Fifteen years ago in a European city I was contacted by a quite famous man who will have to remain anonymous. I assumed he wanted to talk about my work with children so our conversation began with some neutral talk. Before long he broke down and began to sob.
Gradually his story came together. As a young man he had been expected to go to church every Sunday and, with his mother's encouragment, had become an altar boy. The priest took a special interest in him and slowly initiated the boy into some sexual behaviour. Somewhet shocked by what was happening he eventually had the courage to tell his mother what the priest was doing.
Her reaction was to slap him across the face and say "don't you ever again tell such stories about a man of god." Trapped in this situation the boy had to endure the priest's sexual demands until he was old enough to leave town for university.
He tried to forget what had happened, but he said that not a day had passed without the memory of that experience. His first marriage had been a disaster, but fortunately now that he was just past middle age, he had met a sympathetic woman who was helping him to face his earlier history and to some extent overcome it.
Meanwhile. the priest who had abused him had become a Bishop and eventually rose to become a Cardinal in the church.
The man never considered going to the police but many times struggled with himself about meeting with the Cardinal to face him with what he had done. Such was the shame that had been forced on him as a teen he never did have the courage to have that confrontation.
One month before he and I met, the papers announced the death of the Cardinal.
It was an encounter which is still fresh in my thinking. Soon after that I stated in a newspaper interview that I consider the violent sexual abuse of children to be a crime similar to murder, except that murder is an instant death, but child sex abuse lasts a lifetime.
In this blog I hope we will consider some of the ways in which children can be better protected from those who wish to abuse them.
Ron
