Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

The Vatican has castigated Irish bishops for covering up abuse, in the wake of the Irish report on the investigation into the problem.  Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, a right-hand man of the Pope, described the abuse scandal as “humiliating” and “abominable”.  I think that’s the strongest terms the Vatican has used yet!

There’s just one small point: the Irish report made it clear that the Vatican was complicit in the cover-up.  Presumably they hope no-one will realise that, and they’ll be able to place all the blame on the local bishops.

I confess to enjoying cop shows, despite having been an imaginative enough child that even listening to the suspense music in the ones Mum and Dad watched after I went to bed could give me nightmares!  I was a teenager before I could watch such shows with comparative impunity, and back then my favourite was Cop Shop.  Blue Heelers and Police Rescue both helped fill the intervening years, and now it’s The Bill.

Which brings me to my point.  Currently, a major character (Sergeant Smith) in The Bill is facing investigation for beating up a criminal who was, in turn, beating up a fellow officer.  And the only person who knows the truth of what happened (apart from the crim) is Smith’s fellow sergeant Calum Stone, who himself has been shown to be somewhat inclined to administer what we might call rough justice.

Stone is prepared to back Smithy up, regardless of the truth, because “the crim deserved it”.  And this brought me to musing on the “protect one of our own” mentality that prompted Stone to lie for Smithy.  Police are encouraged to think this way, and there’s good reason for it.  Watching and defending your fellow officers’ backs might save their life one day.  Or they might save yours.

And this is where the tension between truth and mateship pulls me in both directions.  Because it’s that “watch your mates’ backs” attitude that sets up this kind of situation, where protecting your mate takes precedence over the truth, and it seems that while the basic attitude can be life-saving, it can also – in non-life-threatening situations -  destroy those to whom justice is denied as a result.

Is Smithy still a good police officer despite stepping over the line on this occasion?  Hell, yes.  Is the truth more important than his career?  I confess I’m not sure.

And perhaps you can see where this is leading, because the situation isn’t all that different in the church.  Clergy step over the line, their mates close ranks, cover up and lie for them, and justify it on the basis of his career (and possibly the reputation of the church).  And I’m quite clear that that is wrong, but not so clear on it in the police force.

But I think there are two fundamental differences.  Firstly, that in the police force, they can and do face life-threatening situations.  In the church, they don’t.  So in the church, there’s no real justification on that basis for a culture of closing ranks.  And secondly, that the church supposedly puts morals first.  In fact, many denominations or church spokespeople argue that morality outside the church is necessarily deficient.  To argue for morality, yet not place primary importance on truth seems to me to be duplicitous.

In some ways, maybe, it comes down to who do you protect first – your mates, the criminals or society/injured victims?  I don’t support vigilantism, but neither do I support excessive societal protection of those whose actions put them outside society.  And I certainly don’t agree that anything less than the truth is appropriate in the church.

No, no… I’m not getting married again (I like the model I’ve got, thanks), or moving (god forbid!) or changing my diet (current one’s working well, thanks), or pregnant (god forbid that one too!). This is about my website.

Firstly, that I was asked to write an article for the WA Uniting Church’s The Transit Lounge website, on the recent release of the Ferns Report (Irish Catholic) and the Australian Anglican research into abuse allegations in their dioceses. However, the end result raised “concerns that there could be some sections that might be defamatory and/or damaging to our ecumenical relationships”, and Assembly therefore declined to publish it. I’m proud to prove that despite maintaining useful connections with people in key places in various denominations, I can’t yet be accused of selling out my principles

And the second half of that news is that I chose to post the article on my website rather than see its punch severely lessened by the diplomatic editing that would have been necessary for it to be published in The Transit Lounge. The direct link is here, but I have also added (and will continue to add, supposing I’m disciplined enough) various other articles I’ve written along the way, which you can find by going to the main page of the website and clicking on the “my articles” link which has been added to the menu.

