Sexual abuse: eclipse of the soul
The trauma of childhood sexual abuse is almost incomprehensible. Here, Michael Corry and Aine Tubridy explain some of the consequences
I've come to realise that sexual assault is an
imposed death experience for the victim. That is, the victim
experiences her life as having been taken by someone else.
— Evangeline Kane
The emerging self, with its inherent potential, needs
to be protected, and like a seedling, nurtured in fertile ground.
Sexual abuse, like no other trauma, eclipses this natural unfolding
with an impact of such magnitude that is rarely appreciated. Upwards
of 150,000 adult women and men in Ireland have experienced statutory
rape in childhood. Five times that figure experienced other forms of
sexual abuse, ranging from inappropriate touching to the forced
witnessing of exposure.
Picture an infant, whose window on the world is the
rim of their cot, whose cry or smile elicits the unqualified
unconditional attention of her mother and father, their watchful
eyes holding her gaze completely, making her feel for those moments,
the absolute centre of the world. In the infant's tiny mind an inner
knowing is forming ‘I am the reason this is happening'.
Now fast forward to a time when the same apparently loving father is gradually beginning to express his ‘love' in a sexual manner, involving her in sex games which evolve over time into full sexual intimacy such as that shared by consenting adults. Her protestations are mollified, her cooperation validated and her secrecy rewarded. Variations of this premature sexualisation occur. Not for some fathers the process of seduction, but rather sadistic, brutal intercourse, instilling terror and pain, where every orifice is violated. She has no escape. Drunk or sober, day or night, he has access to her. Her reason for living has been reduced to being a sexual object, a sex slave. Once again, and in both examples of fathers, the belief holds ‘I am the reason this is happening'. The same interpretation will be formed if the attentions are those of a grandfather, uncle, sibling, neighbour or babysitter.
Fast forward again. She is now a teenager, perhaps
at this stage no longer being actively abused. She now lives a
secret life, besieged by guilt, shame, depression and self-loathing.
School life becomes meaningless. Recreational drugs and alcohol
bring anaesthesia. Suicide, the ultimate escape, is always on the
agenda.
Frequently, early sexual abuse can be of such
overwhelming intensity that the immature mind buries it beyond
awareness, in the deepest recesses of the unconscious. However, this
powerful energy cannot be fully sealed off. The mental turmoil
within may see her engaging in complex obsessive-compulsive thoughts
and rituals — hours scrubbing her body in the shower, frequently
washing and changing her clothes, engaging in checking routines and
endless mental scrabble, without knowing why. The imposition of
order and self-discipline quells her anxiety. She may withhold food
through calorie counting and starvation rituals, and engage in
self-mutilation practices for release of tension, the pain and the
sight of blood reminding her that she's alive.
In adult life, abuse may surface as depression. It
is depressing to have intimacy problems, to fear touch, to feel
confused about sexual identity, to repress and feel shame of the
self as a sexual being. It is depressing to be haunted by images and
sensations that she can't explain; such as feelings of stubble
against her face, the pressure of body parts against hers, and the
pervasive smell of alcohol and sweat. Over the years she comes to
loathe and despise herself for these peculiarities, holding her
personality responsible. Why wouldn't she? There doesn't seem to be
any other explanation. ‘It must be me, I must have a sick mind'.
God's rapists
Boys do not escape. Those who were incarcerated in
industrial schools have borne witness to this. Many were exposed to
regimes of unbridled rape and violence which lasted for years, at
the hands of sadistic sexual perverts answerable to no one. Their
threats of unspeakable violence ensured availability and silence.
The majority of survivors — their chance of a normal life diminished
from the beginning, with their lives totally derailed, and their
humanity denied — learned to place no value on themselves. They
drifted from one crisis to another, their past littered with
criminal behaviour, prison records, substance abuse, dysfunctional
relationships, mistrust of authority, and family breakdown.
Powerless to bring stability to their lives, many suffered later
from depression and other serious psychiatric disorders, beginning a
life-long relationship with psychiatric hospitals.
