UPON HEARING OF MY STRUGGLE FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE, ONE PRIEST WHO HAS SUPPORTED ME OVER THE YEARS RECOMMENDED I READ ANDREW GREELEY'S BOOK CARDINAL SINS, AN EXPOSE OF CARDINAL CODY, AND WRITE MY OWN NOVEL.   I STARTED THIS MURDER MYSTERY, BUT DECIDED TO CHANNEL MY ENERGY MORE POSITIVELY. (Ten years later I realize I did not understand what was happening well enough to write an expose.)

 WRITING THIS WAS BETTER THAN ACTUALLY HANGING MYSELF IN FATHER MIKE'S CHURCH!!

Years ago after I had confronted my perpetrator, he asked, "How much longer will this go on?" He did not understand what survivors want:

1) the abuse to stop
2) acknowledgment that the abuse happened
3) acknowledgment by the perpetrator that the abuse was his/her fault not the fault of the one perpetrated
4) the perpetrator to get treatment so others will not be abused
5) at least payment for counseling so the abused one can heal

My perpetrator and I got to forgiveness and reconciliation.  This was possible because he
1) got sober
2) got honest
3) asked forgiveness for the specific acts of abuse of which he was guilty
4) made restitution
5) stopped abusing me
6) got into therapy assuring me no others would ever be abused
    and lots of people prayed for us a lot.7/92
 
 

 When I negotiated with Father that I wouldn't ask for money for my counseling but only his prayers, I was not aware that I really had an option.  If I am really going to settle for no money, then I WANT THE FOLLOWING:

 Written apologies from the Superior and the Pastor for not handling my disclosure better.

  I want your community to add the petition "for all abused and all abusers" to some part of your daily prayers.  This includes all abused children, victims of torture, battered spouses, etc., not only those abused or abusing in the church, though there seems to be plenty of those from reading the news these days!

 I want your community to urge all members to read Rutter's book SEX IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE...  I want a workshop for your members that stresses the following points:

 1) It is always the responsibility of the one in power to maintain sexual boundaries, EVEN if the one without power is seductive. (I NEVER WAS!)

 2) To have sex with someone who does not know one is a member of a religious community is a violation of one's vow of celibacy, but to EVEN SAY "I'd like to have sex with you" to a woman or man who sees one as having the power of being a Priest or Brother is ALSO spiritual abuse SO SERIOUS IT CAN RESULT IN SUICIDE!!!!! It is called INCEST, because of the betrayal of trust.

 3) Seeing the same person/parishioner more than four times for pastoral counseling requires that the pastoral counselor be supervised, i.e. be seeing a professional counselor with whom one can process whatever personal issues are triggered by listening.  Budget this under continuing education.

 4) If, after making a commitment to be a pastoral counselor or spiritual director to someone, one has so many sexual fantasies about them one fears violating their boundaries and it is necessary to terminate the relationship, IT MUST BE DONE VERY CAREFULLY.  One does not say, "I have to help the pastor buy a new car." One tells the counselee the TRUTH, though NEVER the  CONTENT of the sexual fantasies.  AND one arranges for the person to see someone else, never just abandons them.

 Why am I having to reach Priests how to relate to parishioners? Why in eight and a half years hasn't some Priest or counselor shown me a list of your professional guidelines??  WRITE SOME!!!!! PUBLISH THEM WIDELY!!!!!!!!!! Print them in parish bulletins several weeks in a row.  Give copies to all new parishioners.
 
 
 
 
 

September 3,1992

Dear Chancellor:

I am writing at the request of Ms. Mary Steele...

She also requested that I pass on to you the total bill for her counseling.  Our records show that between the dates of 4-17-84 when Mary first began her counseling with me and 8-12-92, the last session I held with Mary, her total counseling bill was $4,803.60...

Much of Mary's counseling did center on experiences, issues and feelings about the priest in question.  I have told Mary that it is difficult for me to put an exact percentage on the amount of her counseling focused on this issue but I have agreed that it was at least 50%.

As I mentioned in our meeting, Mary's pain and distress are quite real and are caused mostly by the lack of validation she has experienced in the course of this process...

Sincerely,

Corinne Taylor, M.A.
 
 

"Mary, you used the wrong word when you wrote "THE STORY OF GOD'S MERCY".
"Which word?"
"You know. That word."
"Incest?"
"Yes."

 Some people can't even say it.  Others give me scowling looks. Still others simply don't understand.  They grew up with Webster's definition: sexual relations between people too closely related to marry legally.

 "If all that Priest ever did to you was proposition you twice, how can you call that "incest"?