And the second major thing I’ve added to the website is something I’ve been meaning to add for a long time – perhaps the most momentous piece of church documentation I possess after my ten-year fight with them, and that is the Notice of Relinquishment which proves that Vic Cole relinquished his holy orders as a result of his sexual abuse of me. I have also added the letter of apology I received from Peter Jensen at the end of the negotiations with the Anglican Church, wherein he also refers (somewhat obliquely) to the refusal of Harry Goodhew, Donald Cameron, and Vic Cole, to make similar apologies to me. Both can be accessed via links contained within my story.

<sigh> It’d be nice to have time to scan every letter I sent to, and every letter I received from, the church, but that’s still a long-ahead dream.

One of the longterm results of sexual abuse is the ever-present possibility of “triggers” (circumstances, events, objects, words, songs, etc. which serve as unbidden reminders of the abuse and triggers of abuse-related emotions, body memories or post-traumatic reactions).  And when the abuse is church-related – and particularly if the victim was devout and actively involved in a religion and its practices – the circumstances around the abuse frequently encompassed the majority of the victim’s time, social circle, faith, beliefs and activities.  This all-pervadingness presents a special kind of dilemma, where the victim – in standing up against the wrongness of their abuse - loses nearly every aspect of their life, and the potential triggers are correspondingly all pervading.  Phrases that people use that happen to be in hymns, symbols that may have been part of the victim’s religious life, events that may somehow be linked with events during the abuse – all (along with many other things) can serve as painful and difficult reminders.

Christmas and Easter are typical examples which are almost impossible to avoid (Christmas is worse, because more people celebrate the religious meaning of Christmas than Easter), so this time of year is a difficult one for clergy abuse victims.  For many victims who have taken action against their perpetrator, these “festivals” are made even more painful by the thoughtlessness (or deliberate intent) of the church.  For example, this year, a few weeks before Christmas, the Catholic Church announced a review of their “Towards Healing” abuse complaint process, and asked for victims’ comments on their experiences.  There was, of course, a deadline.  So if any victims wanted to be involved in the review process by offering comments, they had to revisit their complaint process, analyse and document the toughest parts of it and how the church made it more painful, and do it all within a few weeks, at a time of year which is already extraordinarily difficult for them.

Other victims tell of frequent examples where they have been required to document something, decide something, or deal with something to do with their complaint immediately before Christmas or Easter.  It is such a frequent occurrence, it makes it hard to believe it’s all purely accidental.  One could try to dismiss it as the church wanting to deal with business before the holiday, but given how busy a time of year it is for them, it seems unlikely that they would suddenly place a priority on dealing with abuse complaints rather than church activities, given the long waits for action that victims suffer at other times of year.

By sheer weight of the frequency with which this kind of thing happens, victims are forced to the conclusion that churches do it on purpose – force them into making decisions at a time when they are least fit to do so, thereby giving the advantage in the complaint process to the church, for whom it is purely a business arrangement.

Ok, this is really simple.  I came to blog on a new topic, re-read the most recent one, and thought: I just have to make this point.  In the previous blog entry to this one, Haines is “defended” with the argument that he didn’t really know what he was doing because he was sexually inexperienced. And, let it be said, this is not an unusual defence for Catholic priests to offer, or, indeed, for the Catholic Church to use in their own defence. But if inexperience is such a danger, then why doesn’t the Catholic Church simply lift the restriction on celibacy?