The greatest tragedy of all is that these people
feel robbed, not just of their innocence, but of their inner light,
as if their very soul has been taken away. We have worked not just
with survivors of abuse in the industrial schools but also with
those who fell victim to the predatory behaviour of priests in
certain boarding schools, priests who lured them in, on the basis
that they were intelligent, ‘special' boys with spiritual potential,
needing guidance with their sexuality. The ‘guidance' offered was,
in fact, a gradual seduction process, which commenced with the
exploration of things sexual, stimulating their curiosity, providing
skewed answers and finally grooming them towards the acceptance of
mutual touching, masturbation, and penetrative sex. To this day,
married or single, many are haunted by flashbacks of their abuser's
body odour, the very touch of their fingers, the sound of their
voice, and the image of their presence. The experience was encoded
not just in consciousness but in cellular memory, where it can be
triggered into life and relived in an instant, such as,
paradoxically, during sexual intimacy with their partner, when the
image of the first seductions by their abuser intrudes, causing
avoidance and sexual dysfunction.
Soul healing
The sexually abused are truly the walking wounded,
living out private hells, their lives irreparably shaped by the
experience. Behind the mask of many a so-called ‘biological' or
‘clinical' depression lies a history of sexual trauma which cannot
be dissipated by a pill or a course of electric shock treatment.
This is the domain of psychotherapy, and the painful process of
peeling back the layers of trauma within a psychotherapeutic
relationship, so that they can be truly seen, verbalised and
integrated, is a lengthy one, sometimes without any satisfactory
resolution, so all-pervasive is the damage.
To compound matters, there are numerous and
formidable barriers put in the path of the abused in their quest for
recognition, the result of which is to protect the perpetrators,
minimise the extent of the abuse, and its life-long and far-reaching
effects. This denial and disbelief not only re-traumatises victims
and blocks restorative justice, but also impedes their healing
process. Another more subtle obstruction to this healing is the
failure on the part of doctors in so many cases to link depression
with trauma of this kind, diagnosing it as a ‘new' illness, the
treatment of which bears no witness to its root cause.
Deirdre, a 32-year-old mother of two and also a
teacher, was obsessively washing her hands from the age of eleven.
In addition, she repeatedly machine-washed bed linen, underwear and
night-dresses. If they weren't cleaned to her satisfaction she would
hand-scrub them. This practice of washing and re-washing consumed
most of her spare time. She spent all her breaks during the school
day washing her hands, often dozens of times.
Early on in her marriage there were sexual
problems. She discouraged sexual touching by her husband and
intermittently suffered from vaginismus, feeling such intense pain
on penetration that intercourse was virtually impossible, and could
only be entertained in an alcohol-induced altered state. The arrival
of children put her under more time pressure, with not enough time
to satisfy her compulsion to wash.
Following her promotion to school vice-principal,
her new duties gave her less and less time for her obsession, and
her anxiety levels escalated as she tried to catch up with the
clothes-washing at the weekends. The more she tried to stop her
compulsion, the more panicky and out of control she felt. Beginning
to lose sleep, she became irritable and depressed, sometimes having
to suppress the urge to weep during class. Not knowing what to do,
she sought the help of a psychotherapist. After a number of
consultations the psychotherapist broached the subject of possible
sexual abuse. Even though she had no clear memories of any abuse,
she found the question deeply unsettled her and she began
experiencing disturbing dreams from her childhood where there was a
male, menacing presence.
She tracked down a much older sister, who had left
home and severed all connections with the family. Her sister
reluctantly confirmed that she had been sexually abused by their
father. This was her worst fear, and she began experiencing
flashbacks of her father having sex with her. It emerged that
following the death of her mother when she was five, her father
started sexually abusing her and her sister and continued until he
began another relationship and married when she was eleven. The memories began to flood in: getting out of bed
after her father had left her bedroom, and repeatedly scrubbing her
hands and body in the hottest shower possible. When the abuse
stopped, her cleansing ritual became confined to her hands only. In
later consultations she realised she had been harbouring intense
feelings of guilt and shame, always having felt that her body was
constantly soiled and dirty. When she had actually made the link
between her obsession and the sexual abuse, she was able to see that
the repeated washing represented, in symbolic terms, a cleansing
process.
