Protection of Minors: The voices
of survivors
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| Protection of Minors in the Church (Vatican Media) |
Five testimonies from survivors of clerical sexual abuse
from across the globe were heard on Thursday during the opening of the Meeting
on the "Protection of Minors in the Church".
By Francesca Merlo
The first of five testimonies came from a man from Chile, in
South America, and although he was asked to talk about the “pain that comes
from sexual abuse”, he chose not to. Because, he said, “everyone knows that
sexual abuse leaves tremendous consequences for everyone…the consequences are
evident, in all aspects, and remain for the whole of life”.
“Instead” he continued, “I would like to speak about myself
as a Catholic, of what happened to me, and of what I would like to say to the
Bishops”
The difficulty of speaking-up
The survivor, who along with four others who told their
stories in a video, chose to remain anonymous. He began by saying that for a
Catholic, “the most difficult thing is to speak about sexual abuse”. The first
thing he thought to do at the time was to go, “tell everything to the Holy
Mother Church”, where he believed they would “listen to” and “respect” him.
“The first thing they did”, he said, “was treat me as a
liar, turn their backs and tell me that I, and others, were enemies of the
Church.”
He said he is aware that the Church is discussing how to
“end this phenomenon, how to prevent it from happening again and again, and how
to remedy all of this evil”.
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