Catholic priest John Haines has been convicted of offences of child porn (see here). And it was entirely due to his own stupidity! Now I suspect the average person is not going to believe that ANYone can be as stupid as Haines was in this case, but here’s the story: Haines had a thing for taking pix of his child victims on his mobile phone. Not unusual. But when he subsequently donated the phone to a parishioner, WITHOUT removing all the pix, he dropped himself right in it. (I told you you wouldn’t believe it ) If this had been a life and death situation, Haines would win a top Darwin award! Thankfully, the parishioner had a decent sense of right and wrong (unlike the one who gave a character witness in court) and took the phone to the police. One wonders if the parishioner who gave a character reference would have been so ready to do so if they’d seen/discovered the pics themself! And also thankfully, the judge’s response to the character references was that Haines’ apparent decency only makes the breach of trust even more profound. This is a far cry from the past attitude of judges, which was to see the aberrant behaviour as somehow more excusable because the priests involved were good on the surface. That attitude, and that of the parishioners who defended Haines as being “not like that”, is based on a fairytale perspective on life (see my blog entry here). It’s encouraging to see some shift, however slight. The lawyer defending him (who was obviously pushing shit uphill, but sometimes that’s what lawyers have to try to do), tried the defence that Haines was sexually inexperienced due to a prohibition on sex for Catholic priests. Perhaps he was (although it seems he was getting some experience!), but how much experience does it take for a Catholic priest to know these days that child porn is wrong? Should it, in fact, take any experience at all? Surely we have a right to expect that those who preach morality should have a working understanding of it for themselves!

Haines is now on “administrative leave”, but one has to hope that the Catholic Church will defrock him rather than follow his example of stupidity and immorality by allowing him to remain a priest.

Hollingworth has conceded he thinks the job of GG was wrong for him (see here).  Let’s hope it hasn’t taken him until now to come to that conclusion, because abuse victims could have told him that years, if not decades, ago. They could have told him that when he reassured victims he was “keeping a close eye” on how abuse complaints were being dealt with, but which later inaction he justified as “not being directly involved in”. They could have told him that when he refused to defrock a clergyman (a bishop by the time of the complaint) for underage sex, which he justified as the (14yo) victim’s instigation. They could have told him that when he appointed a clergyman against whom there were two known abuse allegations to a post on the diocesan sexual misconduct complaints committee.

And now Hollingworth tries to justify his failure based on some perceived, or unperceived (it’s not really clear which) separation of church and state. He obviously still doesn’t get it! The public disillusionment with him was nothing to do with any link or otherwise between church and state – it was simply and purely that he stood exposed as miserably inadequate in dealing with sexual immorality in his subordinates, and pitifully shameless in his attempts to wriggle out of responsibility for his poor judgement. Moreover, his supposed moral (religious) and ethical (social welfare degree) education had obviously done nothing to improve him.

Churchman or not, such qualities are not what we want to see in a GG.

Many people find it hard to understand the longterm effects of clergy sexual abuse on a victim, and particularly what effect it has on the practice of their faith.  In 20 years of telling my story to hundreds of churchgoers, only once have I ever had enthusiastic encouragement not to go to church when I described how painful it is.  The following was written by me as part of an email discussion with churchgoers, and seemed to be worth posting here.  As an Anglican victim, some of the things that bother me will be different to what is painful for a Catholic victim, and different again for members of other denominations and faiths, but I offer this as a small insight into the retraumatisation that happens when a clergy abuse victim goes to church.

There are two main problems for me in going to church: one is the language, building, atmosphere – the whole “church” experience – that makes it impossible for me to walk into church without feeling terror (literally).  The second problem is the attitude (which is intertwined with the theology).