The need to wash became less and less, and as the
tension inside subsided she felt less trapped by her obsessive
behaviours, which had been ruling her life, and the accompanying
depression slowly dissipated. Determined to leave the legacy of the
abuse behind, she began to repair the havoc wreaked on her
relationship. In psychosexual therapy with her husband, she learned
for the first time to establish a personal boundary, an experience
which had been denied her by the invasiveness of the abuse,
stimulating her erogenous zones prematurely.
Such was her confusion
following the abuse that Deirdre had always experienced difficulties
sorting out the conflicting messages her body sent her, finding it
difficult to manage pleasurable influences coming in from the
outside and to distinguish them from painful ones. Having felt
betrayed by her body, she had instead decided to ignore its signals
altogether. Together they embarked on the long, tortuous road
towards fostering normal sexual intimacy.
David, a forty-eight-year-old accountant and
father of a thirteen-year-old girl, began being abused at boarding
school at the age of twelve, by a visiting priest who conducted the
school retreats. He encouraged boys to come to him to have their
confession heard in the parlour. When David went, Fr Sebastian was
sitting in a chair in front of a fire and David was asked to kneel
on the floor beside him. The ‘confession' took the form of a
discussion about how David felt he was maturing as a young man, and
whether or not he had experienced erections or wet dreams.
Fr
Sebastian used the opportunity to elaborate explicitly the facts of
life, explaining penetration and ejaculation in detail. He reached
over and felt David's penis, which he noted to be erect, and invited
him to open his fly to allow him to feel ‘more comfortable'. Then Fr
Sebastian commented on his ‘manliness' and suggested that he would
instruct him as to its primary purpose, that of ejaculation. David,
who had never ejaculated before, did so when Fr Sebastian started
masturbating him.
Fr Sebastian then lifted up his robes, revealing
his own genitalia, inviting David to masturbate him, in order to
check whether he had learned how to do it effectively. He told him
before he left that he would be regularly visiting the school and
would take a personal interest in his development, because he was a
very mature and spiritual boy.
Each time Fr Sebastian visited the school, David
was called to have his confession heard and his ‘spiritual progress'
monitored. On every occasion detailed conversations about sexual
matters preceded mutual masturbation. On one occasion, to his
surprise, there was one other boy already present in the parlour. Fr
Sebastian showed them photographs of a group of boys of a similar
age engaging in oral sex, and told them that the time had come for
the next stage of their ‘sexual education' to begin. He assuaged any
feelings of awkwardness or embarrassment the boys had, with
reassurances that what they were engaging in was the fostering of an
attitude of openness between them, as ‘dropping inhibitions' was a
healthy development in young boys. He then asked them to perform
oral sex on him also. He bound them to secrecy on the basis that
there were certain private details which were ‘sacred' and were best
kept within the confines of the sacrament of confession. The abuse
continued for two years, and the visits to the parlour stopped when
Fr Sebastian no longer sought him out for ‘spiritual direction'.
On leaving school, David went to college and was
plagued by doubts as to his sexual orientation. He drank heavily and
experimented with bisexuality. In later years, on falling in love
with a female colleague, he got married. Initially their intimate
life was mutually pleasurable and fulfilling, but with time he found
himself having to draw on the sexual imagery of his encounters with
Fr Sebastian in order to become aroused. He gradually began to avoid
intimacy and used the excuse of his wife's pregnancy to justify
this. After years of avoidance, by which stage they were virtually
celibate, his wife became distressed enough to seek out psychosexual
counselling. During one consultation David broke down, revealing the
torment of the last number of years and his sexual history with Fr
Sebastian. He explained that he had been having such vivid and real
flashbacks that he was finding himself swept along in a sensual and
kinaesthetic experience. These could occur at any time, usually when
he was under stress, and he often had to resort to alcohol to lessen
his anxiety. Nonetheless they continued to break through. During the
flashbacks he could literally smell Fr Sebastian's body odour, taste
his sperm, and feel the touch of his hands on his genitalia.
