How do we help children and adults who have been abused? The first thing is to talk about it, recognising that it is endemic in our world. The second is to be clear that it isn’t the victim’s fault – that any shame they may feel is misplaced. Abuse is always an abuse of power and it can destroy lives. My work in this field began when I was a paediatric trainee in London, and later as a psychiatrist, working with victims of sexual abuse – mainly adults with learning disabilities.
In 2011 the late Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor asked me to assist him in a Vatican visitation of the Diocese of Armagh, tasked with investigating the Irish Church’s response to clerical-abuse scandals. We met dozens of people: individuals, groups and in public meetings. We listened respectfully to the anger that was expressed. There were no riots, there was no adverse press comment. There was just appreciation that we had listened, and more insights for ourselves.
As a senior medic, teacher, researcher and legislator, I suggested that Cardinal Murphy O’Connor should recommend independent lay-led governance of the local Church, much as happens for doctors. I argued that doctors and clergy have similar responsibilities with respect to standards, ethical practice and confidentiality. They also have a similar need to be well trained. This didn’t get into the report; the Church still investigates itself.
The 2022 Vatican Constitution does introduce some lay governance, although media reports suggest that not all cardinals at their August consistory liked the idea of separating the exercise of Church governance from sacramental ordination. I was later invited to speak about the impact of abuse on victims at the “Towards Healing” conference in Rome for representatives of bishops’ conferences worldwide.
At my suggestion, rather hesitantly, the organisers asked me to present jointly with Marie Collins, a prominent victim-survivor from Dublin. Our talk was led by Marie’s personal experience of years of cover-up following her own abuse by a priest: the way in which the pontifical secret had been used as an excuse for refusing to communicate with her; the mental healthconsequences of being sexually abused as a teenager; the rarely considered spiritual harm.
I spoke from my clinical experience of working with both victims and perpetrators in therapy and about the visitation to Armagh. The talk that Marie and I gave, as the only lay speakers, had an impact both inside and outside the venue. Marie and I were invited to become founder members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM). I requested that at least 50% of the members should be lay, 50% female and that it should include abuse survivors as full members.
Our induction from the Secretary of State’s office explained the dual role of Church leaders. The Pope as spiritual leader of the worldwide Church and head of the tiny Vatican City State; the 3500 diocesan bishops worldwide as chief executives as well as spiritual leaders. We prioritised healing and care and supported 6 victim-survivors in the process. The Holy Father spent several hours listening to their stories for as long as each person wanted, and he celebrated Mass for us in his chapel.
Pope Francis has welcomed more survivors since, including from Chile after his eyes were opened to the injustices taking place in that country. One Chilean survivor, Juan Carlos Cruz, is now a member of the PCPM. After his visit to Chile (accompanied by the Bishop of Osorno, a protégé of the convicted priest Fernando Karadima) Pope Francis made a public apology, saying he had misjudged the events in Chile because he hadn’t been given “truthful and balanced information”.
34 Chilean bishops offered their resignations, and he accepted 8 of them. But there was no mechanism to discipline a bishop. One working group tried to find a canonical process to hold bishops accountable. In 2019, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio: Vos estis lux mundi – “You are the Light of the World”. It introduced mandatory reporting of any allegation of abuse to the Vatican’s dicastery for bishops.
It requires compliance with civil laws, too, including all reporting obligations, and insists that no one “shall be bound by any obligation of silence”. However, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is responsible for investigating allegations against priests. It does not respond to enquiries from victims about the progress of their complaint or attend to their recovery needs. Extraordinarily, the PCPM has now become part of the CDF, even though the primary brief of the PCPM is to prevent abuse and address the care and healing of victim-survivors.
Pope Francis points to clericalism as the larger part of the Church’s failure to prevent and to respond to abuse. Unfortunately, the original synodal style of working in the PCPM seems under threat with its current more clerical leadership. The belief that “it could never happen here” is deeply embedded; the shame and lack of competence to deal with it when abuse is uncovered, provides no remedy.
Training is an important tool towards achieving the culture change and confidence that is needed to transform the Church’s response. For several years I chaired the Scientific Board and taught at the Centre for Child Protection – now the Institute of Anthropology for Human Dignity and Care – at the Pontifical Gregorian University, headed by Fr Hans Zollner. In 2019 Cardinal Vincent Nichols asked me to provide training for the bishops of England and Wales.
My team included survivors, and our focus was on learning to listen. I answered questions about the training when I gave evidence to IICSA, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay. In most countries survivor engagement by Church authorities is non- existent, but the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission for England and Wales has a Survivor Advisory Panel (SAP). Its members have been invite d to Rome to work with the PCPM; three countries have since developed their own SAP.
My work with the Vatican has taught me that listening to victim-survivors matters more than anything. This includes members of the clergy who are survivors of abuse in childhood or during seminary formation. The last word goes to Fr Andrew Browne – a priest of the Diocese of Hallam –because it’s people like him who hold the key to healing our Church. Fr Andrew is chair of Survivor Taining – Beyond Words, which is a charitable training organization available to dioceses and schools, and all its Directors are abuse survivors.
As Fr Andrew says: “We, all of us, need to stop seeing Safeguarding as just an activity of the head: procedures, policies, actions to be done, forms to be filled in, boxes to be ticked. Because we are dealing with hurting, broken, lost human beings. We need to start to give them their humanity back, on their terms of understanding and care”.
This article appears in the January edition of the Catholic Herald. Baroness Hollins of Wimbledon and Grenoside sits as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. This is a redacted version of the Craigmyle Lecture, which she gave to the Catholic Union at the end of this year. For the full version, see https://catholicunion.org.uk
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