Adult Victims of Clergy Abuse

In a startling new estimate, the national director of SNAP claims that adults comprise up to 25% of all clergy abuse cases.  However, adults victims encounter far more skepticism when they come forward with their stories because public opinion holds that adults are ultimately responsible for all of their decisions, and the media has conditioned the public to feel that sexual misconduct within the Church is an affair between an ordained priest and a child. In this respect,  an article for Religion Dispatch by writer Kathryn Joyce sheds a tremendous light on the shifting demographics that makes adult abuse such a wide-scale problem.

A growing Hispanic population in the US church coupled with the shrinking priest population has created a vacuum within the Church that has been filled by lay ministers. Joyce’s article tells the story of one such organization, Christo y Yo, designed to fill the gaps between the Hispanic faithful and the lack of ordained ministers.

In 2008, Katia Birge joined Christo y Yo after moving back to her native Denver. Birge, then 25, had gone off to college and was working when her juvenile rheumatism debilitated her. She came back to Denver. Birge was in pain and distressed to find herself dependent on her parents after years of independence. Raised in a bilingual home, Birge sought solace in a Christo y Yo, a charismatic Hispanic church group for young adults. What she found was anything but.

According to Joyce’s article, Christo y Yo drew as many as 500 participants from around the Denver diocese, including 100 from Birge’s St. Catelan parish alone. It was run by a Mexican lay minister, Juan Carlos Hernandez, a dynamic and outwardly pious preacher in his mid-30’s. Hernandez and Birge formed a fast friendship primarily based around faith and theology. However, the relationship grew complicated after the two kissed at Hernandez’s home. Several weeks later, Birge asked Hernandez to come over for a talk about where they stood. According to Birge’s testimony, Hernandez ended up driving her to a dark and secluded part of town where he raped her.

After the incident, Hernadez told Birge that she was a whore and that no man would want her. Later that night, Birge e-mailed Hernandez in Spanish asking why he did what he did, and protesting his calling her a whore. According to Joyce, it was “divergent” translations of this e-mail that allowed Hernandez’s defense to paint her as a scorned woman, seeking revenge. Because of the e-mail, the local District Attorney refused to prosecute in criminal court.

However, the case against Hernandez is still ongoing. Birge filed a restraining order against him as well as a lawsuit. In 2010, she added the Archdiocese as a co-defendant, arguing that the Church had failed to adequately supervise Hernandez because they neglected to conduct a background check or make him agree to the Church’s Code of Conduct. Birge and her attorney also found additional evidence against Hernandez: a woman who testified that Birge had attempted to rape her under very similar circumstances.

In addition to implying the rape as a date gone bad, the Church countered that Hernandez, as a lay volunteer, couldn’t be an agent of service of the church. While the Church’s defense tried to paint Hernandez as a low-level volunteer, he in fact held considerable influence and authority in the church’s Hispanic community: Hernandez was a member of the Archdiocesan Council for Hispanic Youth and Young Adults, a keynote speaker at the Fifth Hispanic Catechetical Congress of the Arhcdiocese of Denver in 2007, and a participant in the elite Archidocesan Pasotral Council alongside the Bishop and other high-ranking priests.

However, the Hon. Sheila Rappaport sided with the Church, exempting it from the lawsuit. In her article, Joyce is quick to point out that  Rappaort herself received a Catholic Lawyers Guild Award in 2004. Whether Rappaport was biased or not, she certainly bought the Church’s argument. As Thomas Birge, Katia’s father puts it, the Church tried to paint Hernandez as “the guy setting up chairs in the basement, with no theological, pastoral, or guidance responisbilities.” As the ruling shows, they must have succeed.

According to Joyce, Katia Birge’s case is symptomatic of a more national problem, and the facts seem to back her up. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hispnaics have accounted for 71% of the growth of the Catholic Church since 1960, and two-thirds of all Latinos in the United States consider themselves Roman Catholics. Seeing the growing church population and the declining vocation of the priesthood, Pope John Paul II issue a papal dictate in 2003 that more lay people become involved in ministry.

However, as David Clohessy, the National Director of SNAP asserts, with great power comes great responsibility.  Considering the ethical and legal prohibitions against doctor and therapist sexual relations with patients, Clohessy  notes, “none of us have been raised from birth to think that a therapist is God’s represntative or that a doctor can get me into heaven.”

As the Catholic Church moves forward into what is hopefully a brighter era, it must carefully educate both its ordained ministers as well as those lay ministers whom the congregants trust. Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of these sex abuse scandals are the systemic protections offered to those clergy who violate the integrity of another human being. Many decrees to cover-up information have come down from the highest levels of the Church. Surely, the Church professes to uphold the sanctity and integrity of all persons, but victims’ advocates claim that’s not the case.

“People who have gone to the Archdiocese have found their families scrutinized and questioned. It’s revictimizing, and it discourages other victims from coming forward,” said  Jeb Barret, Director of the Denver Chapter of SNAP.  Whether it is protected by a vast, obfuscating power structure or not; whether it is connected to people’s deepest beliefs and fears or not; preying on the vulnerable is never acceptable, and it is always corrupt. Furthermore, silence protects predators.

The Church is supposed to be a place of sanctity and piety. By speaking up, you can keep it that way. The SNAP homepage is a good resource for any who have been victimized, and the Chicago chapter holds meetings every second Tuesday of the month. Please call (312) 399-4747 for more information. Should you need legal counsel in a clergy abuse case, please contact Dolan Legal for a free consultation.

–Steven Flores

Sources Attributed

This article is deeply indebted to the an article by Kathryn Joyce on Religion Dispatches which can be found here.

lululemon appears forever a high-risk inventory to get
weight loss tips Why Are There Different Sunglass Lens Colours