I, Mary Isabel Steele, desiring to make some small return for the infinite Love given to me, offer myself and my life to my Lord, Jesus Christ. I promise to live the rest of my life in the Christian Community according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in poverty, consecrated celibacy, obedience, nonviolence, and stability. I trust that God, Who has given me the grace and desire to make this offering, will also give me the grace to fulfill it one day at a time.

 I promise this before Vincent De Leers, my Spiritual Director, and Joel P. Garner, my Pastor, March 21, 1992, the forty-eighth anniversary of my Baptismal vows.
 

Mary Isabel Steele
 

Vincent De Leers, O. Praem.
 

Joel P. Garner, O. Praem.
 
 

Healing takes a long, long, long time.  When survivors of sexual abuse first get through their denial and start to remember and to feel the pain of their abuse, they want the whole thing to be finished in weeks or months. That isn't how it happens!  Healing takes years.  However, healing does happen.  I would like to share my story because it has a happy ending, because it may give other survivors hope, and because it reveals God's Mercy.

 My name is Mary and I am an incest survivor. My perpetrator was not a parent or other trusted family member but a member of the clergy.  Eight and a half years ago I was propositioned by a Priest to whom I'd gone for counseling.  I'd only seen him four times, but already I had transferred to him all my feelings for my father and my mother.  Right in the middle of sharing with him details of growing up in my alcoholic family, he said to me, "I'd really like to go to bed with you, but I think it would destroy us both."  Just these words, from someone in such a powerful position, whom I trusted so much, nearly destroyed me.  I was shocked.  I knew his words were inappropriate.  He was a Priest!  He had shared with me that he was an alcoholic.  He had instructed me not to tell the Priests he lived with that he hugged me, although there was nothing inappropriate about our hugs.  I felt I had to keep his words a secret, that I had to protect his anonymity!

 Shortly after this incident, I did feel free to talk about what had happened to a counselor I'd just begun seeing. She did not understand incest. "You two are in love!" was her comment. She didn't know how to listen either.  I found a new counselor.

 Father signed himself into treatment for his alcoholism.  During the weeks he was gone, I started attending Twelve Step meetings for Adult Children of Alcoholics.  I sent him get well cards and prayed for him.  He sent me word that he was grateful for my prayers.  When he came home, he walked right past me without even looking at me.  I left town to attend summer school.  But I couldn't sleep.  I couldn't study.  A counselor at the school said I sounded to him like the women he'd been seeing who had been remembering incest for a couple of years.  I dropped out of school.  As soon as I got home, I knocked on Father's door and asked him why he hadn't spoken to me.  "I'm not supposed to counsel you any more, and I was afraid I'd hurt you if I told you," was his reply!

 Six weeks later I asked him to help me celebrate a special occasion with a Mass.  He said he was too busy, that he was getting ready to leave on vacation.  Undaunted, a couple of days later I left him a note saying I'd be at the 5:30 p.m. Mass at which he was presiding if he would leave me an invitation with his secretary by 5:00 p.m.  He left no note.  I was crushed.  I avoided him for several weeks after that.  Just before Christmas I spoke with him again;  we unsnarled our communication.  I asked him if I might give him a Christmas present.  He said I could.  I told him I would like a spiritual gift from him.  He said he would offer his Midnight Mass for me.  I was ecstatic for weeks.

 Father is especially gifted as a Confessor.  Sometime during the months that followed,  when I went to him to celebrate Reconciliation, besides confessing my sins, I told him  I needed to hear him say he was sorry for his words to me during the previous spring.  He did and the incest seemed behind us, but our communication continued to vacillate between terrible and wonderful. Often he would pass without smiling or saying, "Hello!".  When he did, I immediately felt afraid. "What had I done to make Father mad at me?" I'd ask myself.   Reading Jampolski's book LOVE IS LETTING GO OF FEAR  was one of the things that was useful at this time. It helped me to figure out we needed to stop acting on our fear of each other.   Another was my slow realization that I was projecting all my "father stuff" onto this Priest, not seeing him for who he really was.  By now I was also attending three or four Twelve Step meetings a week.

 That summer I asked to speak to Father just before he left on vacation. "I'll be very busy when I get back," he informed me. "I have to help the Pastor buy a new car."  I sat in his church daily and wept, puzzling over his words that didn't make sense to me, but for the next five months I didn't attempt any communication with him. Finally, in October, I knocked on his door and said, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I seem to need your help.   What did I do that you are too busy to talk to me any more?" "You didn't do anything," he responded. "I'd been having sexual fantasies about you." I felt immense relief.

