Madam, – Lest anyone be under the illusion that the Vatican has any real interest in healing the profound wounds of clerical child abuse, please note my own experience.
In 1998 I tried to address the issue of the sexual abuse I had endured as a seven-year-old girl in a London diocese in the 1950s.
The child of emigrants, I was horrendously sexually assaulted by the local parish priest who was a Capuchin Father. The long-term effects of this assault were profound and life-changing. In 1998, I made contact with the relevant order simply to report this man, only to discover that the perpetrator was at that time an archbishop (head of the church in Wales). I was told by an intermediary that the Vatican were informed and that was the last I have heard.
My letters to the papal nuncio in England were ignored. There were a couple of genuine attempts at sincere responses notably from the late Cardinal Basil Hume and from individuals within this man’s order. For that I am grateful. This interaction with the church in England took up the guts of three years.
For the duration of these contacts, like many survivors, I was made feel like I was an untouchable. The hurt goes way beyond words and most certainly into the next generation. It is now 2010 . . . I am still awaiting any acknowledgment that I ever existed. The archbishop has since died. But as far as I am concerned, the sin against me still exists. Words like resolve, determination, honesty and courage ring very hollow. The Vatican specifically made me invisible with its heartlessness, lack of acknowledgment, its lack of humanity (to this day) and its inability to deal with my own complaint on any level that treated me as a human being of any value. In effect, as with many survivors, the whole original experience is replayed with the usual components of disbelief, denial and exclusion.
In these times of relentless media coverage on a daily basis, I am reminded that the abuse I endured was simply not important enough to merit any response from Rome: no justice, only silence. I have managed to recover with the support of a number of determined, resolute, honest and courageous people, some of whom still belong to the church, No thanks whatsoever to the Vatican. In the words of Richard Rohr, if we do not transform our pain we will surely transmit it. – Yours, etc,