Terrified, he thought he was going mad, and considered suicide on a
number of occasions.
David somehow managed to keep his life afloat and
his marriage and job intact. He feels Fr Sebastian robbed him of his
innocence, his sexuality and his fundamental human right to fulfil
his potential. He continues in psychotherapy and will need such
support for the foreseeable future.
Peggy, at age eight, was taken from the
playground by a local man, brought to a derelict building and
brutally raped in the toilets there. Since he used a broken bottle
she sustained severe vaginal injuries and spent several months in
hospital. With the passing years Peggy became a nervous timid child
who never went out, except occasionally in the company of her
sisters. She had many nervous habits, among them always needing the
front door to be open at night, wanting to sleep downstairs,
spending much of the day standing outside in the front garden of the
house, and sometimes inexplicably rushing outside in the middle of
meals. She would go to the local pub only if she could get a lift or
a taxi, but would never go by foot.
Her husband was her first and only boyfriend (‘I
could trust him'), and she had four children. During sex she said
she would ‘space out' until it was over, and gave it up once they
had completed their family. All the family thought Peggy was odd and
somewhat stupid, with all her strange habits that she refused to
discuss. The relationship with her husband was not tranquil, as he
would lose his patience with her frequently and shout at her with a
raised voice. After these episodes she would be nervous for days,
and experienced frequent bouts of depression for which she had been
prescribed antidepressants over the years.
At the age of 52, following a minor car accident in
which the other driver got out of his car and began shouting loudly
at her, she became hysterical and had a severe panic attack which
resulted in her being brought to the local casualty department.
Following this she was referred to a psychotherapist to whom she
confided her fear that the other driver, who was drunk and abusive,
was actually about to assault her. Although the accident had shaken
her it was fairly minor, and it was obvious even to Peggy that her
terror was an over-reaction. When she subsequently developed
disturbing nightmares, and when her psychotherapist became aware
that she had in fact been having panic attacks for years, Peggy was
instructed in how to control them with abdominal breathing and
relaxation techniques.
It was during one such deep relaxation that Peggy
got her first insight into the source of her problem. Although she
hadn't forgotten the fact that she had been raped, she could not
remember many of the details of the experience, and had not made any
connection between that and her subsequent panic attacks. She
thought that all her odd behaviours were due to the fact that she
was stupid. Her mother had blamed her for going off with the man and
not having ‘more sense'. It was swept under the carpet and never
mentioned by the family. When she turned into such a nervous child,
they reasoned that her mental dullness was the cause, which was
reinforced by the illogical nature of her behaviours.
On one occasion while practising her relaxation
exercise, she could clearly hear (for the first time) her rapist's
voice saying to her: ‘Your father sent me to bring you home'. This
meant that he must not have been a stranger to her. Other memories
which re-emerged included noting that he had worn spats on his
shoes, that as he had taken off his shirt she had seen a tattoo on
his arm, and that he had smelled strongly of sweat. Remembering that
he shouted loudly all the time he was with her, and threatened to
kill her if she ever told, she recalled again the terror she felt as
he blocked the door to the toilets so that he would not be
disturbed. The thought ‘if that door is closed I'm dead' flashed
into her mind. Retrieving the images helped piece together many
loose ends for Peggy.
The driver of the car which had crashed into her,
had unwittingly brought back several of the elements which had been
present during the rape but lost to her memory. Like her original
assailant, the driver was drunk and abusive, and she was once again
feeling shaken, hurt and in danger. Although unable to process an
experience of such traumatic magnitude as a child, the ball was
rolling now for her as an adult, and integration of these parts of
her history was its agenda.
