«They gave me education and culture, but they stole my soul. Since it happened, more than 40 years ago, I have not been afraid of death, but of life. With the words of a man, abused as a child in a religious school, the act of forgiveness and recognition of victims of abuse organized by the diocese of Madrid this Monday began. In the atrium of the cathedral, still without entering the blessed space of the temple, as if he wanted to unload all the sacredness on the victims, and on the eight testimonies, which one by one have marked each of the key elements that have marked the crisis of abuse in the Catholic Church in recent years.
There did not seem to be any elements left to improvisation. If this first testimony pointed out the constant of a life destroyed and completely marked by abuse, so repeated in the victims, the second, of a priest abused in the seminary, affected the silence that has covered the abuse for years. «If they do not give importance or credibility to our story, how are we going to take the difficult step of leaving anonymity, being full of fears, fears and shame? If there are no complaints, it is not because there have been no abuses, it is because the treatment we are going to receive is more painful than the abuse itself,” the text stated.
In order to preserve their identity, the testimonies, written by abused victims in the diocese of Madrid, have not necessarily been read by them. Thus, the third spoke of the denial and confusion of the abused person in the face of something that they never thought could happen. «He was a person of absolute trust for me… What’s more, I had told him things that I had not dared to tell anyone. My head told me that that was not happening. Even though he forced me, I denied it, because he couldn’t be abusing me,” wrote an adult woman who had been abused by her spiritual director.
And the following has abounded in the same idea: “You are a victim and, at the same time, you consider yourself an accomplice, and you disgust yourself”, which came from a woman who was abused by her novitiate teacher. A circumstance that also reflects a singularity in the issue of abuse, the scarce presence of women among the perpetrators. In fact, in the first report presented by the Episcopal Conference in June 2023, only 5 of the 728 abusers were women.
«At 14 years old I was pushed to go to live together with a religious club. I had to phone my parents in front of a priest, who watched what I had to say to them in order to get their permission. Even then, I was brutally pressured in a planned way by the people who talked to me into joining the organization, under threat of eternal damnation if I didn’t. “I agreed crying and terrified… They forced me to hide my entry from my parents…”, stated the testimonies, which focused on the abuse of conscience and power and not so much the sexual one.
The following text has been attributed to a nun who was abused by her confessor and spiritual director. «He was my confessor. When I told him that the kiss he gave me made me feel confused, he told me that nothing had happened and that what was happening was that my mind was dirty and that, in reality, it was my desire that confused me. “I was having sex with him for ten years,” she said.
The following texts have followed the line not so much of abuse itself, but of the attitudes, often guilty, of the people of the Church who knew them and looked the other way or covered them up. «It wasn’t just one person who abused me, it was abused by an entire community that allows it. The fault that there are ‘bad guys’ in the Church is that there are good ones who do not denounce the bad ones. What harms the Church is not the denunciation, but what happens in it. The bad guys win when the good guys do nothing,” explained a man who was abused when he was a minor in a school belonging to a religious congregation.
“Do not be afraid of the victims” cried the following text. «The majority of us are not looking to mediate our case or see how we can get an economic pinch from the Church. We just need an empathetic welcome in a safe space that generates trust; We only ask for attentive listening, credibility, accompaniment, offering, availability, affection. All these things are not even material things,” explained an abused man, now an adult, on a pilgrimage. «We have been betrayed by the Church, the Bride of Christ, but we want and need a renewed maternal embrace. Are we willing to give it? Some of us do want to receive it,” he concluded.
More generic has been the penultimate of the writings, from a woman, also an adult, “victim of the Church”, without specifying what type. «The abuse dominated my life and took over me, under the false appearance of care and concern. The one who abused me, managed to corrupt my world of relationships, betrayed me by providing me with help that he always charged for and manipulated me by placing moral and religious duties on my shoulders that he did not hesitate to fail to fulfill… Convinced that there was no way out, I came to believe that only death would free me from the sentence imposed,” he explained.
And the last one entered again into the distant attitude that most of the Church has had for many years. «The institution has almost hurt me more than the aggressor. It has taken them 10 years to receive me and believe me… The dilettante, distant, legalistic and cold attitude of some ecclesiastics and concealers has greatly damaged my soul and my relationship with God,” explained the eighth and final testimony.
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