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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
An important factor in the underreporting by women, and their greater emphasis on shame, says Schoener and others, comes from the idea that women in the Catholic Church toil in the shadow of Eve. Just as Eve is portrayed by the church as being responsible for original sin and leading Adam astray, so too are tantalizing teenage girls characterized as responsible for some priests' downfall.
"The church is so dominated by men that there's a tendency to portray girls as provoking the crimes against themselves. The depositions read like rape cases used to: Did you enjoy it? What were you wearing?" reports Susan Gallagher, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Gallagher won a $250,000 settlement after being sexually abused at the age of 14 by the Rev. Frank Nugent, a priest who ran a youth camp in Ellenville, N.Y., for the Salesian Catholic order. Nugent also worked at the Don Bosco Preparatory High School in Ramsey, N.J. He was later transferred to Massachusetts. "There's also a homophobic view that sex with girls is somehow more natural, that some of these priests were just being red-blooded American men."
This attitude was epitomized by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago when he spoke out last spring against a zero-tolerance policy for sexually abusive priests. Indicating that sex between priests and teenage girls is somehow more forgivable, he said: "There is a difference between a moral monster like [Boston priest] John Geoghan and a priest who, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, is involved with a 17-year-old girl who returns his affections. Both are crimes, but in terms of the possibility of reform, they are very different sets of circumstances."
Adult women who have been abused face the toughest fight of any, Schoener believes. Their abuse by priests -- often during spiritual or marital counseling sessions -- wins little public attention compared to abuse of children. In addition, they are often held responsible for the relationship.
The pattern of lawsuit filings also shows that suits tend to be filed primarily on behalf of men, according to several attorneys. Jeffrey Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., lawyer who is considered the nation's predominant litigator in Catholic clergy sex-abuse cases, says that of the 700 cases he has filed, about two-thirds of the victims are male and one-third are female. That's the opposite ratio of sex-abuse cases in the general population, where two-thirds of the victims are female and one-third male.
"Women have been discouraged culturally, and especially by the Catholic Church, from reporting abuse," says Anderson. "Often, when they go to a church leader to talk about an assault, they are rebuked rather than helped." Anderson's own daughter was assaulted at age 8 by a former priest -- during therapy. "I had no idea until I had been doing this work for 10 years," he said. "She suffered for years in silence and shame." His daughter's perpetrator was successfully prosecuted, he said, but "she still wears the scars very painfully."
Many of those who are convinced that abuse of women by priests is vastly underreported still suspect that, overall, more males than females have been abused by priests, primarily because priests have more access to boys after Mass and in sports programs. "It's easier for priests to spend time -- and time alone -- with boys," says Gallagher.
In fact, many abusive priests are alleged to have attacked children of both sexes, which is evidence that opportunity is a key factor when it comes to which children are victimized. "Of thousands of cases across the country that I'm familiar with, a significant number of priests abuse both boys and girls," says Sipe. "It's a question of who they can get their hands on."
Gallagher said her older brother, Patrick, was repeatedly abused by her abuser. Patrick, who Susan said had become suicidal because of the abuse, died at 25 in an accident driving a car owned by Nugent's order, the Salesians.
