I don't have a lot to say about this. Headlines this week report that, over a 70 year period, somewhere between 220,000 and 330,000 minors were abused by French clergy and/or in a French church setting. This is pursuant to an investigation by an independent commission. It seems that only a small fraction of those numbers of abuse victims actually came forward to report abuse; the 220K-330K is an extrapolation done by experts and victims advocates. In truth, we don't know exactly how many were abused; it could be those numbers, or even more, or many less.
One news account described this collection of cases as "systemic". Probably that is accurate: it's difficult to believe that tens of thousands of cases of abuse could occur without church authorities being alerted to at least some of them, with the authorities failing to take sufficient corrective action. It is systemic in the same way that police misconduct is systemic: there are bad actors in the rank and file; others in the rank and file are aware of the misdeeds but are disincentivized from doing much about it; and those in leadership have strong incentives to look the other way. This is precisely how social structures enable sinfulness, and then prove to be resilient in the face of attempts to reform the sinfulness out of them.
70 years is a very long time horizon. 70 years ago was 1951. Presumably, almost no abusers and their leaders from 1951 still are alive today. For that matter, a teen who was abused 70 years ago would be an old man now (the commission report notes that the majority of victims are male). Whether French law includes statutes of limitation, and whether they can be lifted, and whether the church would agree to compensate victims even if statutes of limitation remain in place, are details I don't know. Certainly, younger victims whose abuse falls within the statutory window can expect whatever the French church can offer: compensation, payment for counseling and other treatment, an apology, a plea for forgiveness. Any abusers still in ministry should expect to be removed, laicized, sued and possibly charged with crimes.
I don't know of a reason to expect this story will develop along different lines than it has previously in the US, Australia, Ireland, Germany, etc. Those in favor of fundamental church reform will call for fundamental reform. Those not in favor of fundamental reform will resist those calls. Church leaders will try to say the right things, and will leave many people unsatisfied. Francis will say empathetic things and point to church law reforms he already has implemented. Most of the abusers will turn out to be retired or dead. The victims will continue to be embittered. People who are not stakeholders in the church will be frustrated that nothing more gets done. The media will have a field day. Politicians will try to leverage the situation for their political advantage. Some of the faithful will care, and some won't. Some will stay, and some won't.
These investigations, reports and all that flow from them are necessary. I've commented before that I've seen this play out so many times now that I can't really muster shock or surprise anymore. But the sour, sick feeling in my stomach hasn't abated. I expect that the same sequence of reckoning could, and should, play out anywhere the church has been present - which is most of the nations in the world. Every diocese and religious order has its sins it has tried to keep secret. This exhausting, infuriating, interminable shining of light into dark places needs to continue until there are no more dark corners in the labyrinth which is the institutional Catholic church worldwide.
The story goes, when Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he answered it was because that's where the money was. Not all coaches are pedophiles but you can see how a pedophile might want to be a coach. Similarly, a clerical collar, at least in the old days, could provide cover and access. If the French Church's statistics are bad, is it a reflection if the general culture? Molestation doesn't only occur in church groups.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that many of the anecdotes of abuse I have read have involved a priest ingratiating himself into a family. The next move is to isolate the victim, e.g. on an overnight trip.
DeleteIt used to be a Catholic cultural thing - probably still is - that a family would be flattered to be befriended by a priest. It was a kind of social status, I guess. I think that's a symptom of clericalism.
Even as a deacon couple we don't hang out with priests, but some deacons do. It's an interesting dynamic.
One thing the abuse scandals have done is to make it difficult for good priests, which is most of them. It makes what is sometimes a lonely life even lonelier. Most of them are not assigned to a parish for longer than a few years. In our archdiocese, it's for a six year hitch. It can be extended for another six years, but after that they are pretty much term limited. So that means any friends they did make are left behind in the long run.
DeleteWhen I was a kid, my grandmother would occasionally invite the priest to dinner. And also invite my parents and us kids. We were dressed in our Sunday best and instructed to be on our best behavior. I usually did something to merit a frosty glare from my mom. A lot later, Mom would host Sunday dinner after the baptism of our kids, and invite the priest. When our boys graduated high school we sent the priests an announcement, and they put in an appearance at the open house. The priests at these occasions were always very cordial, but it seemed a little stiff and formal rather than an intimate friendship.
It is hard for me to imagine the circumstances in which abuse could take place.
Katherine, I have a friend who was abused by her pastor. He was a close friend of her father and a frequent guest at their home. Just as Jim described.