 Just after Christmas of 1985, I called Father about our garbled communication.  When I stopped at the church, we talked.  I just want to be friends, I insisted.  "Sometimes I think we could be friends if only we went to bed together," he replied. "You know, you could say, 'I'll be home this afternoon at two o'clock,' and I could come on over."  As much as I wanted to be friends with him, I told him, "No!"  I must not have been incested as a child.  My sexual boundaries are pretty good.  It is my emotional boundaries that are damaged.  I mentioned Father's words to a few people and then repressed them.

 One meeting I remember well must have occurred at this time, though its date is hazy and not easy to look up in the over fifty notebooks I have filled with my  journals but have never indexed.  When I came in, Father, he asked if he might sit next to me and put his arm around me.  I had no objection, but my response was to burst into tears.  I explained that this reminded me of the hours I spent sitting imagining God's arms around me.   Father asked if he might have a hug and a kiss.   I replied that I'd be happy to hug him but that I would not kiss him.  "I do not want there to ever be anything sexual between us," I said.  "I wasn't thinking of a tonsil tickler!" he protested.  "I'm sure you weren't," I responded, "but I'm not comfortable with any kind of kiss."

 Over the years, our hugs were always wonderful.  There was never anything sexual about them.  Even when we'd talk for an hour and seemingly get nowhere, our warm embrace declared louder than any words that we did care deeply for one another.   Always as our arms encircled each other's shoulders, our hearts were united in prayer.

 The summer of 1986 I was in so much pain I took no vacation.  I had learned how to do Centering Prayer, a Christian form of meditation.  Three hours each day all summer I sat in church asking God's healing.  It was September before I realized Father had propositioned me a second time.   I was riding along the bike trail with a friend when we came upon another Priest I knew from Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings.  I stopped and asked if I should change parishes.  "You are asking the wrong question," he replied. "That man propositioned you." It was as if someone had flipped open the blinds. I had words for what had happened.  I got in touch with my anger.

 I had been seeing my new counselor weekly.  Now I made an appointment with one who had the reputation for being the incest expert in town.  I asked her for a road map.  I was in a lot of pain.  I wanted to know where I was on the journey.  I wasn't happy to learn how much farther I had to go!  I told her I wanted to confront this Priest about his second proposition.  She advised against it.  "He'll just deny it happened or blame you.  If you shame him, he'll go out and hurt some other woman."  I didn't want any of those things to happen so I tried to just "let go".

 I couldn't just "forget' what had happened.  I made Father an audio tape and handed it to him, confronting him indirectly.  On it I asked for a meeting and an apology.  I might as well have been asking for the moon!  He was capable of neither at that time.  Admitting my powerlessness in this situation didn't come easy.

 I turned my anger inward upon myself.  I struggled with suicidal thoughts.  I couldn't sleep.  I was finding trying to teach my high school students very difficult.  One morning I called my counselor at 7:00 a.m.  "I've been awake since 6:00 a.m., but I can't get out of bed," I reported.  "I'm immobilized."  She replied, "Mary, a three year old cannot seduce an adult." The world tipped back on its axis!  I knew I had been emotionally only three years old when I had gone to this Priest for counseling.  It wasn't my fault that he had propositioned me!!  I got out of bed and went to work!

 Sure that I wanted the sexual abuse to stop, I went to his superior.  "Father propositioned me.  I forgive him and myself," I said. "Healing takes a long time," was his only response.  I went to my Pastor.  His reply was, "Well, that is all behind you now," as he tossed his head and glanced over his shoulder.  They didn't tell me it was my fault or transfer Father to another state, but I didn't feel heard. In December I told my story to the Archbishop.  He listened.  He believed me.  He was concerned for me and for the Priest. He promised to talk to him.  He promised to pray for us both.