Her terror of being in a room with a closed door
now made sense, as did her need to sleep downstairs — for a quick
get-away. Her certainty that her breathing would stop whenever she
got frightened resonated with being held by the throat. Since the
derelict building in which she'd been raped was on the way to the
local pub, she now knew why she refused to pass it on foot, and why
she was terrified of any aggression whatsoever on the part of her
husband. Most startling for her was the moment she recognised who he
was, by the shoes he wore. She knew a man locally who wore spats. He
was married to a friend of her mother. All the family knew she
feared him, because she would run to her room if he had occasion to
come to their house. When his wife died, fifteen-year-old Peggy had
adamantly refused to go to the funeral, causing a row at home.
Nobody, even Peggy, knew why before now.
Peggy's opinion of herself changed dramatically.
From being obese, she lost a lot of weight, became interested in
clothes for the first time, and began to venture out to the shops
alone. She could stay inside the house now with the doors shut, and
would sleep upstairs in the bedroom sometimes. Knowing where her
fears came from allowed her to see that she was no longer in any
danger as he was now an old man. Most importantly she knew now that
none of her reactions were ‘stupid' but of a survival nature and as
such highly intelligible, warnings to keep away from certain
situations and from him.
Once she was able to see that what had once been a
useful survival response had now turned into a life-restricting
habit, she had more motivation to uncouple the two. She learned to
feel the unpleasant sensations and know that, unlike during the
rape, they wouldn't kill her, and that this time she could do
something about them.
John, a fifty-four-year-old father of two young
children from a second relationship, was detained in St Conleth's,
Daingean, Co Offaly in June 1965, at age 14, where he remained for
two years. Its reputation as a place of unspeakable violence and
sexual abuse has been well established. In John's words: ‘Such was
the unbridled violence that we were treated as sub-humans. We were
regarded as little more than animals. It was a brutal, mindless
system. Everyone was ground down to their level. It was an existence
beyond redemption. They were totally shameless. All the brothers
knew what was going on. They were living their version of a
religious heaven while we were struggling in hell.'
He was sexually abused and beaten on a number of
occasions, one of which he describes vividly and which haunts him to
this day. That night he and another boy were accused of trying to
run away.
‘Suddenly Br Fitzpatrick appeared and took me out
of bed. He brought me down the marble stairs. At the end of the
stairs I could see Br Cummins, a huge man, of over 26 stone. Then I
was hit at the back of the head by Br Fitzpatrick, and Cummins
started to kick and beat me, both rained down blows on top of me.
Then I was told to kneel down on the first step and Fitzpatrick told
me to lean forward and place my hands on the step above. When
Cummins stood on my fingers, I started to scream with pain. Br
Fitzpatrick pulled the night-dress over my head, leaving me
completely naked. I started to plead and beg "we were only talking
about it, we had never planned to escape, we had never planned to
escape".
‘Suddenly I felt this shock going right up to my
head. Br Fitzpatrick had hit my backside with a leather strap. I
thought I was going to pass out, and kept trying to look over my
shoulder to see what was happening next. Fitzpatrick was running
towards me and I can still see that face, that look. It was all
happening in slow motion. When he hit me I thought I was going to
die. Then I saw four brothers standing in the background, and
recognised two of them as Sheehy and Gallagher. They were just
standing there leering. I knew they were getting off on it. I felt I
was worthless, with no bargaining chips left, an object, a thing. I
started to pray to God. After the third belt of the strap I passed
out. I just wanted death to come. By the time the fourth blow came I
was in some kind of a dream. I was numb. I was gone. I was empty.
‘I have no memory of how I got back to bed, I don't
know if I was carried up or walked up. I remember none of the other
boys came to my assistance. Everybody was hiding under the sheets,
no one was talking, everybody was terrified, no one could sleep. Up
until that night I felt I was useful, that I had some role as either
a slave or a sex toy. But during the beating I realised I had no say
in anything. I felt abandoned by God. He did not rescue me because I
was nothing. I realised then that I didn't have a present, a future
or an afterlife. I had nothing after that.'
Whenever John, in all the years in psychotherapy,
refers to this particular beating he starts to sweat, gets to his
feet and paces up and down the room. He describes in detail the
vivid memories of that night, literally starting to relive the
experience, becoming animated and profoundly distressed. After he
has gone through the process step by step he sits down exhausted. He
usually emphasises ‘It was the night everything was taken away from
me, everything. Nothing has given me meaning since that flogging —
no job, no children, nothing. They have just helped to fill in the
time until I die. I have nothing inside me, no purpose'.