DeleteIn hindsight, I believe that a young priest with the Legionnaires of Christ order (Mariel’s order) was grooming one of my sons when he was about 12. I wasn’t especially suspicious about him at the time, but later pieces fell into place. Long story. But I never allowed my son to go on the ski trip he was offered, or the summer camp trip, or even alone to go swimming at the private pool in a house owned by the order. I stayed there the whole time with my other sons, and the young priest was visibly annoyed, telling me I didn’t have to stay. Later I pondered his reaction. My son was a good candidate - unpopular and miserable at his school, where the Legion ran a “ youth program”, I was the worried mom who had approached this young, friendly priest with my concerns because he knew the social environment of my son’s school. He was charming and earned my trust. The classic scenario.
When my two older sons were preschool my devout Irish Catholic mother warned me never to let them be alone with a priest. I was a bit mystified by her vehemence at the time, but the warning stayed with me.
When I was in my 60s, I learned that when my older brother was 14, in junior seminary ( to get away from our not so idyllic family life); one of the priests there tried to seduce him. That was why he came home after 2 months. I assume that was why my mother warned me about not letting my sons be alone with a priest, a warning that I remembered when my son was 12. I never let them be altar boys either.
Anne - that is *crazy*. I am so glad your son dodged that bullet - and your brother too. Uber-creepy!
DeleteI was an altar boy in the 50's and 60's. My parents were separated, essentially no father around. There were five priests in the parish. I neither experienced anything or heard of anything. I was initially astounded when I heard of this stuff. But I suppose that in a population of tens of millions of Catholic kids, even a hundred thousand molested could be washed out in the overall numbers. It seems awful that a priest would do such things but it seems just as bad or worse if a father or uncle is the perpetrator. Jack's clinical experience seems to indicate this happens even more often than clerical abuse. My question is, are there precursors to this activity? And can anything therapeutic be done to prevent it? We naturally get upset about the occurrence in Church and the indifference, but this is a societal problem. What, if anything, can be done besides detection and ostracism/incarceration?
DeleteStanley - While it's not therapeutic, the Chicago Archdiocese has a prevention program called Protecting God's Children. It involves staff members and adult volunteers getting trained to recognize signs of abuse, as well as to identify risky behavior (such as adults meeting singly with individual kids with no visibility from outside the room). We have to read a new article every month and take a one-question quiz. I've been doing it for years now. It's definitely raised my awareness - I've learned a ton. I think this program is pretty successful, in that most adults in our parish take part in the program without griping (at least publicly). A few have left volunteer ministries because they don't want to deal with the compliance training. But those were just a few people that I'm aware of.
DeleteOn the other hand ... the archdiocese also has tried to roll out awareness training to children. When the parish invited parents to enroll their children, few enrolled and nobody showed up. My takeaway is that parents are exceedingly uncomfortable speaking frankly with their children about this topic. When my children were primary school age, I was right there with them!
Jim, I appreciate these measures. There's a greater awareness of these hazards in the general society. I hope there's a way to balance vigilance with the natural tendency to hold children, the same thing that makes us cuddle puppies. Years ago, my friends trusted me to babysit their children. I wouldn't be comfortable doing such things now. I just hope it's possible to keep vigilance from turning into paranoia and poisoning an area of human interaction.
DeleteJim, we have a similar program in our archdiocese. Anyone who who is an employee or volunteer doing basically anything in the church is required to take the training. I took it because I am an EMHC and all of us occasionally take Communion to the homebound, which means we are meeting one on one with vulnerable adults. Like you, we have all learned a lot. Hopefully going forward we won't have these tragic incidences.
DeleteStanley, yes, I hope we can keep vigilance from turning into paranoia.
Molestation doesn't only occur in church groups.
ReplyDeleteYes it mostly occurs in families. In the Ohio Mental Health Information System there were check offs for problems, sexual abuse, physical abuse, alcohol abuse.
When I came to Lake County in 1990 I had all the information combined into a central data system; it did not have names but it did have a unique identifier for each client. That was a great advantage. Many times a client had services but no check mark was made for sexual abuse. However if just one time the issue had surfaced I could count that person as either a sexual abuse victim or a sexual abuse perpetrator (the system did not distinguish).
Not only were their a large number of persons with sexual abuse problems, they were much more expensive than clients without sexual abuse problems. I had data on diagnoses and found for each diagnosis, e.g. depression, those with a sexual abuse problem were much more expensive than those who were not.
I suspect other counties around the state and the nation are no different. And the costs I counted were just mental health costs, nothing about criminal justice, welfare and other public system costs.
So if we systematically went around the national exposing all these family victims, their perpetrators, and the huge costs we would have a story at least as bad as the churches.
The Boy Scouts of America has been accused of having nearly 8,000 predators. I have no idea what is the number of victims. Some cases go back to the 70's. The BSA apparently had a list since 1920 of undesirable volunteers. But the draw is understandable.
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