The first problem – of language, building, atmosphere, etc – encompasses so much that church people take for granted.  A few examples:
1) the building itself.  Obviously, the more similar a church is to the one where I was abused, the more dangerous it feels, but it goes for any church.  Have you ever had a car accident, and been extra nervous at that spot the next few times you went through it, or even other spots like it? Multiply that a million times and you’ll begin to have a faint idea of what I mean.
2) closing my eyes to pray (and bowing my head, and kneeling [in churches where that happens]) are all danger signals for me.  This one sometimes isn’t too bad, because everyone else has their eyes closed so they don’t see that I don’t
3) the collection (or offering, if you want to call it that).  I choose not to financially support a system that abused me.  But when the plate, or bag, or what-have-you is passed along the pews, it is very obvious to those around you that you aren’t contributing.  And those who don’t contribute, by definition, are considered to be outside the clique that is the parish family.
4) passing the peace is a danger time.  I’m VERY protective of my physical and psychological boundaries when I’m in an unsafe space to start with, but it’s incredibly hard to make that point to people who think passing the peace is good.  I can’t shake hands, or say the formatted response.  I can manage a half-smile and a thankyou sometimes, but that’s it.  Mostly, the feeling of threat it carries for me will put me in tears anyway.  So I sit there, hoping people won’t approach me, and having to be rude and ignore their outstretched hand when they do come up to me.  (For churchgoers reading this – try it sometime!  Sit in your pew when everyone starts to move around to pass the peace, imagine feeling utterly terrified and profoundly vulnerable, and when people come up with outstretched hand, keep your arms folded, and don’t reply.  And remember that you’re doing it someplace where everyone already knows your character and won’t just assume you’re rude!)
5) the language – this is a much harder one to describe, but is partly about what I have learnt since to be dangerous (in predisposing a system to allow abuse within it) and partly about the forms of words that specifically remind me of the disparity between what I believed and what happened to me.  Hymns are good examples.  Ones that refer to god rescuing us from all ills, or god as father (my abuser was fatherly), or even particular hymns that I only ever really sang at the abusive church, will all leave me undone and crying, which is pretty damn embarrassing in a place where no-one understands, and mostly where they don’t want to know…
6) …which leads into the last thing: church people often (dare I say mostly?) have a huge emotional/spiritual investment in their beliefs and the system which undergirds it.  In fact, many many church people depend far more on the system than on the theology.  So if you threaten that system (either actually, by – for instance – going public with an abuse complaint, or in their mind, by telling one’s history of abuse by a minister) many of them are sufficiently turned off that at best they merely murmur a few platitudes and then make their excuses to leave you alone.  That’s a pretty powerful rejection.  Or worse, they try to talk you into coming back to church because “god can heal you if you just let him” (thereby subtly placing the blame for you not being healed squarely on your perceived resistance to god).

That’s a very longwinded, but still short, summary of the first problem.  The second problem, of attitude/theology is simpler to express: christians in general believe that Jesus is the way to god.  The degree to which they assert he is the ONLY way varies.  But the more they believe that, the harder it is for them to see that any variation on their belief is equally legitimate christianity.  In other words, they end up in a “so-and-so is in, but the other guy’s out” kind of mentality.  And the more important it is for them to define what constitutes acceptability, the less open they are to accepting those who, by their definition, are “out”.  And abuse victims, who by their own actions are perceived by the church community as threatening to the system, are deemed “out”, and are therefore excluded.

And this kind of defensiveness ends up being blind faith in the system and what it teaches, rather than blind faith in god.  A brief example: when I went public with my story, I was teaching scripture in the same school as some of the abuser’s congregants.  One of them, who was also a member of the abuser’s parish council, took me to task over going public (as most christians do – they’d rather not know!).  I challenged him to discuss my claims, and he said “it’s your word against his, and I’ll give double honour to an elder”.  Now, he hadn’t asked me what proof I had (sworn statements by other people of admissions the abuser had made to them, including another minister) and even when I told him, he preferred to defend the abuser.  That’s not faith in god, because god is about justice and integrity and honesty – it’s faith in the system and the system’s endorsement of the abuser as an ordained minister.

(And as for the system… in my case the abuser admitted it to the archbishop, but the archbishop never made that admission public, and then the church spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting me in court when they knew it to be true… and it took 10 years of being in the public eye and a change of archbishop before I even got an apology!)

If all this was only my experience, or if it had only been one short experience, I might still be in the church.  But it’s the experience of countless clergy abuse victims, in every denomination, and sustained over an unbelievable length of time.  Leaving ends up being a result of a) seeing that most church theology breeds that kind of person, plus b) choosing not to support that system, plus c) choosing to avoid hurtful people and situations.

