The Church in the wake of the abuse scandal ELENA CURTI
Scars that need to heal
Pope Benedict was due to have a private meeting during his visit to Britain with those who suffered clerical sexual abuse as children. Days ahead of his arrival, they vented their anger, saying the problem is not so much safeguarding young people as supporting survivors
s Sue Cox related how she was sex- ually abused by a priest the day before her Confirmation, silence settled over the rowdy crowd at the debate on the papal state visit held earlier this month at London’s Conway Hall. All the complaints hurled at the Church about Aids and condoms, attitudes to homo- sexuality and abortion paled into insignificance as this survivor calmly described how she was molested by the priest when she was 10 years old and raped by him three years later. On the platform Fr Christopher Jamison, who was defending Pope Benedict’s state visit to Britain, said her testimony had a powerful effect.
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“When someone in that situation speaks, it tends to freeze the atmosphere, and rightly. I was upset to hear her story,” said Fr Jamison of Worth Abbey in West Sussex. The papal visit has galvanised campaigns
by survivors, who have used the run-up to it to highlight the sexual abuse of children by priests and to vent their anger at how they have been treated by the Church. While some, such as Sue Cox, have focused on fierce crit- icism of the Church, others – despite their sense of outrage – are trying to engage with it and win support for their plan of pastoral support for victims. Members of the American self-help sur- vivors’ group Snap are also in Britain with the stark message that the Church cannot be trusted to protect children or support sur- vivors. They have been a distinctive presence wherever historic abuse has come to light, holding up black-and-white photographs of themselves as children at the ages they were abused.
If there is one fact that hits home after lis- tening to survivors’ stories, it is that, no matter how long ago it happened, the pain is still raw. “It may sound like a long time ago to you, but to me it is as though it happened yester- day,” one victim abused decades ago told me. Talking about the abuse seems to bring relief and there is the sense that even media inter- views assist in this process. When I asked Therese Albrecht, a survivor of abuse from Chicago and member of Snap, who was awarded compensation of $375,000 from Chicago Archdiocese in 2008, whether she would ever stop telling her story, her reply was emphatic: “Never. I will always talk about
18 | THE TABLET | 18 September 2010
it. It makes me feel better to talk about it.” As Pope Benedict has done on a number
of previous journeys, he was expected to meet a handful of survivors while he is in Britain. The meeting was due to take place in London on the second day of his visit. No one from the Church in Britain was due to be present. Bill Kilgallon, chairman of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, says that the encounter is important, even though Pope Benedict has held similar meetings with sur- vivors in America, Australia and Malta. “It is an opportunity for survivors to speak face to face with the Pope and to let him know directly the pain and the hurt they have experi - enced. I have worked with survivors for many years and there is nothing more powerful than to hear from them what they have expe- rienced and the hurt they still have. It reminds people so that they keep it at the forefront of their minds,” he said. The only group in Britain said to represent
survivors of clerical abuse, Macsas (Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors), has been refused permission to meet the Pope. They have been seeking opportunities to give him personally a book they have compiled setting out survivors’ stories and have rejected offers from intermediaries to pass it on. Macsas founder Dr Margaret Kennedy is a Catholic who insists their objective is not to damage the Church but to persuade it to set up a com- prehensive pastoral plan for survivors. “We’ve been labelled pernicious, disloyal,
aggressive, money-grabbing. We are trying to say to the Pope, ‘We are speaking, please listen,’” said Dr Kennedy who has a PhD on the theme of the sexual exploitation of women by clergy.
She acknowledges that the Church in England and Wales has made headway with child protection, but says there has been no similar progress with supporting survivors. She deplores the £10 million the Church is spending on the papal visit and says the money should instead be spent on a comprehensive pastoral plan for survivors. Dr Kennedy has produced a document sug- gesting what such a plan could encompass. It includes ideas for drop-in centres, “circles of support” for survivors in parishes similar to those offered by Quakers for perpetrators of sexual abuse, regular lectures, religious services, advocacy, retreats and residential rest and recuperation centres. The document gives details of a property in County Wicklow, Ireland, that would be perfect as a rest centre. It is for sale with a £700,000 price tag. Macsas already does many of the things it would like the Church to take on in a pastoral plan but its work is limited by lack of cash. Dr Kennedy described liturgies where sur- vivors are encouraged to recall their lost childhoods by bringing soft toys. They can also vent their anger by setting off fireworks and burning items including photographs and letters in a brazier. The services are highly emotional affairs –
packets of tissues are distributed alongside hymn books. Priests conducting them are often survivors themselves: they are encour- aged not to wear clerical collars. Locks are removed from doors at retreat centres as sur- vivors have a terror of being trapped. Some still feel unable to enter churches. At the moment, Macsas receives £2,000 a year from the Church to run a volunteer helpline that operates for three two-hour ses- sions a week, receiving calls from adults abused in childhood. It expects to be inun- dated with calls while Pope Benedict is in Britain. Macsas was among a number of sur- vivors’ organisations that met Bill Kilgallon last July to discuss what the Church can do to support survivors, but Dr Kennedy said she found the meeting frustrating, adding: “The National Safeguarding people simply asked, ‘What shall we do?’ They have no
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