And you spoke with other women who say they've been sexually assaulted, who were also part of the Canadian Reformed Church.

SB: Yeah, I've talked to other women who have been abused and some people have expressed what they've been through and police have been called but there is also situations of abuse that come up where police aren't called or they want to deal with it as a family or community and not go to the police. So that was always just a fear of mine from hearing stories from other people where police weren't called, or no real punishment was given to a person, that prevented me from talking.

SM: What do you think it is about the church structure, like the Canadian Reformed Christianity, that makes it so prevalent?

SB: You trust everybody. They are your community, so you believe that everybody has the right intentions, but that ends up being taken advantage of. I think also with the gender imbalance, men are superior to women in this community. So you trust a man even if you feel uncomfortable, you trust that they are the leader and what they say is the final word. 

SM: Well, in a lot of these communities, it's taught not to go to the outside world…

SB: Exactly.

SM: …that you should keep it insular, keep it within the confines of the people you know who are men or who could be your abuser.

SB: Yes, absolutely. It did end up happening that there were members of the church that did end up taking his side. They thought that it was, in fact, a consensual relationship between him and I. Me at 13 years old, him at 55 when it started. And some of them were even related to my mom. And they were her distant cousins that ended up writing character witnesses for him that were read out loud in court, siding with him and talking about what a great person he was. And even when a restraining order was put in place after he was arrested and he was no longer allowed to go to our church, he was welcomed into one of our sister churches in a town over. So he would still be seen every Sunday by relatives of mine and by other members of the church who would stand around and talk to him after church like nothing had gone on.

SM: And we know that that is not an isolated case. Like there's pastors who just get moved to another county in the United States or there have been reports of pastors in Texas who have committed rape, pedophilia, sexual assault and then they're moved to developing countries.

SB: When you're taught in this community, from a young age, is to forgive everyone. And if they are repenting, quote unquote, then you should be able to welcome them back. But you do see that cover-up happen a lot of times, where somebody will just move, or it's just not talked about again.

SM: And when we found you on TikTok and I saw your story and you had very courageously explained what happened to you, I was honestly shell-shocked that more media hadn't already come to you and asked to tell your story, especially in Canada, right? Were you surprised by that?

SB: In 2025 people are generally surprised by that because you don't hear about it as often, but it is still something that's prevalent. There's still a lot of kids who are at home, scared to come out and scared because they will get disowned from their family. My family hasn't disowned me, but they aren't coming to my wedding that's coming up in a few weeks.

SM: So your mom and your siblings are not coming to your wedding because you're gay.

SB: Yeah, because in the religion, they've grown up in that their whole lives, so their belief system was what my belief system was then, so I do sympathize with them in a way because I understand that mentality, and when you're surrounded by people constantly who are telling you that something is wrong, it's hard to push against that.

SM: Lesbian identity is often, uh, you know, stereotyped to be caused by previous male trauma. And your family found out you were lesbian at the same moment that they found out that you had been sexually assaulted. Did you ever feel like the church tried to blame your sexual orientation on what happened to you?

SB: Yeah, still to this day, people think that the reason that I'm gay is because I was sexually abused. It's not going to make me all of a sudden have the ability to fall in love with a woman. And I'm not going to be all of a sudden physically attracted to women just because I lost trust in one man. It just doesn't make sense.

SM: Well, it also shows the power of how much brainwashing, frankly, goes on in the church, that your family would find out that this horrific thing happened to you and now fast forward more than a decade later and they're still not open to coming to a wedding or accepting you as a lesbian. That's crazy to me.

SB: Yeah, I think for them, it's just two separate things. The abuse was something that was done to me, and they can sympathize with me for that happening, because it wasn't a sin that I had committed. But when it comes to being queer, that is technically under, in their eyes, a decision that I'm continuing to make over and over. So, yeah, some have come around, some still not so much, but I'm still gonna keep talking to them about it and hope to change their minds even though it's been over a decade and not much has changed, I still have hope that maybe one day something will.

SM: If you could sit down with leaders of Canadian Reform Christianity, what would you tell them?

SB: I think believe victims, I think a big thing is that I'm sure there's victims who have spoken up and have gone to leaders of the church and explained that they were abused and weren't believed or were just taught that they would deal with it and then nothing ever comes of it and you still continue to see that person around all the time. So I think actually taking action, I know that there are members of this church who are starting to take steps like this where they are saying every member, every man in the church needs to get a police report done just so that we have it on file so we can look into who you are or if you've committed any crimes but I think that is just the beginning and they need to continue to push and protect the kids. 

SM: America is such a different can of worms when it comes to religious freedom laws, but in Canada, we have exceptions for hate speech, right, and a lot of what you're describing as it relates to teaching about homosexuality is a human rights abuse, right? What do you think needs to change?

SB: I think a lot of these churches and schools, they find ways to get around things and be able to fight against people who are queer. They don't allow people to be who they are, even though by law they have to, because it's hate speech.

