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Meeting with Pope Francis His Holiness Pope Francis Domus Mark Vincent Healy [email protected] Survivor Campaigner seeking ‘Rescue Services’ and ‘Safe Space Provisioning’ for survivors of clerical child sexual abuse http://www.thejournal.ie/author/mark‐vincent‐healy/ 7th July 2014 RE: Meeting with Pope Francis His Holiness Pope Francis Domus Sanctae Marthae 00120 Vatican City, The Vatican. Your Holiness, I wish to thank you for this opportunity of meeting with you as a survivor of clerical child sexual abuse along with others from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany. The world will indeed be curious about our meeting and wondering what will come of it. There are opposing opinions about such a meeting ranging from high hope on the one hand, to scepticism, if not derision, that nothing positive can possible come of such a meeting. For my part I can only hold out hope. I contacted other survivors and their families to let them know I had been accorded this opportunity. Many do not trust the Catholic Church and for good reason considering the enormous betrayal of trust which was later followed by the enormous distress in seeking remedy and redress. However, I feel any opportunity to dialogue and lay out the realities of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse is not to be squandered. I am not sure I have what it takes to give the sort of presentation this subject requires but I will be happy to have made the effort than to have lost the opportunity in not even trying. THE PROBLEM I have poured over reports, letters, articles and papers attempting to find words appropriate to this occasion which might strike sufficiently loudly on the alarm bell. These matters could not be more serious. The scandal of clerical child sexual abuse (CCSA) is an existential crisis in God’s house, played out for the world to see. It is about the children of the living God and how they have been treated by the ministers of the living God. The Lord Jesus promised, ʺYou shall know the truth and the truth shall set you freeʺ (Jn. 8:32). Scripture bids us speak the truth in love (cf. Eph. 4:15) BACKGROUND AND ORIGIN Though the sexual abuse of children by ministers of the church has been going on for centuries, there is arguably a ‘ground zero’ to the current worldwide scandal. It is founded on events in Louisiana in 1983, where the Rev Gilbert Gauthe was convicted in 1985 of sexual rape and assault of 37 altar boys from seven to ten years of age. He later was to abuse his youngest victim who was only three years old. The failure of Bishop Gerard Louis Frey of Lafayette Louisiana (1972‐1989) exacerbated the situation and facilitated further abuse and crimes against children. Gauthe is believed to have abused over 100 children. IRISH SITUATION The Louisiana ‘case’ was to set in train the approach that would be adopted by the Catholic Church to the scandal of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse as noted in the response taken up in Ireland by the then Archbishop of Dublin, Kevin McNamara. Throughout 1986 and 1987, it was noted that Archbishop McNamara had turned his attention to managing the liability of the Irish Catholic Church to such criminal scandal. The first reaction was to take out insurance and secondly to call in the lawyers on how to manage the scandal. The third option was how to manage public outrage, at what was a pending horror of abuse on children by the religious through a state that had absented itself from its constitutional obligation to the bodily integrity and welfare of its citizens, to its most vulnerable, to its children. It has taken till 28th January 2014 for a brave woman from Cork, Louise O’Keeffe, to vindicate her contention that the Irish State was and is responsible for the welfare and wellbeing of children attending Irish schools. Louise’s victory against Ireland at the European Court of Human Rights secured children’s rights in 48 European countries. The judgement in her case holds those countries liable to its school going children’s welfare. Again and again all the press statements indicated that the child was paramount, preeminent, the first consideration, but if that were so, why was the first reaction not to find out WHO had been abused and secondly WHAT do we need to do to help them. Indeed this was the very question I put to my former school principal who sought to transfer my two abusers to the foreign jurisdictions of Canada and Sierra Leone, with the help of the then Provincial for the Spiritan congregation in 1971 and 1973 respectively. The reputation of the school was paramount back then and no consideration or assistance was made for any of the children that had been abused. They were abandoned. The centre of this matter is the child, the victim, the survivor. The first response cannot be how much is the insurance, what are the financial damages and what advice do the lawyers offer. Those consideration were quickly followed by assuaging the anxieties of parents regarding the welfare and wellbeing of their children now and in future. Page 2 of 9 The first response ought to have been to ‘rescue’ the victims and the second to deliver ‘safe space provisioning’ to traumatised children, to traumatised survivors. The response to this existential crisis and scandal has not come from the Holy Spirit, or the Catholic Church would not have reacted the way it has. The acknowledgement of the life‐long and intergenerational impact that clerical child sexual abuse causes has been confirmed in numerous studies and reports. This ought to be reflected in the multi‐disciplinary response to such comorbid conditions found in survivors. Perhaps this profound impact does not serve legal liability and its consequences. Listening to many survivors I would have to say the response services leave a lot to be desired in treating them at all times with ‘dignity, justice and compassion’. LEGAL The legal arena poses enormous dangers to witnesses and plaintiffs and is crying out for reform. Survivors are processed in a manner by the legal system which clearly inflicts violations to their dignity in unsympathetic, unethical and immoral practices representing real and present dangers to their wellbeing and life. It is perverse to seek justice and be a victim of injustice by the very process involved. Suicide, attempted suicide or self‐harming are an unacceptable consequence of legal process. MENTAL HEALTH Engaging in mental health services also poses certain stresses on survivors who can be limited in their choice of therapists, restricted by a service cost cap in certain jurisdictions, and asked to forfeit the level of confidentiality that should exist between a therapist and a client. As one survivor put it ʺwe will pay for your counselling, will own the reports and will tell you how much counselling we will pay for based on our assessment of your needsʺ HUMAN AND SPIRITUAL CONSEQUENCES OF CLERICAL CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (CCSA) ruptures one’s life with the self, family, community, society and the greater human family. ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES Recent studies show there is a direct correlation between economic wellbeing and success where CSA victims live in households with incomes that are found to be 40% lower than comparable households (Goodman et al 2011). An Irish study found that male victims are four times more likely to be out of work due to sickness and disability. This research is very relevant in the legal context where restitution ought to reflect these findings (Barrett et al 2012). Page 3 of 9 HEALTH, LIFE AND SUICIDE RISKS Sexually abused children suffer from higher rates of serious mental health and social problems during adulthood, including anxiety disorders, chronic depression, PTSD, sexual re‐victimisation, and relationship problems including breakup, separation and divorce which weaken the ‘positive factors’ or increase the ‘risk factors’ attributed to incidents of self‐ harming, parasuicide and completed suicide. CSA victims have a higher propensity to self‐harming which can and does escalate in some cases to drug addiction and onto a life of crime and penal service. Indeed the latest studies show that a propensity to suicide does not diminish in more elderly survivors who dread the idea of returning to an institution in their later years (Arensman and O’Riordan 2007). The evidence is clear, the suffering is life‐long on a number of levels. It is a life that is reportedly cut short by 20 years on the average life span. It is a life that is characterised as one in which the victim is four to six times more likely to commit suicide depending on the research. RESTITUTION Provision and restitution is paltry and inadequate. Capping compensation or setting limits on making restitution to victims fails to deliver justice. In Ireland the residential board set the limit at €300,000, where the average ‘pay out’ was just €62,500. In the Netherlands the limit was set at €100,000 and in Australia the cap was set at AUS$50,000. The criteria used in determining the level of compensation was considered unsatisfactory in Ireland and hugely distressing to some victims who called the redress board, the re‐abuse board. JUSTICE Justice is illusive to the vast majority of survivors with very low conviction rates reported by the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) at just over 1% and by national audits at 6%. Adult rape convictions in Ireland are just under 1% so I am more than suspect of the national audit figures of 6% for clerical child sexual abuse convictions.
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