 On April 12, 1984, (I just looked in my journal.   I didn't have the date memorized; the words are graven in my memory.)  I sat in a parlor of my parish rectory.  It was about 8:30 PM.  I was talking abut the pain of growing up with an alcoholic mother.  I was speaking to an assistant pastor, dressed in a Roman collar, whom I'd first met in the confessional.  He'd been kind.  He'd hugged me.  He'd listened to me three or four times before in his parlor.  He'd helped me celebrate my 40th birthday by presiding at a Eucharist at my house attended by my father, brother, and about thirty friends.

 This man wasn't older than I; he's five months younger.  He wasn't better educated than I.  I have a master's;  he has a bachelor's.  He is intelligent, though, perhaps no more than I.   But he was a PRIEST.  I DID NOT SEE HIM AS AN EQUAL. I saw his POWER, his AUTHORITY.  I TRUSTED HIM.  I was sharing details of my life with this man I hardly knew because I believed he cared about me with God's Love.  I thought he'd been trained to listen.  I hoped he'd pray for me.  He'd told me he was an alcoholic.  I hoped he understood the dynamics of an alcoholic family.  I had transference for him, that is, I saw him as a father figure.  I was vulnerable.  I was feeling lots of emotional pain from the wounds from my childhood relationships with my father and my mother.

 Out of a clear blue sky - that means I was not talking about any thing sexual.  I wasn't thinking sexual thoughts. Having sex with this man had NEVER crossed my mind! - he said to me, "I would really like to go to bed with you, but I think it would destroy us both."

 The second time Father propositioned me was a year and a half later.   He'd been to treatment for his alcoholism, apologized to me for his first proposition and, although I was still projecting my unfinished father figure needs onto him and he was still projecting his unresolved sexual issues onto me (neither of us were clear enough to have possibly said these words at the time!), we had been struggling to relate.  On January 3, 1986, again sitting in his parlor, I said to him, "I just want to be friends with you."  The pastor had gone out of town leaving Father as acting pastor.  He'd been drinking. He responded to me with, "Sometimes I think we could be friends-if only we went to bed together.  You know,   you could say, "I'll be home this afternoon at 2:00 o'clock,' and I could come on over."

 On both occasions the Adult in me thought, "How inappropriate!  That man is a Priest!"   But it wasn't my Adult that was sitting in the chair talking to him.  It was the three year old Child in me, the part of me that looked up to him and trusted him and wanted his approval.  Her response was to ask, "What did I do wrong?"  It is the question that every child asks - when parents divorce or a parents dies - the child always assumes she or he is responsible.  Why would a Priest, a religious Priest with a vow of celibacy, speak  like that to me? Did I say something wrong? Was I immodestly dressed?  Why won't he love me the way a good father should?  WHY?????

 When parents incest their children, they instruct them not to tell.  This Priest had already told me not to let any of the Priests he lived with know he hugged me.   He hugged me in the confessional and in the parlor, but he would not hug me at the church doors where Priests greeted parishioners after Eucharist.  His hugs were not sexual, but for some reason, he was ashamed of them and he told me to keep them a secret.

 He was an alcoholic.  I knew little about AA, but I did know that one was not supposed to break an alcoholic's anonymity.  Somehow the Child in me got all those things mixed up.  I felt I shouldn't tell anyone what this Priest had said to me.

 Rather than respect my vulnerability, this wounded Priest took advantage of it.  He said words no counselor should ever say to a client, no Priest should ever say to anyone, certainly not a parishioner who had come in trust, seeking help.  He had been drinking.  His Adult was not present.  It was his wounded Child that responded to me.  My three year old could not understand that for years.  She saw a man in clerical garb who looked like a good father to her.  She was exploited.  The word for this exploitation is "incest."
 The definition of "incest" read at every Incest Survivors Anonymous meeting includes "...verbal abuse...by any adult in a position of power who betrays the trust of a trusting adult."

9/13/92
 

CHAPTER ONE

 Father Gabriel bent low over the altar. Before him were the bread, wine and grape juice that would soon be changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus.  His mind was full of distractions.  Had his homily pleased the right people?  The Bishop had sent him to this parish because of his bookkeeping experience.  The debt on Saint Michael's Church was enormous.  The previous priest had alienated so many parishioners that Sunday contributions had fallen way off.

 As he began the litany invoking by name many of the greatest saints in heaven to join what was about to take place, a part of Father's brain registered an unusual sound from the choir loft.  "THIS IS MY BODY," he pronounced over the small, thin, white wavers of bread.  As he raised the large Host for all to see and  adore, a swinging object caught his eye.  "Jesus Christ!" escaped his lips as he almost dropped the Host.  Hanging by the neck from the choir loft was the limp body of a woman.  Pinned to her short red dress was a sign so large even he, at the far end of the church could read it: CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE KILLS, FATHER GABE!...