October 9, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 17Oakland, CA

COMMENTARY

• Proposition 1C
Let California be known as a place
where all have a home of their own

• Proposition 85
Parental notification can help stop statutory rape, child molestation

• Surviving sex abuse: A day-to-day struggle to keep going

Proposition 1C
Let California be known as a place
where all have a home of their own

By Steve Pehanich

California is famous for incredible extremes – from sun-drenched beaches to sparkling Sierra mornings, from general wackiness to cutting edge technology.

But one topic almost always predominates when the conversation turns to the Golden State – high housing costs. California has 21 of the 25 least affordable metro areas in the nation. The extraordinary cost of housing has become a California cliché, almost a truism.

Housing in California has been an issue since the 1940s, when military personnel passing through en route to the Pacific Theater discovered how wonderful a place this is and returned to raise their families.

If you have a job, car and house in California, many say you just can’t find a better place to live.

It’s not hard to see, however, that something is askance.

Thousands of families continually juggle rent, food, health care and other basic expenses. Battered women and youths exiting foster care have no place to go. Seniors fight to find decent accommodations.

Working families – many of them teachers, police and fire fighters – cannot afford to live in the communities they serve. And an estimate 360,000 people are homeless in California.

We all probably know somebody who is having housing difficulties, whether it is an adult child moving in with parents to save money, a struggling single mother, or the homeless men and woman we serve through parish ministries.

That is why Proposition 1C – the Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2006 – on the November 7 ballot is so important.

Proposition 1C authorizes $2.9 billion in long-term bonds to address many housing needs including emergency shelters, down-payment assistance, transitional housing and construction of multi-family units. It also provides assistance to municipalities to install the infrastructure to support the effort.

This measure follows on the highly successful Proposition 46 of 2002 which authorized a similar amount of money ($2.1 billion) and resulted in more than 17,000 apartments being constructed or rehabilitated, and almost 10,000 new shelter spaces. It allowed 18,000 families to become or remain homeowners.

Housing is fundamental to the “common good.” In our Catholic social justice tradition, the common good is the set of circumstances that enable people and communities to provide for themselves.

Food, housing, work, and health are some of the most basic elements of this concept. Take one away, and people and communities are out of balance.

Catholic Charities of California endorses Proposition 1C because housing is basic to a dignified, balanced life, yet proper housing is lacking for too many individuals and communities.

As Christians, we are all bound to promote the common good. And as Pope Benedict says in his new encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” doing charitable works is something good and natural to the Church.

Catholic Charities up and down the state have myriad projects to assist people with housing – from emergency shelters to shared housing programs to low-income apartments. All Catholics can take pride in this work.

Religious orders of women and men, dioceses, local parishes – plus thousands of projects from other denominations – support many kinds of housing assistance.
During this election, there are already millions being spent on campaigns for or against the propositions. The mythical and scary “special interests” all come out to play during California elections.

Unfortunately, little is being spent to promote Proposition 1C. No candidate is pushing it strongly. Many people recognize the need, but not many set it as a priority. And no big name movie or music star is inciting the populace or holding concerts to raise the issue.

Not many oppose the measure either. What objections there are usually involve the issuance of bonds – long-term borrowing by the state. In the case of housing – which is used for decades – paying over the life of the asset is a common, accepted approach for individuals and government.

Other critical issues and interesting candidates are on the November ballot. Voters will be making many choices about the long-term future of the state and our common good.
When it comes to something as basic as housing, however, Proposition 1C is a measure we can all support.

(Steve Pehanich is the executive director of Catholic Charities of California.)

Proposition 85
Parental notification can help stop
statutory rape, child molestation

By Edith Black

Often overlooked in the debate about the parental notification initiative (Proposition 85 on the November ballot) is the effect it would have in deterring the statutory rape and child molestation that are responsible for so many minor teenage pregnancies.

All states have laws prohibiting sexual activity between minors and adults. In California the statutory rape law covers girls under 16 while the child molestation laws cover girls between 16 and 18.

