| Now
is the time to break the taboo of silence about sex abuse
By Father David O’Rourke, O.P.
These days, reports of sexual abuse in the past are
big news. We talk about abuse of children as though it were a rare occurrence
in our society. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Although there are no concrete statistics, counselors and others who work
with families believe that by the time America’s children reach
18 years of age, one out of every four or five women and one out of every
eight or nine men has been sexually molested in some way. Most of these
experiences take place within the family or in social settings where children
spend much of their lives.
To put the percentages into perspective, it is likely that on a professional
sports team with a roster of 25 players, statistically three will have
been sexually abused as children. And in a college classroom with 40 women
students, 10 will have a history of sexual abuse.
Set this into the population figures for the United States and we are
talking about well over 30 million women and 15 million men who were sexually
abused as children.
Continued silence
If sex abuse is so common, why have we heard so little about it, except
in the context of news reports? The number one reason is that people don’t
want to talk about being abused. It is a closed door that few want to
open because of the pain residing within. There is a silence concerning
sexual abuse that amounts to a taboo. Today it is becoming safer to talk
about a jailed or dead priest, but don’t mention Grandpa Joe.
First, there seems to have been a reluctance to call the police. So the
parents who dared to do something about their child’s abuse made
their reports within the abusing system itself, seeing it as some kind
of family matter, the kind you take care of out of court. So they went
to the pastor or to the school principal.
Unfortunately, in both church and school situations, the authorities also
saw themselves as part of a family-like system, and often misread their
responsibility to notify the law.
Reluctance to act
And I think it is unclear if, 50 years ago, they had reported it to the
law that the district attorney would have accepted the report. It is likely
it would have been sent back to the school or church. In any event, the
lack of clarity or the reluctance to act seem to have been shared by both
parents and authorities.
There is the real possibility that parents wanted an easier alternative
than going to the law. It could be that they wanted to avoid the spotlight
that a legal case would shine on their child.
And for parents who blew the whistle on the caretaker of their institutionalized
or handicapped child, the consequences could have meant the child was
back in their home even when they were unable to provide appropriate care.
For us Americans, the separation of church and state is an important value,
one that Catholic practice supports completely. State and church are each
valid societies with very different work to do.
Church purposes are spiritual and religious — to live and preach
the faith we have received from Christ. The state’s role is to promote
civil order and justice and to arrest and prosecute those who violate
that order. The state does not have or preach religion and the church
does not prosecute crimes.
At most, the Catholic Church disciplines offending clergy, stripping them
of the right to serve as priests. Vatican courts are appellate courts,
serving as appeals from religious decisions made on the diocesan level.
But in neither level is there a system to prosecute crime. Crimes are
referred to the state.
The Vatican made that very clear in its recent directive that bishops
report allegations of clergy sex abuse to the police, something called
for by the U.S. bishops in their 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children
and Young People.
The protection of children against abuse is still a thorny issue. As a
people, we are just coming to understand the importance of acknowledging
the sexual abuse of kids, especially when it is close up — in our
families, our schools, our Church. Of course, what makes the violation
of a child by a Church official so heinous is that it is not only a crime
of assault, but religious hypocrisy as well.
The taboo is still solid. It is time to open wide the door — to
talk about the abuse that happened years ago that continues to wound its
victims and to do everything we can to insure that today’s children
are cared for, well and safely.
(Dominican Father David O’Rourke is parochial administrator of
Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Point Richmond and Defender of the Bond in
the Marriage Tribunal of the Oakland Diocese. He is former pastor of St.
Mary Magdalene Parish in Berkeley and former assistant director of the
diocesan Family Life Office. He is the researcher and writer of “A
Family Perspective in Church and Society” re-issued by the U.S.
Catholic bishops in 1998.)
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