The un-integrated experience
Some depressed individuals, such as Deirdre (who
also suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder), who had no
conscious memory, and those suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder, such as Peggy, who had only a fragment of a memory of a
traumatic event happening to them, find the cause of their symptoms
a mystery.
Frequently, early childhood traumas of a physical
or sexual nature remain unhealed. The trauma was never recognised
and never treated. At the time of the abuse these children were not
developmentally equipped to handle the intensity of such
experiences, or to put it into words. Their inability to process the
trauma at the time meant that it became sealed off in their
unconscious mind, and as such obscured from their awareness. It was
nonetheless experienced, stored within their energy field and
cellular memory, and years later is often expressed as a physical,
emotional or mental symptom.
In childhood these symptoms may include acting-out
behaviours, learning disabilities, bed-wetting, truancy, delinquency
and other maladjusted behaviours. In adult life they may find
expression as depression, psychosomatic disorders, sexual
dysfunction, eating disorders, substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive
disorders, psychosis, self-mutilation, suicidal behaviours,
personality disorders, acts of violence and other serious crimes.
A child's mind explains the reason for events in
different ways to an adult's. As to why painful experiences keep on
happening to them they will rationalise ‘It must be me. I have to be
doing something wrong. I'm bad. That's the only reason something
like this could keep happening'. The true reasons cannot be
integrated by a child's psyche, as the implications would be too
contradictory and disturbing to take in. A loving father abusing his
innocent child in such a way could not possibly make sense in a
child's mind, which might shatter under such realisations. In order
to maintain the father as loving, the child has to interpret him or
herself as bad. Wiser to air-spray out such details and keep the
illusion that the adults who run your world are trustworthy.
Over the years, traumatised individuals come to
loathe and despise themselves for their deficits, holding themselves
responsible. Why wouldn't they? There doesn't seem to be anybody
else to blame. An intuitive psychotherapist is invaluable in these
cases, one who gets a sense of the charge or unseen dynamics
underlying the more obvious surface symptom, such as depression or
obsessive-compulsive disorder. The wise physician would hold off
from prescribing medication in order to facilitate such unconscious
material in finding expression. This will never happen if it is
sealed off under the influence of the medication, which works on the
level of energising behaviour and mood rather than insight. A
valuable opportunity is lost.
Those who work with young children who
have been sexually abused know the power of art therapy, psychodrama
and role-play to assist them in expressing the unspeakable. In order
to process unconscious memories they have to first be brought into
awareness. This is what is meant by integration of such experiences.
How could you make sense of disturbing noises coming from under your
floorboards, if no one had ever told you your house had a cellar?
Honouring Themis: justice for all?
Pre-Hellenic Greeks personified the natural way,
order, or balance of all things as the Goddess Dike, also known as
Themis, whose scales, representing balance, are familiar to all as
the symbol of right and justice. The Greeks understood that whenever
the natural order of Themis was violated the powers of righteous
anger, Nemesis, and shame, Aidos, would be invoked, so that wrongs
might be righted and the single strand of wrong-doing rewoven back
into the web of life, making it whole again.
Aidos represented the sense of reverence for life
that holds us back from wrong-doing, and the sense of shame we feel
whenever the bonds of trust are broken and personhood is violated.
Shame carried a sense of respect for the sacred, and served to
remind us that as human beings we can make mistakes, allowing us to
acknowledge them, and finally prompting us to remedy them to the
best of our abilities.
Formal apologies and efforts to compensate for
damage done were essential for the restitution of balance. If
efforts to redress the injustice were not forthcoming or, worse, if
it was denied outright, Nemesis came into play in the form of
righteous anger and punishment. Once again balance was restored and
the victim was satisfied that justice had been done, presided over
by Themis.