Let me be clear that I’m referring to churchgoers in general here, not just clergy.  Though different denominations have different structures, and different ways of co-ordinating those structures, and even differing theologies, they all function in very much the same ways when it comes to crushing those who presume to question their goal/aim/theology/methods.  Shoot the messenger, discredit the messenger, stonewall the messenger, and silence anyone they can.  In the course of my life, I’d say the nastiest, most manipulative people I’ve met have been within the church, and the nicest, most compassionate people I’ve met have been outside the church.  That doesn’t mean I’ve met no-one good in the church, and no-one bad outside the church, but the sum total of good people in each has been heavily on the side of the non-churchgoers.  And I truly believe that much of the reason for that is the fear of churchgoers when I threaten their security, resulting in antagonism and bullying behaviour towards me.

One last point: staying in the system and working for change from within is a viable alternative for some.  I’m certainly not wanting to decry that option – in fact, I am tremendously encouraged by the few clergy I know who are doing just that.  But most of them, if you talk to them for any length of time, will admit that they too have become victims of the viciousness of the system-supporters, so it’s a very stressful option, and certainly one that most clergy abuse victims, with all the church-related pain they carry, can’t undertake.

The closure of the Catholic Church’s in-house treatment programme for sexually abusive clergy, Encompass, has brought out some interesting figures. Firstly, Professor Timothy O’Hearn, a former board member, said that a review found that maintaining the programme would cost $750,000 a year, and the cost can’t be justified.

Can someone tell me, then, how the Catholic Church can spend 20 times that on World Youth Day, and not see the equivalent 20 years of treating abusive clergy being worth the money?

Secondly, a Sydney Morning Herald article says this:
“Opened in 1997 by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes, Encompass treated more than 1100 people, 250 of them in an intensive six-month residential psychosexual program, according to its final newsletter.”

So that’s an average of 100 clergy treated per year for 11 years, of which 23 or so each year were considered serious enough problems to be doing the intensive residential programme. Those weren’t all Catholic, by the way – other denominations referred problem clergy to Encompass too. But given that there are around 12,000 clergy in Australia at any given time, having to treat 1100 of them gives some idea of how big this problem is.

So given a) the scope of the problem clearly set out in their own newsletter, and b) how much the church is prepared to spend on other things, how can they not find justification for maintaining the Encompass programme?

The money’s not really an issue (even if their priorities are).
The number of clergy to treat isn’t an issue (the less to treat, the less it will cost, after all).

About the only answer I can logically conclude is left is that the treatment has been found to be unsuccessful.

If churches really wanted to deal properly with sexual abuse by clergy and church workers, they could issue the following compulsory directives:
1. All complainants must be advised to seek police opinion on whether any part of their abuse constitutes a crime (it is neither appropriate for a church nor within the church’s areas of speciality to be providing an opinion on criminality). If police proceedings are instigated, the perpetrator should be immediately stood down for the duration of the investigation, and the parish notified as to the reason.
2. No perpetrator can be moved to another parish as part of handling the complaint.
3. No church moneys may be used to support perpetrators defending themselves against accusations of sexual abuse.
4. Victims must be offered open-ended therapy by therapists of their choice, paid for by the church until the therapist and victim deem treatment is completed.
5. All credible accusations must be made public and the perpetrators defrocked.
6. All perpetrators convicted of a crime of violence (including sexual abuse) should be immediately defrocked.
7. No perpetrator may be allowed to resign from the church during (or as a way of avoiding) an investigation into an allegation of misconduct. If the perpetrator has already resigned at the time of complaint, the investigation must still proceed, and the findings be notified to the appropriate body under Working With Children legislation.

Obviously, the directives would need to be issued by authoritative bodies, which vary according to denominational structures. In the Catholic Church, for instance, the Pope could do it. In the Anglican Church, each diocesan synod would be the relevant body. In denominations with congregational structures, each congregation would have to do it. But whoever decrees it, and however it is done, such decrees would show that they are really serious about eradicating abuse within their ranks, and providing care and concern for victims.

Any suggestions for additions to the list?