So they have their own system of rules, and I think they just continue to use that and hope that people don't notice, but I think they need to be held accountable more for the way that they treat people because people are being, they're not just being forced to stay in the closet, they're committing suicide. They are being taught that who they are, and they're growing up miserable or they're forcing themselves to be celibate and be alone because they feel like that's the right thing to do. So there's just so many people who are suffering in this and who are having to deal with being kicked out of their homes and losing the whole community of people that they knew growing up because of who they were, and I just don't think that that still needs to happen. I think we need to accept people for who they are and love them like we're taught to be as Christians, that people just aren't doing.

SM: Why do you think the Bible has so much power to trump, you know, human rights abuses, homophobia?

SB: I think the Bible and Christianity as a whole is something that people can always rely on, and it gives you a lot of comfort. I always loved reading the Bible when I would be in a situation of fear or guilt or shame or any sort of feeling that I was feeling. I could rely on the Bible, and look for a verse that would be comforting to me. 

SM: Religion can be good. 

SB: Yeah, religion can definitely be good! I mean, the whole basis of Christianity is to look out for each other and to love your neighbor. But I just see a lot Christians not acting in that way.

SM: If you weren't brought up in this really extreme religious environment, do you think you would have felt like you had more agency to come forward while the abuse was happening.

SB: If I’d been taught that, “Hey, if something's happening to you, it doesn't matter who it is, we will take care of you and we will protect you.” If I'd even heard that once throughout the abuse, that would have encouraged me to say something. But because I didn't hear that and because I was constantly surrounded by people who loved this man and praised him and all of these things, I didn't end up telling.

SM: Can the government of Canada do anything? What could be actually done tangibly to help solve this problem?

SB: I think it's important to look into these communities and to find the things that they're doing wrong and hold them accountable for it. And I think just hold people to basic human rights.

SM: So few women report and so few women speak out to the media without anonymity about something like this. How did you get here, where you're able to speak with this much clarity?

SB: As soon as I was able to share this secret about myself, I wanted to tell everyone that I met. I think also getting justice for the crimes that were committed. I had the judge tell me that he believed me, and he helped put my stepfather in prison. He ended up getting sentenced and found guilty on all three things that he was charged with. But even the fact that he was put away. I felt more confident in my story because it didn't matter if people didn't believe me or weren't on my side anymore, because my mom believed me and the judge believed me. So that gave me a lot of confidence, and a couple weeks after he ended up getting out of prison, he ended dying. So him not being here anymore has also given me a lot of confidence because I don't have that fear of him showing up anymore or stalking me like he had done after he got arrested, so even being able to speak out and help one person not feel as alone as I felt. That makes it all worth it.

SM: There's obviously little girls and probably boys, too, who are going through exactly what you went through right now in their homes in Canada. What's your message to them?

SB: I would say do what I didn't have the courage to do for so many years. Go and tell a parent or a teacher, if they don't believe you, go and tell somebody, keep telling people until somebody believes you, or just call the police if you can. It's a really difficult thing to do, but if you can go through it and you have the courage to try and convict somebody for the crimes that they committed, it is very, you feel very justified in that situation. And I know too, we are still in a situation where it can feel very re-traumatizing to go through it and to give a statement and to sit in court and to have to see your abuser again, but I found the whole situation very helpful in my healing journey. It was terrifying to have to sit across from him and explain all the things that he did to me, but once that was done, it was like an entire weight was lifted.

SM: People hear that, like the young kids who hear that in these religious circles, who say, well, I've been taught not to gossip, right? Or I've been taught to obey the men in my world. What would you say to that?

SB: They should know that what has happened to them is not their fault, it's somebody else's fault, it's their sin that they're committing and it has nothing to do with anything wrong that you've done. So I always say that you are not in the wrong; they are in the wrong, they are committing a crime against you. So it's important to tell someone about that so that they can be punished for that crime.

SM: You've been out of it for a while. What helped you cope? And for somebody who's getting out of kind of religious extremism, sexual abuse, what would you recommend to them in terms of coping, at least from what helped you?

SB: If you have the opportunity, go to therapy. I've been in therapy for over 10 years, and it's been so helpful on my journey just to hear that reassurance from someone who's an outsider to let you know, like, “Hey, it's okay, you're not doing anything wrong. You can relax, you can go and have fun and you don't have to have all the guilt that comes with it.” That's been really helpful for me, and also just finding people, I am surrounded by my queer chosen family who love me unconditionally and that has been so helpful for me. He controlled my life for so long, but he can't control it anymore. I go to bed every night and I get to wear pyjamas. I wasn't allowed to wear pyjamas. I can go and sleep eight hours without getting woken up in the middle of the night, which is just such a joy that I get to live with. So there's just so many little things in my life that it's given me such a great outlook that I think it's just made me a more positive person, and I'm grateful every day that I get to live life and not be abused.

No one deserves to be abused and it is never your fault

If you or anyone you know is experiencing any form of abuse, please call Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868 or text CONNECT to 686868. You can also call The National Child Abuse Hotline at 800.4.A.CHILD (422-4453)

**Shannon’s church and her high school did not respond to a request for comment.

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