The way the legal system is being manipulated at
present, particularly in the case of sexual abuse, the scales of
Themis are rarely balanced. Shame now rarely lands, as it is
designed to, on the shoulders of those who commit the
transgressions. Rejected by the perpetrators, it passes instead on
to those treated shamelessly, the victims who already harbour
Nemesis, satisfying Themis' need for balance. Psychotherapists
working with victims towards healing the wounds of sexual abuse will
attest to the profound depth of their sense of self-loathing, shame
and disgust. Although intellectually understanding that as a child,
with no control or choice in the situation, fault should not be
placed at their door, they do it nonetheless. It's as if by having
been a participant in the act at all, they must pass judgement on
themselves, for what individual with any decency would not? Deirdre
cannot make herself clean enough. Even Peggy holds it against
herself for it occurring at all. ‘What made me go with him?' she
would repeat over and over, unable to understand how she wasn't in
some way at fault.
The experience of profound shame is excruciating,
so unbearable that we usually develop ways to compensate and defend
ourselves. We disown parts of ourselves — our needs, emotions, or
perceptions that were painfully exposed in shaming incidents — and
cultivate false selves to protect ourselves and please others. In so
doing, we lose the ability to validate our own experience and to
relate compassionately to ourselves, and we come to rely on external
standards of performance to guide our actions in order to gauge
whether we are a good person or not.
The present judicial system, believing itself to be
an agent of justice, is not fulfilling many of the requirements of
Themis for balance. If hearings such as occur in the Residential
Institutions Redress Board are not held in public, but in secrecy,
this negates another basic need of the victim, that of their own
vindication, which is only possible by the wrongdoers' demonstrable
acceptance of responsibility in the eyes of the whole community.
Victims like John are horrified at the thought that their stories
will be left untold, their sufferings forgotten and trivialised.
With their abusers shielded, the political system having washed
their hands of them, and the legal system going for the most
expedient route, their distress is never given
validity.
Collusion: secrets and lies
'What I say is ‘just' or ‘right', means nothing but what is in the
interest of
the strongest
party.
— Plato
In a society such as ours, we stridently refuse to
face the hideous imperfections and failings of our judicial system
with respect to the sexually abused. They feel abandoned by the
political process and unprotected by the legal system. They will
never feel exonerated and they will bring their sense of injustice,
pain and suffering to the grave, punished so that the rest of us
feel exonerated and the communal mores can be maintained, justified
and reinforced. Shamelessness, arrogance, deceit and moralising
thrives at the highest level and the ultimate authority is power,
money, reputation, and respectability.
In spite of the uncovering of the miasma of sexual
abuse in Irish society, with its unwholesome and foreboding stench
polluting and affecting us all, attempts are still being made to
cover it up again, and deny the extent of its existence and the
depth of the trauma caused. Every possible legal mechanism is
brought into play to prevent the constitutional right of every
individual to have their case heard in the courts, in front of their
community, where society can bear witness to it. This primitive
instinctual need is a universal archetype recognised in all
societies.
Religious orders, with their huge financial
resources, will stop at nothing to protect their members who have
abused. Their strategies are endless — delaying tactics, legal
loopholes, mountains of paperwork, judicial reviews, appeals to the
Supreme Court, anything to put off the day they take responsibility
for their shameful acts. Many victims are left dumbfounded and
re-traumatised when their case is overturned by the highest court in
the land. The religious legal machine, with its highly paid
solicitors and barristers, is well versed in manoeuvring through
plans A, B and C, to protect its members from ever appearing in
court. They happily sit down with the victim's legal team, as they
did with David's, and through back-door settlements negotiate a
satisfactory outcome, one which is to their own advantage, and which
ultimately buys silence. For the victim the atmosphere of such
negotiations is one of fear, intimidation, bullying, time-urgency
and a tissue of half-truths. The victim's own legal team will tell
them, as his did, ‘You don't have a case, there's no guarantee
you'll win, your name will appear in the papers, the costs are going
to be prohibitive, the judges are not sympathetic, this could take
years to get heard, if you win they'll appeal to the Supreme Court'
— anything to discourage them from proceeding.