 I had said "I forgive him," but I was still far from forgiveness.  I sat in silence praying Centering Prayer three hours a day each day of my Christmas vacation.  I found Terry Kellogg's article "The Healing Power of Forgiveness."  I made copies of it and carried it with me everywhere in my journal.  I read it and reread it.  In it, he lists steps of the forgiveness process.  As soon as I thought I'd made some progress, I'd go back to the article to see what to do next.  I learned that although I had not caused the proposition by anything I had said or done, I was guilty of putting this Priest on a pedestal.  I had given away my power to him.  In order to ensure that he could never incest me again, I had to change.  I had to take back my power, to stop seeing him as a father, an authority figure.  Afraid of me, he had been unwilling to make an appointment with me.  I went to him as he sat in the confessional.  I let him hear me tell God that I was sorry I had given him so much power.  In the Sacrament of Reconciliation I asked for the grace to change so he could not hurt me again.  I asked for the grace to forgive myself and him.

 After Christmas, I asked again to see Father.  I requested that we meet in the chapel.  I took him the gift of an icon of Saint Francis and Saint Clare.   I assured him again that what I wanted was a spiritual friendship with him.  He was able to say, "I'm sorry for all the ways I have hurt you."  He had hurt me in a lot of ways, but it wasn't as explicit an apology as I wanted to hear.  It was the best he could manage at the time.  Still afraid of me, he asked, "How long is this going to go on?"  I asked him to pray an Our Father with me and I departed.  That spring he left town for another alcoholism treatment program.

 This time Father was gone for six months.  I didn't know his address.  I didn't try to write.  I did try to get on with my life.  The Pastor's behavior towards me was very cold.  One Saturday morning I asked to speak with him.  "Do you think I'm evil?" I asked when we'd sat down in his office.  He immediately stood up and announced, "I have better things to do!" and walked out.  I felt very angry.  I turned my anger inward.   I had suicidal thoughts.   I decided that that parish was not a very healthy place for me.  I joined a parish on the far side of town.

 When Father returned home, I got word to him that I'd left his parish but not because of him.  I added that the months he'd been gone before I'd left had been helpful to me because I hadn't had to wonder every time I approached the church door whether I'd run into him.  I told him I hoped my absence would help his healing.   I asked his prayers and assured him of mine.

 Meanwhile, I was very busy with school.  Dealing with the incest the year before had not helped my teaching at all.  A vice principal had placed me under formal evaluation.  She was observing my teaching every week and teaching me to write five-step lesson plans.  Accepting the humiliation of this situation and struggling with my fears of authority figures took all my energy.

 The parish to which I'd transferred did not prove comfortable.  I moved again.  But this wasn't "home" either.   For the Easter Vigil of 1988 I went back to Father's parish.  I'd been praying a lot to be able to forgive the Pastor.  That night before the Vigil service, the Pastor would not even speak to me, but at the Kiss of Peace, the Pastor and I were able to share the peace of the Risen Jesus from our hearts!

 By the summer of 1988 Father had had a year of sobriety, and I had been removed from formal evaluation.  It was time for us to resume our work of healing.  I was again doing Centering Prayer three hours a day.  Most of the boats going down the river of my consciousness had Father's name on them.  In the past, letters I had written and shared had brought healing.  I again turned to writing as a way of clarifying my thoughts and seeking closure.  Over the summer I wrote three short fiction pieces about the incest.  The first, "Mimi Grows Up," is about the good father teaching the little girl to sit on the lap of Jesus in prayer.  It is truly a piece of fiction.  I never asked to sit in Father's lap, and he never spoke to me about prayer.   Yet, when I shared it with Father, he seemed honored.

 The second, "The Meeting," came to me sentence by sentence one morning as I was meditating.  When I got up, I spoke it into a tape recorder then sat down at my computer and typed it out word for word.   I still couldn't say "A Priest propositioned me."  I changed the perpetrator to a psychiatrist, but named  the ways Father had hurt me.  I set the story ten years in the future and gave it the ending I wanted to story to have with the perpetrator able to express his sorrow and his gratitude.  He and the survivor break bread together as he admires her art work.  (Father had never let me show him my photographs; later he explained he'd feared my offer was akin to the invitation "Come upstairs and let me show you my etchings!')  When I tried to explore the symbolism in this story with Father after I'd sent him a copy, his only response was, "I don't care to discuss it."

 Several weeks went by.  Finally a third story wrote itself. In this one I was able to use the word "Priest," and I quoted his explicit proposition.  I changed his name and the sequence of events, but otherwise, "Thanksgiving" was very close to reality.   I printed out a copy and placed it in a large green envelope.  I took it to Father as he was hearing confessions.  "I hope you appreciate this gift.  I give it with great love," I said, handing it to him.  On August 1st he did offer a Mass of thanksgiving, as the story said, for all who had supported us with their prayers and had been instrumental in our healing.  I printed out fifty copies of what was now THE TRILOGY and mailed them to most of the people on my Christmas card list.  The bad secret was public knowledge.

