First published October 2009
When I see media headlines about child abuse, my response is like that of a family I know, where one of the siblings is a publicly notorious criminal. When his crimes or even similar ones receive publicity, they feel humiliated. They accept the humiliation, as the price you pay even for indirect association with villainy, but they do not welcome it.
That is how I, as a priest and so part of a group that has been identified with the abuse of children, react when there are more headlines about abuse: in weary resignation. If you do the crime, you — and those associated with you — do the time. I simply hope that the news item that reminds me of my humiliation might help someone, somewhere, who has been abused.
So it was in the last few days that I read of the reaction to Roman Polanski's detention and possible extradition to the United States to face an old charge of sexual abuse of a minor.
As the Polanski case was unfolding this week, Vatican United Nations Observer Archbishop Silvano Tomasi was reported to have claimed that few Catholic priests had abused children, that these were mainly gay, that there was as much abuse in other religious groups as there was among Catholics, that the vast majority of children were abused by relatives, and that there was as much abuse of children in other churches as by Catholic clergy.
Furthermore, he said, the Catholic Church had put its house in order. The implication was that the focus on child abuse in the Catholic Church was disproportionate and discriminatory.
Assuming the Vatican official was rightly reported (something not to be taken for granted), I believe he missed all the things that matter. The consistent spirit of anything we write about sexual abuse must surely be one of compassion for the human beings who are affected by it. Those who are abused, primarily, but then those who are wounded through their relationships with the victims of abuse: their family, friends, wives, husbands, children and — if our compassion stretches so far — the abusers, so often themselves once victims of abuse.
They are the people who matter, and what matters is that they are recognised and that others do not suffer as they did. This must be the focus of those who speak on behalf of groups among whom abuse