Yet studies across the country are now showing that most minor teenage pregnancies are the result of girls’ sexual activity with adult men, not with their teenage peers. In California a study of 46,000 pregnant teenage girls showed that 71 percent of them were impregnated by adult men whose mean age was 22.6 years.

Such sexual predators generally try to cover up their crime by arranging for their victim to have an abortion, sometimes even coercing them. Or the minor reports her pregnancy to a health professional, such as a school nurse, and, despite California mandatory reporting laws, is escorted to an abortion clinic with no prying questions asked.

Having gone through the mandatory reporting training myself, I know that California law requires all professionals, including health professionals, to report to appropriate government authorities any suspicious situation. It is then the responsibility of the authority to investigate the facts to determine whether a crime has indeed occurred.

Yet it is standard practice with health professionals involved with the abortion industry not to comply with these laws. This fact has been well-documented by an organization called Life Dynamics, whose full report is online at www.childpredators.com.

Life Dynamics decided to conduct its own test after examining statistical evidence indicating that Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities have an over 90 percent rate of failure to comply with mandatory reporting laws.

A young woman portraying herself as a 13-year-old girl impregnated by her 22-year-old boyfriend called over 800 Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities across the country. The calls were made from Texas where conversations can be legally taped without informing the other party.

As can be heard on tapes played on the website, she explicitly told each one that she wanted an abortion because she and her boyfriend did not want her parents to find out about the sexual relationship. She never suggested her parents would be come abusive if they discovered her sexual activity.

Even though many of the clinic workers openly acknowledged that this situation was illegal and that they were required to report it to the state authorities, 91 percent of them advised her on how to conceal the crime. She was often counseled not to reveal her own age or the age of her boyfriend when she came in for the abortion, or was given the number of another clinic and told not to be so forthcoming there.

Some even counseled her how to circumvent parental involvement laws by, for example, bringing in an older adult who would pose as her parent.

To appreciate the seriousness of this situation, we need to ask ourselves how we would react if we knew that an employee of a store was giving minors advice on how to circumvent laws prohibiting them from buying alcohol and tobacco or that a gun dealer was teaching minors how to purchase handguns.

Proposition 85 attempts to address a similar outrageous flaunting of the law. It will bring such crimes to light by requiring that abortion providers notify a minor’s parent or, in the case of a judicial bypass, a juvenile Court judge, who would be more likely to report a violation of the law.

That the proposition will deter sexual predation is indicated by the track record of the 34 states which already have parental involvement laws. Generally, a year or two after a parental notification law goes into effect, there is a significant reduction in teenage pregnancies and abortions.

The abortion rate for minors dropped 25.6 percent in the two years following the enactment of a parental involvement law in Virginia. Pennsylvania’s teen pregnancy rate fell by 18.7 percent following the enactment of a similar law. The California Legislative Analyst has estimated that parental notification could reduce abortion rates in California by up to 25 percent.

(Edith Black is one of the state coordinators of California Democrats for Life and on the steering committee of Catholics for the Common Good. She is a member of St. Margaret Mary Parish in Oakland and works with children as an environmental educator.)

Surviving sex abuse: A day-to-day struggle to keep going

By Sabrina Vourvoulias

The only thing harder than telling your story of childhood sexual abuse is surviving it.
That is the reason so many of us call ourselves survivors one day, victims the next -- because our struggle to keep going, to reconcile ourselves to the past, is a day-to-day struggle with denial and self-censorship.

We know our friends, family and peers cannot -- and do not want to -- imagine our experiences, much less hear them recounted.

And yet, being able to tell our stories after long years of silence is probably the most crucial part of our journey toward becoming whole again. Or, as close to whole as we can get, because what childhood sexual abuse does is tear us into smaller and smaller pieces, until -- at whatever age it stops -- there seems to be nothing left of us. We end up hollowed out and alone, shouldering crosses far too heavy and overwhelming for our child-size strength.

I am not a victim of clergy sexual abuse, but I am close kin: I was sexually abused by my maternal grandfather from the age of 6 until I was nearly 8.

