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From
the SURVIVOR Community
Women Religious
Abusers: A Victim’s Story
Mary C. Dunford
I was sexually abused for two years every night after
lights out by a nun in a
Catholic boarding school. She came into my room, sat
on my bed, and removed her clothing from the waist
up. She proclaimed she loved me. She kissed me on my
mouth and pulled my face down to her bare breasts urging
me to kiss and suck her nipples. I was from a broken
home. I needed attention. My father and mother were
divorced and my father never visited me. Mother had
to work long hours every day. This nun's criminal sexual
abuse has impacted every day of my life and five generations
of my family.
Leaders of the LCWR, the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious (which represents 450 orders of women
religious and 76,000 nuns) have been asked to allow
victims of sexual abuse by nuns to speak for one-half
hour at their national and/or regional conferences.
They refused. They were asked to provide the names
and addresses of membership orders. They were asked
to provide a link on their web site to SNAP so victims
could talk with other victims and be comforted by the
knowledge they are not alone. The LCWR refused.
Letters were sent to Cardinal George and victims of
nun abuse visited with Archbishop Flynn when he was
still the Chair of the Committee for the Protection
of Children and Youth. Contact was made with Jane Chiles
of the National Lay Review Board to see if she could
do anything about this forgotten stepchild, the victims
of sexual abuse by nuns. Requests for help were sent
to the National Coalition of Nuns, to Kathleen McChesney
(the ex-FBI head of the national diocesan auditing
team), and to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice
during their study of the causes of abuse and numbers
of victims in preparation for the issuance of their
national report. Various lawyers and judges whose names
are linked with abuse work for victims of priests and
nationally known psychologists who have done work in
the religious abuse field were contacted. All efforts
were met with courteous refusals. Many letters have
been sent to hosts of talk shows, to producers of Catholic television, to writers
of movies, to editors and journalists of various newspapers,
to advocates for those abused by priests, to authors
of books on abuse.....none can or will actively stand
in solidarity with victims of abuse by nuns.
These victims are near the bottom rung on the ladder
of abuse victims. There is a clear hierarchy of victims.
Teen males abused by priests are on the top, but even
they have received only occasional, reluctant, begrudging,
minuscule amounts of justice, and only after the diocese
was backed into a corner. The Dallas Charter has no
built-in consequences for non-compliance by bishops.
How can an organization like national VOTF formed
in response to horrific crimes and unjust responses,
work for justice for victims of priest abuse, and strive
to change the organization of the Catholic Church from
being an "organization" into being the Body
of Christ, and not respond to the cries of victims
of nuns? How can you not hear the cries of every brother
and sister in Christ who has been tormented by those
to whom we look for leadership in our Christian and
Catholic walk? How can you not intuit the harm that
has been done also to the loved ones of these victims?
Talk with victims and their family
members.
The VOTF group here in the Twin Cities has ears to
hear. They have a good understanding of goal one. They
understand whom that goal should include - ALL
victims AND their families. They have undertaken many
innovative programs and
outreach to this larger community of victims and to
their healing. They know
how to stand in solidarity. They embrace us victims
and our pain and our rebirth with a love that is reminiscent
of the One who knows each of us and who
calls us to full Life.
Isn't that the real business of the Catholic Church
and of organizations founded to renew the Church and
its leaders? Isn't the gift of life, the saving of
life, and the way to live the real business that God
gave us to teach and empower and share?
The leader of a SNAP group in Iowa (sexually abused
by a nun when he was eight years old) and I have assembled
a document that contains contacts by phone or email
or newspaper accounts of 300 sexual abuse victims of
nuns. Nearly half are pre-puberty males. Teen victims
are mostly female. Some victims were abused as novices
or nuns by other nuns in authority over them. Many
of these abuses also included physical, emotional,
and spiritual abuse.
More children were available to nuns. There were many
more nuns than priests and nuns enjoyed an especially
trusted status as women and religious. Our society
still cannot or does not want to conceive that nuns
would harm children sexually.
Orphanages and boarding schools were stocked with
potential victims. Orphans usually had no family to
keep track of them. Many children in boarding schools
were from one-parent homes or parents who felt encumbered
by their children, or from parents who believed they
were providing the best possible situation for their
children, spiritually and discipline-wise. Catholic
grade schools, high schools, and colleges were abundant
hunting grounds for immature, sick women. Some hospitals
were staffed by nuns. In all of these facilities emotionally
stunted or outright-sick individuals knew how to recognize
and cultivate candidates for abuse.
There needs to be a clear realization that nuns have
abused and their victims need help and support. A vague
term like "religious," doesn't really let
people know that the reference is to nuns and not to
orders of priests or brothers. There was an expectation
at the Dallas Conference, according to Archbishop Harry
Flynn, that orders of religious women would be included
under the strictures of the Charter. They refused.
They have, they say, their own sexual abuse policies.
Having read through two of them, no provisions were
found for acknowledgment, justice and healing for victims,
just elaborate stipulations to provide for health and
security for the accused.
Nuns are NOT accountable to bishops. They are responsible
to the provincials of their individual orders and to
a remote group in Rome whose power to oversee is not
reliable. Nuns receive accusations, investigate their
own sisters, decide on the credibility of a claim,
and make disposition of the case. Sometimes nuns who
have offended are given counseling. Sometimes the accuser
receives some counseling. Rarely is a financial award
given. Nuns are not dismissed. The public is NOT warned.
If a system isn't working, it needs to be repaired.
Nuns must answer to the laws of the secular society
in which we live. Their crimes must be reported to
law enforcement authorities, be investigated by the
police, and then they should answer in court. Consequences
should be imposed indiscriminately if they are found
guilty. Statutes of limitations laws need to be reformed
and windows cut that allow victims, however long ago
their abuse, to bring charges and receive compensation
and healing. Religious women, as individuals and as
orders concealing crimes of their sisters, have caused
great harm through abuse and deceit. The harm was even
worse because they represented God and religious authority
to victims.
We can't wait until each category of victim and abuser
is dealt with in years of drawn-out efforts and then
go back and take up the next category. We must address
all instances of injustice and harm.
We are all complicit in failures of justice until
we embrace all whom the Catholic Church excludes from
its circumference of care. The Catholic Church in America
is, like that in Rome, an absentee landlord who collects
the rent but refuses to repair the plumbing. They seem
to weigh everything on a monetary scale rather than
a spiritual scale. Mary Dunford
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