Progress Made On Abuse
Title: Progress made on abuse, but much yet to be done, say experts
Author: Mark Pattison
WASHINGTON (CNS) — While progress has been made on the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the United States and elsewhere, much more remains to be done, said panelists at a Jan. 20 webinar on the issue sponsored in part by Georgetown University.
Those sentiments were shared during the webinar, “Listening to the Voices of Survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse,” by investigators of past abuse, relatives of victims and those who counsel survivors.
“It was a shock, it was a deep shock to discover the damages that were incurred due to these sexual abuses,” said Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of the French Institute of Administrative Sciences, who led an independent investigation into the history of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France.
“We cannot understand and know the reality as it is” and its consequences, Sauvé said, “if we have not been able ourselves to touch the experience of the victims (including) the isolation, the shame and the guilt.”
Speaking through an interpreter, Sauvé said what he found during the investigation “scared me, deeply disgusted me” to the point where “I had to seek therapy.”
“It was a really painful experience that I had,” he said, adding that he really has some doubt these days about “the human mediation between the church — the men and the women that we are — and God our creator” and wonders “where do we go back to” from these revelations.