Many victims of abuse feel that their ‘own side'
has betrayed and abused them. Justice is no longer a principle
within such interactions, only a means of professionals earning
their living, their clients pawns in their daily game-playing of
one-up-manship and out-manoeuvering. The only game in town where
win, lose or draw, all the players — except the victim — go home
with their pockets filled. Tragically they are supported in this
effort by ‘expert' psychiatrists who will ruthlessly minimise the
trauma suffered by the abused individual, some even going so far as
to state that the abuse ‘never happened at all' by calling it a
false memory, a fiction, presumably contrived by unscrupulous
individuals to extort money.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions
is virtually a black hole where sexual abuse cases seem to
disappear, some taking years to be processed. This ineptitude in
acting swiftly causes unnecessary suffering for victims, and
strengthens the hands of those protecting abusers. These time delays
are themselves being used to justify cases being overturned due to
the ‘age' or ‘infirmity' of the abuser.
One of the greatest abuses perpetrated against the
victims of sexual abuse in religious-run residential institutions
was the setting up of the Residential Institutions Redress Board in
2002, the result of an agreement between the Church and the state.
Not being a court, it is held in secret, away from the eyes of the
community, and no perpetrator of a crime is ever sentenced to a
punishment. Justice for the victim is not the purpose, only
financial compensation, which is capped to a maximum of €300,000. To
date the average award paid out to 2,555 victims has been €78,000.
The award is dependent on them signing a secrecy agreement. If the
victims disclose the amount awarded, they can be fined up to €3,000
and can face a summery jail sentence of six months. After a second
disclosure, they face a fine not exceeding €25,000 and a two year
jail sentence.
One victim used this analogy: "An adult — man or
woman — abuses a child. It is their ‘secret'. To make sure the
‘secret' is kept, the adult will give the child money or sweets.
They buy silence. By making secrecy a condition upon payment, the
board is doing exactly what an abuser does to a child."
The Redress Board is a virtual goldmine for
solicitors who have, to date, been paid €9 million in legal costs
for representing victims. Since there are thousands more waiting to
have their cases heard, their fees may finally be greater than the
original estimate of total compensation costs agreed by the
government when it signed its €127 million indemnity deal on 5
July 2002 with the 18 religious orders involved in the
scandal. The state was hoodwinked, as the total projected costs are
now estimated at €800 million.
The original abuse perpetrated against the victims
goes on and on, in a continued atmosphere of fear, secrecy, lack of
control, bullying and betrayal. These victims who were incarcerated
in Dickensian environments through the children's courts, for the
most trivial of reasons such as truancy and petty theft, were the
most underprivileged and vulnerable of our society. The Lyons
brothers, James and Gerard, were sentenced in 1963, aged 12 and 14,
for trespassing in a deserted building while catching wild pigeons
to keep in their loft at home. They were each detained until the age
of 16 in two industrial schools, Upton and Letterfrack. They were
used and abused, and like so many of their peers remain to this day
in emotional turmoil.
Others committed no crime at all, except to find
themselves orphans or the offspring of parents designated ‘unfit' on
the word of the local parish priest. Paddy Doyle, the author of The God Squad, was sentenced in a District Court to be
detained in an industrial school for eleven years. He was four years
old. His crime: his mother died from cancer in 1955, and his father
committed suicide shortly afterwards. He was sexually abused,
viciously assaulted, all of which culminated in questionable brain
surgery, contributing to serious permanent disability. His book
gives an inner voice account of his horrifying experience, and will
stand as testament to the lack of protection, interest and
compassion, shown not just by his carers, but by Irish society as a
whole.
The sexually and physically abused are still being
treated as having no value, and the blind eye approach to their pain
and suffering continues. This hideous legal circus, the Redress
Board, that they have been channelled towards, is a crime against
humanity. Inevitably one can only hope that its unconstitutional
nature will be revealed, leading to its abolition, to be replaced by
an open forum where the victim is not only properly compensated
monetarily, but where they can have their perpetrators named and the
scales of justice balanced.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
— Martin Luther King
