stories

SURVIVOR'S STORIES
SUZANNE'S STORY

I present my testimony here, of my experiences of sexual abuse, attempts at seduction at the hands of clergy and religious in the Catholic Church, and the failure of others in a position of authority whom I told about this to face the problem or to deal with the matter appropriately.

I am a woman of 52 years old. I have been in a stable marriage for 30 years. I grew up in London, England, in a Catholic home. I was subject to constant physical battering and severe emotional abuse by my mother I went to convent schools and I was taught to hold priests and nuns in the highest respect and to trust them completely as ordained or vocationally committed representatives of God, in positions of spiritual leadership and authority.

When I was 14, things had become increasingly intolerable at home, and I confided in my headmistress, a nun, at my school. As she was not only a nun but a headmistress and in a position of authority I believed she could help me and I gave her my full trust. She started to comfort me by giving me long intimate hugs, which developed into fondling and kissing. I was very disturbed and confused by this. At this pre-pubescent stage of my life I had not even heard of such things as lesbianism or homosexuality.

I allowed her behaviour to continue for several reasons: I was so desperate for affection and love that I used to hang my coat on a hook on my bedroom door and make the arms of the coat go round me, so I could at least imagine how it felt to be hugged; this nun used to call me down from class into her office and give me little jobs to do, which not only gave me a degree of prestige among my peers but a much needed sense of being special;she had also managed to achieve some small degree of improvement at home by talking to my parents about the issue of pocket money, which was a tiny fraction of what my peers were getting on average, and as a result my parents increased my pocket money a little.

Young as I was, although I sensed something was very wrong, my trust was so great I did not think that she was abusing and violating me. I put up with it as the price one had to pay for what I got by way of attention and what I saw as affection. But it was taking its toll, and I started to become defiant and unmanageable at school. When I stole a purse, and owned up the very next day, the headmistress expelled me immediately. I appealed to the Reverend Mother and tried to explain what had happened with this nun, but she ignored my plea and told me I had to grow up and learn to take the consequences of my actions. The sense of deep betrayal and the grief I experienced is indescribable, and has haunted me for the rest of my life.

My teenage years were very troubled, and I suffered from depression. My attention -seeking misbehaviour continued at my new convent school, and one time, when I was 15, I took an overdose of aspirins, though I did not actually wish to kill myself, just to somehow draw attention to my need for help.

My depression continued when I left school and went to college. I became promiscuous seeking love in this way. At the age of 20 I met the man who is now my husband, and whom I married at the age of 22. We had children and 4 years after getting married we left England and immigrated to South Africa. I started studying again, and gained a degree.

I started teaching at a seminary, which trains men for the priesthood. During my first year there, a visiting priest came to give a specialized weeklong session. He was a well-known figure in the Church and in the academic world. I initially found him warm and caring, and felt I could confide in him. I first went to him for Confession, and during that time events and the pain of the past started to come up in a way that had never happened before. I asked him to help me and we arranged for a counselling session. At this first counselling session, (which took place in the guest room in which he was staying, which was a bedroom-cum- sitting- room) , I started to cry. He got up and locked the door, took me in his arms and held me. I was nervous about this, and told him so, but he told me not to worry. He had locked the door because people are so judgemental and wouldn't understand, he said. The priest said this was what God would do, that God would want to give me this kind of comfort. Later during this counselling session, which went on far many hours, he told me I was a very attractive woman, and I needed to know that, and would it help if he bedded me, to prove this? I refused.

This counselling went on for hours at a time for the rest of his week there, and several other peculiar, unnerving and even traumatic incidents took place.

A few days later I went to a priest on the seminary staff who held an office of authority and I described to him what had happened. This priest told me that I was making too much of things, that the priest I was talking about had been at most very 'indiscreet' and that anyway, women are always imagining that priests are attracted to them or after them, and ' reading' things that weren't there. He referred me to the psychologist who attended to some of the seminarians. I went to this psychologist with my husband, told him the story, but he told us that I did not need psychotherapy as I was obviously a strong woman psychologically, that we had a strong marriage and that between us, my husband and I would be able to sort it out.

I wrote to the priest who had tried to seduce me. He sent back a letter threatening to tell the bishop of my diocese as well as his own bishop to order me to stop harassing him and telling lies about him. He insisted that he had only tried to help me and reminded me that I was the one who had approached him for counselling, not the other way round.

The next day he apologized and asked me to forgive him. He told me how he wished he could help me further. By now I had started to go to pieces. I went to a nun, a fairly elderly and respected nun who was also on the seminary staff, and I appealed to her for help. She told me that men are easily aroused sexually, and less able to control their sexual behaviour, and that the onus was on the woman to control such things. She even suggested I must have done something to tempt him. She sternly reminded me that I was a married woman (thus suggesting I was behaving adulterously) and warned me to leave this priest alone.

The priest who had tried to seduce continued to keep contact, making references to 'helping ' me, and using talk about God, which added to my confusion. Eventually he started to make obscene and explicit sexual comments and suggestions, and it was at this point that I had a very serious mental breakdown.

I was in a terrible state, spiritually as well as emotionally. I felt that God had played a cruel joke on me, and I truly believed that God himself had betrayed and abused me.I felt there was nothing left for me now that my faith in God had proved to have been unfounded. I prepared to commit suicide, but fortunately a chance encounter with a stranger who sensed my distress and was kind to me, stopped me from going ahead, and my husband arranged for me to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic where I stayed for one month. After that I suffered extreme depression for several years, but I was referred to an excellent clinical psychologist who over the last 10 years has helped me to understand what happened, and to create order out of the chaos of my emotional life.

I would like to end off by saying that the refusal or neglect of the clergy and religious to deal with the abusing nun or with the priest whom I had reported, caused as much emotional torment as the acts of abuse and attempted seduction. The fact that I had been brought up to regard the clergy and religious as representatives of God caused me spiritual agony as well as an overwhelming sense of guilt, condemnation and worthlessness. I have no doubt that my violation was not only physical and emotional but spiritual as well, perpetrated not only by those guilty of the initial misconduct and by those who refused to acknowledge or face the truth of what had happened or to take action against the guilty for their crime and misconduct.