For much of my life, I have been dealing with the same issues as the victims of clergy abuse: Why was I stripped of bodily integrity, my sense of self, the protective cocoon of family and my understanding of a benevolent God at such a young age? Who might I have been -- what might I have accomplished -- had this not hobbled me?

There are crosses more horrific than this one, yes, but few more sordid or humiliating.

When we were children, my brothers and I were taken to spend our Saturdays with my grandparents. They were older -- my mother was born when my grandmother was 40 -- and an odd pair. My grandmother was irascible and a little scary; my grandfather, soft-spoken and easy-going.

When I look at his photos now, it is hard for me to reconcile my grandfather’s pleasant, likable face with my memories of him as an abuser. I sometimes manage to forget how little and young I was when the abuse started.

But when I look at those photos, I also see a 6-year-old girl, a small child no one could possibly label seductive -- which is a claim many abusers and their apologists make about children they prey on.

Let’s be clear. Childhood sexual abuse isn’t about the sex at all.

It is about having power, and wielding it ruthlessly against the young, the vulnerable, the helpless.

My grandfather abused me every weekend until I was nearly 8. I survived by numbing myself, literally and figuratively, every time I walked into my grandparents’ house.

I tested the numbness once. After an episode of abuse, I walked into my grandparents’ bathroom and sliced open the tips of my fingers with my grandfather’s razor. I felt nothing, no sensation whatsoever, as the blood flowed freely.

At home a few weeks later, I sliced the fingertips of my other hand. I howled in pain. Away from the abuse, I could permit myself to feel. Unlike some survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I never repressed my memories, but I didn’t deal with them, either.

My grandfather died suddenly a month after my eighth birthday. The abuse had stopped a few months earlier when, after one of those episodes, I took one of his favorite belongings -- a fancy, 12-inch shoehorn with a solid steel shaft -- and bent it with my hands into a perfect “U.”

I can clearly remember my grandfather’s expression. I saw dawning in his eyes the realization that the child standing before him was furious.

Fury can save your life, but it can’t give you courage. It was 12 years after that day that I finally told my mother about the abuse. And as any writer will tell you, it isn’t until a character owns her story that she becomes real.

I have been thinking a lot recently about my mother’s reaction to my revelation -- to the hidden story of my life. In many ways, it parallels the archdiocesan reaction to the clergy abuse crisis, and that resemblance has sometimes made it excruciatingly difficult for me to work here.

I’m convinced that if the perpetrator of the abuse had been someone else, my mother would have been enraged to hear my story. She would have been fiercely and roaringly protective. But the accusation was levied at her father, a man she loved and had always honored deeply, and she didn’t want to -- in fact, could not -- believe he had been capable of such predatory evil.

When I didn’t back down, or change my story, she changed it for me.

She minimized those episodes: They became “some inappropriate caresses.” When I told my story to anyone outside our immediate family, she characterized my telling as a betrayal -- of our family, and of her, in particular. Soon, she simply wanted it all to go away, and pleaded wearily with me to move on with my life and leave the abuse in the past.

That last was, of course, what I wanted, too. But it was many years before I could claim with any honesty that the wound was healing.

Look, there is no one involved in this story -- or any story of childhood abuse -- who has not undergone real pain.

Knowing you have failed to protect your loved one causes anguish, just as does believing that no one is willing to protect you. Knowing that you cannot undo the past is painful, just as understanding that you can’t rush the future. Knowing that you have failed to listen is painful, just as knowing that you have lacked the courage to speak.

My mother and I did, in fact, eventually close the breach that her father’s abuse had opened between us.

We each listened; we each talked. There was no quick fix, no prescriptive other than heartbreakingly hard work to re-establish trust, the hope that one day we would be reconciled, and the abiding love that exists between a mother and her child.

(This editorial first appeared in the Sept. 28 issue of The Catholic Standard & Times newspaper of the Philadelphia Archdiocese. It was written by managing editor Sabrina Vourvoulias.)

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