A victims’ rights advocate in Ontario says many more people are likely to come forward with allegations of abuse by clergy as a result of the current wave of scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church.
“Whenever someone comes forward and it makes it in the newspaper, then other survivors do come out. So every time there’s a report in some newspaper or in some magazine, you have more survivors that do have the courage to speak up,” says Robert Bérubé of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
Bérubé, 54, says he knows of more than 400 men and women who say they, too, have been abused by members of the clergy from various churches, including Catholic, Anglican, and Mormon.
“Of the people that usually contact me, I would say 90 percent have been abused by priests, or members of clergy, which is not limited to Catholic.”
Bérubé, a former school principal and co-founder of International Days: Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Violence, says he himself was sexually abused by a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Sault Ste Marie over a period of three years starting when he was 12.
After suffering a debilitating depression in his late forties, he decided to break his silence. “I came out because someone else had spoken out,” he says.
Although by then the priest had died, in 2005 Bérubé filed a suit against the diocese and received an undisclosed settlement.
France Bedard, 62, who heads an organization that assists victims of sexually abusive priests in Quebec, also predicts that many who have been abused by Catholic clergy will speak out in the coming months.
“More revelations will be made because many victims now have the strength to come forward,” Bedard told the Montreal Gazette.
“I’m telling you, and I know what I’m talking about, colleges and boarding schools will soon be exposed because people are finding the courage to talk,” she said, adding some have already pressed charges.
Bedard said she was raped and impregnated by Father Armand Therrien in the 1960s. She pressed charges in 2005 after the Quebec City Roman Catholic archdiocese said Therrien denied being the father of her child.
After a DNA test proving Therrien was indeed the father, he was charged with rape and gross indecency in 2006, but died before his trial. Bedard has since filed a $325,000 lawsuit against Therrien’s estate and the Archdiocese of Quebec.
Since going public with her story, Bedard, like Bérubé, has become the confidante of hundreds of other victims.
“I get calls every day from victims,” said Bedard, who runs the Association des victimes de pretres.
An Ipsos Reid poll released Tuesday found that one in ten Canadians aged 18 or older, representing roughly 2 million adults, indicate that they are personally aware of someone among their family, friends, or acquaintances who has been sexually assaulted by a Roman Catholic priest.
Good priests tainted by scandals
In the most recent scandal to hit the Catholic Church, news emerged last week that Georg Mueller, a bishop in Norway who resigned quietly in June 2009, did so after admitting that he had molested an altar boy about 20 years earlier, when he was a priest.
The announcement came after a Norwegian newspaper probed why Mueller had stepped down unexpectedly. Mueller’s successor, Bishop Bernt Eidsvig, said in a statement that the case was kept quiet at the request of the victim.
The revelation follows scandals in Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States that have emerged in recent months.
In Canada, as a result of cases of widespread sexual and physical abuse at the Mount Cashel boys home in St. John’s, N.L., in the 1980s, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1992 produced guidelines called From Pain to Hope, on how to deal with abuse of minors.
“Together with all other responsible citizens, the Bishops respect the civil laws and fully collaborate with civil authorities in sexual abuse inquiries,” the church’s Web site stated at the time.
However, although changes have been made, cases of abuse by clergy have continued to emerge, and critics within the church as well as victims are calling for the systemic issues behind the problem to be addressed.
“The Church continues to look at this as if it were only about the sins and failings of individual men. The systemic reasons for why it has happened . . . are still in need of attention,” Sister Nuala Kenny, Ethics and Health Policy Advisor for the Catholic Health Association of Canada, said in an interview with the Canadian Catholic News.
Sister Kenny lamented how every good priest and bishop is tainted by the scandals caused by a few. A good priest or teacher, she said, can no longer give a hug to a child who has fallen down.
SNAP’s Bérubé says several changes are needed to the church’s canon law, including the excommunication of clergy who abuse children. There must also be an end to the “code of silence” often resorted to in order to protect the reputation of the church.
“I would like to state that there are good priests, and these good priests should, and pretty fast, identify the bad priests and do something about it,” he says.
“I’m aware of priests who are in communities and they are presently abusing, and I’m talking throughout the world. They are presently abusing, and that’s what we have to stop—we have to prevent other children from being abused.”
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