Sexual Abuse and the Break with God

When I began my Sexual Abuse Recovery about 20 years ago, most of the recovering survivors who were disclosing their abuse were women. The statistics showed that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 7 men had been sexually abused as children. These statistics stirred up hard questions for me:

Are pedophiles more interested in girls?
Are girls easier to prey upon?
Is it more dangerous to be born a girl?
Are women more likely than men to confront the truth of their history?
Are women more likely than men to make the commitment to heal from the abuse?
Are men more stoic in general or are they in stronger denial that their abuse history has affected them deeply?

Now I think that those statistics from the 1980s reflected the people that were able to disclose the abuse at that time. I believe it was harder for Survivors abused by clergy to come forward. It took another 10 to 20 years for this group to mobilize due to what I perceive as the extra challenges of their situation.

In recovery groups I took part in, women expressed that they were devastated and shattered by the sexual abuse. Most women were abused by men, but not all. Some women reacted and coped by shutting down sexually, some became sex addicts, some felt they would never open themselves to men sexually again, and some simply closed down their hearts and let their bodies run on automatic.

Men who had been abused were also devastated and shattered. If the man had been abused by a man, he usually had an additional confusion to cope with: his sexuality, more specifically, his sexual preference. As a boy, he probably grew up affected by the dominant culture's belief that a heterosexual is normal and a homosexual is not. For the heterosexual male who, as a boy, is sexually abused by a man, he has the added burden of continually questioning his sexuality, wondering if he is gay, wondering what it was he did to attract this unwanted male sexual attention, wondering if it's because he's gay that a man touched him.

Most sexually abused people have an enormous recovery process ahead of them. The core issues usually addressed are boundary violation, core emotional shattering, betrayal by adults in positions of authority, and abandonment by the adults that were supposed to protect them. As adults we may show signs of sexual numbness and dysfunction, emotional fragmentation, depression, self-loathing, a tendency towards physical weakness and illness, and a tendency towards addiction to soothe the enormous internal pain and confusion.

For years, abused children have been threatened into silence by either quiet coercion, blackmail, and implied fear of more abuse or death. There is also the belief that no one would believe them if they "told" or that they would lose the love of their families after being part of such unspeakable interaction. If the abuser was a family member, the child would risk losing one's family and one's family's love and acceptance by "telling." One is dependent on the family for love and protection and may unconsciously keep the secret in order not to lose that love, protection, and acceptance. In other words, how can one tell on the person upon whom one is dependent for survival?

It is not easy for a family informed of an abuser within the family to accept that it happened because then they must acknowledge that they either failed to notice what was happening, or worse, knew, but felt powerless to stop it, or even much worse, made a decision not to further protect the child because it would be too disruptive to the family.

In the situation of children abused by clergy, though, there is an additional confusing burden in the heart of the victim. It may be harder to "tell" and be believed because one is going up against not just one abusive person but a strong network of abusive persons, much larger than a family, who are allied against the child to keep him silent. It is becoming evident that for years, a network of clergy has repeatedly covered for individuals within the network and made it possible for continued sexual activity amongst child and teen parishioners. This Fortress of Impermeability has been under construction for perhaps hundreds of years.

The other complicating piece for children abused by clergy is that the cleric is the intermediary between the parishioner and God. I imagine that in order to come to the decision to reveal the truth about the abuse, one must risk the love of family members that may or may not believe them, one must go up against the church's Fortress of Impermeability (which as we know now, is tantamount to an army), and one must also deal, consciously or unconsciously, with the belief that if one "tells," one may lose one's conduit to God.

I imagine the child's question:

"If I tell on the priest, who will take my prayer to God? Who will hear my confession? Who will give me communion?"

Here, still, are the larger questions:

"If I tell on God's chosen servant, will God still hear my prayers?"
"If I tell on God's chosen servant, will God still love me?"

This article appeared in the Summer 2002 IPA Newsletter.