This article was send to us by Patrick Wall.
Patrick is a world-renowned expert on the catholic clergy abuse crisis, has been working on behalf of victims of clergy sexual abuse since 2002. A former Roman Catholic Priest and Benedictine Monk, Wall has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s of divinity degree from Saint John’s University in Minnesota. Wall has also pursued graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, the Gregorian University and Cardiff University in Canon Law.
We contacted Patrick after recommendation of our good friend Helen in the US who is advising us on people in her country who have proven which side they are on, have their heart in the right place and and whom can help us establishing our worldwide network fo compassionate fighters against the injustice of the church.
Patrick has appeared as an expert in numerous documentaries on sexual abuse by clergy, amongst which “Sex Crimes and the Vatican” and “Deliver us from evil”. We met with him in Rome in May 2011 where he attended with us the meeting of the Italian Survivors organised by La Colpa. We are honoured that Patrick has decided to contribute to our pages from his wealth of experience on this subject.
You can follow him on his blog: http://patrickjwall.wordpress.com/about/
SOMETIMES THE PERPETRATOR HAD A CHILD’S EYES AND FACE
The story for children who were sexually abused has many chapters. One of the chapters must be about understanding how the perpetrator gained access. This access was never the child’s fault. The child did nothing to either attract or allow the perpetrator access. This is essential to the process of personal healing, forgiveness and ensuring that our kids today are in fact free to just be kids.
Access to children for the perpetrator is everything. As an adult looking back, access is easier to understand if you were a deaf child assigned to the Antonio Provolo School in Verona, Italy. Or after reading, “In Plain Sight”, access is also easier to understand how children were tortured by Irish Christian Brothers at the Industrial schools.
Access for a perpetrator into a seemingly strong nuclear family however is harder to understand and often times create a barrier to healing. One weakness that could have allowed access is if the family was zealous or devout to a particular religion. Another weakness is the false belief that family members always protect family members. A third weakness is that access might have been economic. The economy could have forced all the adults to work insane jobs, leave home for extended periods of time or in fact immigrate.
Experience has taught me that another access point exists. Sometimes the access was simply that the perpetrator had a child’s eyes and face. But behind those bright eyes and soft face was a deviant criminal personality. Then as an adult looking back, one naturally feels tremendous pain/anger from the adult’s failure to detect the deviant.
Thus part of healing is acknowledging it was never the child’s fault and possibly not the adults fault for allowing the perpetrator access. The adult’s religion, false security in family members, economic conditions or lack of experience with deviant criminals may have been the blinders that provided access.
In righteous anger some survivors want to distribute a portion of the blame/fault to the adults for allowing perpetrators access. As noted, there are circumstances where it was not the adults fault.
What then?
Children first, last and forever. I recommend we focus that righteous anger toward improving an international system of child protection, survivor healing and predator retention.
Today I see great strides in child protection and healing for survivors compared to twenty years ago. One area that must change is predator retention. Deviant criminal predators must not be allowed to move across international borders, most especially after being criminally convicted of child abuse. One only needs to look at the stories of Oliver Francis O’Grady or Fernando Lopez Lopez. Maybe Father Gerald Fitzgerald s.P. was dead on, designate an island and isolate the vipers.
A physical international island will likely never happen. Knowing that silence and anonymity are great weapons for predators maybe the worldwide web is where the newest source of protection and predator retention can occur. How do we set up an international register of child predators?
I do not know. What I do know is that if we focus our righteous anger on identifiable and attainable system change, healing occurs organically.
Patrick J. Wall
