Hurting in the Church. Fr. Thomas Berg

       Soul Murder

       “Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

      —Elie Weisel

      I have not suffered the personal devastation of sexual abuse. My own personal heartbreak within the Church, as devastating as it was, pales in comparison to the raw betrayal and the unspeakable suffering of those subjected to this extreme form of physical, moral, and spiritual cruelty. Victims of sexual abuse, especially those who have suffered at the hands of Catholic priests, have been foremost in my mind and heart when writing this book and reflecting on those who have been hurt in the Church.

       Soul Murder

      Some 17,600 Americans have alleged they were abused by more than 6,500 clerics from 1950 to June 2015, according to a review of data by BishopAccountability.org. Many victims who were sexually abused by clergy as children refer to what they have suffered with a blunt and chilling expression. They call it soul murder. Many wait for years to open up to someone about the abuse. The reasons for this are often complex. They are afraid of not being believed;

      they fear the reactions they will receive and how this knowledge will impact relationships with a spouse or child, with family or parishioners, or how it would be handled in the local news media. Yet when they do eventually begin sharing their stories, they discover that telling what happened, and being listened to and believed, is key to any possible healing. While victims are individually unique in their manner of handling the aftermath of their own abuse, most eventually want their stories acknowledged. For many, in fact, sharing their stories becomes a mission: they want to know if the perpetrator had other victims; they want those victims to know that they were not alone, that it is okay to come forward, that the abuse was not their fault.

       Not “Them” and “Us”

      As child sexual abuse expert Dr. Monica Applewhite shared with me, there is one enormous misperception that unfortunately shapes the attitudes of not a few Catholics toward the reality of clergy sexual abuse. “Persons who were abused are not them; they are us,” she observed emphatically. “They came from the families who were closest to the Church: they worked and volunteered for the Church, they had a child who was considering becoming a priest or nun; these were people who spent a lot of time in the Church.”

      Part of the tragic story of the abuse crisis is that victims were seen as adversaries, not only by bishops and diocesan lawyers, but by fellow Catholics who held them suspect because their stories seemed too incredible and because—it was often assumed—they “just want to harm the Church.” Victims of sexual abuse by the clergy are not the adversary, and as Dr. Applewhite observes, “When victims come forward with their stories, they are giving us the gift of truth.” Here, too, the truth will set us free.

       Facing the Reality

      On a Sunday evening in late February 2016, I directed a screening and discussion for some thirty of our seminarians and faculty of the movie Spotlight, which recounts the story of how, in 2002, The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team of investigative reporters uncovered the massive scandal of child sexual abuse and coverup in the Boston Archdiocese. That same Sunday evening, Spotlight won the Oscar for best picture.

      It was the second time I had seen Spotlight. In the movie’s final scene, the Spotlight team is manning the phones in their office on the morning that their story broke in January 2002. The phones, in fact, are ringing off the hook. We are led to understand that the scores of callers are mostly victims of abuse who have been empowered by the story to come forward.

      This is followed by a series of titles that appear on screen before the final credits roll: list upon list of the names of hundreds of U.S. dioceses and of dozens of countries where clergy sexual abuse has occurred, indicating the incomprehensible magnitude of the crisis. As happened the first time I saw Spotlight, I was again left hunched in my seat, barely restraining the tears.

      Spotlight reopened for me that same gnawing feeling I had not felt in years—that “shitty feeling,” as reporter Mike Rezendes puts it in one of the movie’s most poignant scenes after he finally gets his hands on documents detailing that the Boston Archdiocese had knowledge of, and flagrantly mishandled and attempted to hide, child sexual abuse by members of its clergy.

      That feeling Rezendes described is something most Catholics would rather not feel, and to which they would rather not expose themselves or their loved ones. And that’s understandable, to an extent. There is a part of us that wants to keep the reality of clergy sexual abuse and its aftermath at a safe mental and emotional distance. The idea of sexual abuse of children is an acutely anxiety-provoking thought; and our minds naturally tend to filter and block such thoughts. This peculiar psychological dynamic has, in fact, shaped cultural attitudes toward sexual abuse for centuries, and in large part explains societal malaise and indolence in attempting to deal with and prevent child sexual abuse wherever it occurs.

      So, naturally, Catholics recoil. While such dodging, distancing, and denial are understandable, they constitute fundamental obstacles to the Church’s healing process, and ultimately to creating and sustaining within the Church the type of environments that are truly safe for children, as well as safe havens of support, nurture, and recovery for victims of abuse. For that to become a reality, we all need to listen to victims tell their stories.

      Victims of sexual abuse—particularly abuse endured in childhood—can be vulnerable and fragile. Many suffer through lifelong, often daily, emotional and psychological battles. Many are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in all its cruelty: bouts with insomnia and nightmares, anxiety attacks, flashbacks, social isolation, depression, self-destructive behaviors.

      The victims who were willing to speak with me in some manner—these remarkable and courageous men and women—have taught me one simple thing: we who have not suffered the torture of sexual abuse really have no idea what victims have gone through.

      So in my mind there is no more adequate way to come to grips with the horror experienced by survivors of sexual abuse than by hearing their stories—not in snippets filtered through the news media, but rather, if at all possible, in person, up close, in their own words, catching their gestures, looking into their eyes, hearing their voice.

       Jean’s Story

      Sadly, accounts of clergy sexual abuse recounted in disturbing detail have not been lacking online and in the news media. Survivors of abuse—not exclusively, but typically, males—have mustered extraordinary courage in sharing their stories. Each story is as unique as each victim of abuse. I could have easily incorporated elements of their stories into this book, but as I made progress on the manuscript I was blessed to meet and interview a remarkable Catholic woman we will call Jean. Jean too is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. Thirty-nine years of her life passed before she finally felt the courage to report her abuser to authorities in her diocese, well after the perpetrator was dead. By the time we met, she felt ready to go public for the first time with her story, agreeing to do so in the pages of my book.

      Our interview lasted nearly three hours. In what follows, I have quoted large portions of our conversation as well as portions of some of her written testimonials and woven them into a narrative. While not simply a transcription of our interview, this does