 A little over a year after this, I was finally healed enough to sit down face-to-face with Father and say, "I need to hear you say the words 'I'm sorry I propositioned you.'"  He was healed enough to be able to say them!  It was two and a half years after he'd gotten sober again.  It was two years after I'd begun praying Centering Prayer for two hours every day.  At last I felt some peace!

 The next month I went to Father and thanked  him for propositioning me!  I realized how much good had come to me out of our communication difficulties.  I had learned how to give pain to God.  I had learned more about forgiveness than I had ever thought I wanted to know!  I'd faced the pain of my childhood in an alcoholic family and experienced another layer of healing in relation to my parents and to authority figures.  I had learned a lot about prayer.   I had learned a little about humility  I had discovered a writing talent which had been blocked the first forty years of my life.  I have since realized that I have been called to a new ministry.

 Before my experiences with Father, I had had people talk to me about their sexual abuse, but I had been able to listen only with my head.  In the past few years several men and almost all the women I know have shared memories of childhood or clergy sexual abuse.  Now I am able to listen with my heart.  I have also become active in the Survivor Network as a writer, photographer, and ad salesperson.  I am able to pray for perpetrators as well as for survivors.  On at least one occasion I have been allowed to be a bridge between the two.

 Another gift with the pain has been an increase in trust.  It is clear to me that God has been present in all of this.  I had just returned to the church a couple of months before I met Father.   My faith is my most precious possession.  Though leaving the Church has crossed my mind at very painful moments, it has not been an option for me.  I had avoided alcoholics after all the painful experiences with my mother.   Only through this Priest did I look again at my childhood.  God didn't pick just anyone to help heal him.  If I had been incested as a child, we likely would have ended up in bed together.  If he'd ever yelled at me, I'd have abandoned the struggle.  His patience and courage were a match for my patience and persistence!  I have also been gentle.   Father had not heard an angry word out of me until this past January!  And I, also, get credit for courage.  Many, many of the times I asked to talk with him my hands were dripping  sweat!  We were carefully matched to do this work together.

 Father has been sober for five years now.  Without his sobriety, none of the other healing could have happened.  For years I have been so grateful that every month on the day of his AA birthday I have offered my whole day to God as a prayer of thanksgiving and as a prayer for his continued sobriety.   On Easter of 1990 I had made a private promise to God that I would not again eat chocolate, something I enjoy, and whenever I have had the opportunity to pass some up, I have offered that as a prayer of thanksgiving for all the healing God has done in both of us and as a prayer for our continued healing.

 Many survivors these days are asking their perpetrators to pay for their counseling.  I had told Father that I did not want money from him, but I did want his prayers.  Over the years I felt free to ask his prayers for my intentions.  He met with me whenever I requested, listening to me as I worked to unravel the painful snarl of our communication from the time when he was drinking.   For years I had hoped we could somehow be friends, but I have come to understand that the power in our relationship was too unequal.  Because we met in a pastoral counseling situation, a friendship between equals could never be possible for us.  We did develop a deep spiritual love for one another that will last for all eternity.

 Father has been assigned to another parish miles away, but we have kept in touch.  Just a year ago, he shared, "I think of you and pray for you several times a day."  I'd been doing that for years.  I was happy to learn that there was this mutuality to our relationship and delighted to realize that although I still often feel abandonment from my childhood, we are daily united in prayer. He was able to ask for my prayers saying that he really counted on them to sustain him in his ministry.

 This spring we had a chance to visit.  Father shared that in therapy he had remembered a comment made to him years before he met me by a counselor who did not understand celibacy.  "I think that was a factor in my propositioning you.  If you had accepted, I would have gone running down the hall."  "I'm sure you would have," I agreed.   "How grateful I am to have been an instrument of your healing."  A month ago I was finally able to bring myself to ask him if he'd ever been guilty of any sexual misconduct with anyone else.  He assured me that he hadn't, and I believe him.

 God truly used us to do deep healing in each other over the years.  I wish that God had already healed Father's writing block enough that he could share his version of this story as a companion piece.  When Father does write from his perspective, God's Mercy to us both will be even more deeply revealed.  It is with a prayer that all who read this might see God's grace at work in each event of our lives, even the most painful, that I tell this story with the happy ending.