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     We hope you find this email update useful.  New subscribers can submit their email at www.SurvivorsFirst.org to receive copies of this occasional email.   This email list is a critical part of our efforts to find healing, justice and prevention for survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

What is SurvivorsFirst.org? 
     SurvivorsFirst.org (SF) is a group of survivors and their supporters who are interested in **action** to help survivors.  SF is not a support group.  We are based in Boston, and work with all the national groups: SNAP, Linkup, VOTF, CTA, etc. 
 

Keep Clear The Moral Clarity of the Cover-up 
     The resignation of Cardinal Law, the Advent season and the New Year will be cited by many as a time for a "new beginning", a "season of Christian forgiveness" and a "time for healing."   Do not let these works confuse the moral clarity of the cover-up.   An insistence on justice is not anti-Catholic. In fact, the Catholic Catechism reaffirms Justice and Courage as two of the 4 cardinal virtues.  Blind obedience is not a virtue or one of the teachings of Jesus.   The Bishops clearly believed that the end (no scandal) justified the means (cover-up of felonies against children and harboring child molesters).    The cover-up is wrong.  Anyone involved must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the civil law and has lost the moral authority to be a leader in the Catholic Church.   Practicing Catholics can still pray for the person in jail or after he resigned, but with leadership comes responsibility.  For Cat! holics, to insist on anything less is to be less than Catholic.

Let's Keep All Children Safe: Boys and Girls
By Susan E. Gallagher, Survivors First
Susanekg@attbi.com
     One of the most disturbing aspects of the flood of articles on the crimes committed by priests and Church officials is that Catholic leaders and insensitive journalists have frequently suggested that raping a boy is somehow worse than raping a girl, an offensive view that correlates with the Vatican's unsuccessful effort to link homosexuality with child abuse.  For example, to show that some types of sex with children are more acceptable than others, Cardinal Francis George remarked, "there is a difference between a moral monster like [Boston priest John J. Geoghan], who was accused of abusing nearly 200 boys over 30 years, and a priest who has sexual contact with a 16- or 17-year-old young woman who returns his affections." 
     When reminded that the conduct he was minimizing could land a priest in prison, George responded that he was "horrified" and vowed, "never to use that example again."  However, the Cardinal's comments reflect a general tendency among unreflective people to downplay the damage done to female victims of predatory clergy.  In fact, thanks to the males-only focus that many journalists have adopted, most people have no idea that more than a dozen of the eighty-six victims involved in one lawsuit against Geoghan are female.  Similarly, women who were molested by Fr. Paul Shanley have cited shaming media coverage as a central factor in their reluctance to go public.  Meanwhile, since many powerful newspapers such as the Boston Globe have never profiled any women who were victimized as children, crowds of Catholics wrongly imagine that the shortest route out of the present crisis is to keep boys out of the clutches of homosexual priests. 
     In light of these misperceptions, it's not surprising that survivors, psychologists, advocates, and responsible journalists have tried to called attention to the significant number of women who have come forward, while also emphasizing that female victims are less likely to contact lawyers and more likely to fear having their sexual histories exposed to public scrutiny.   Thus, Richard Sipe, a well-known expert on clergy sexual abuse, and Gary Schoener, a therapist who has treated scores of victims, estimate that one-third to one half of those who were victimized as children are female.  In line with these estimates, nearly half of the members of the largest survivor groups, SNAP and the Linkup, are women.  Moreover, whenever the media reports on female victims, more women come forward to tell their stories and to get assistance from these groups.
     Now that survivors and their supporters have come together to demand accurate reporting on the scandal, we are finally starting to get a clear and comprehensive view of the realities of child molestation.  Now the general public is beginning to understand what most survivors have known all along, namely, that access is far more important than gender to those who prey on children.  As a result, we will all be much better able to hold predatory priests accountable for their crimes and to protect both girls and boys from the threat of clergy sexual abuse.
Related Links:
Richard Sipe, The Sipe Report: http://www.thelinkup.com/sipe.html

Jane Lampman, "A Wider Circle of Abuse," Christian Science Monitor
http://www.thelinkup.com/abuse-women/women1.html

Louise Haggett, New Information on Mandatory Celibacy and Clergy Abuse
http://www.rentapriest.com/new_information_on_mandatory_cel.htm

For more information on media coverage of the scandal in the Church, please visit http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/spotlight.htm

Be a part of the solution to increase awareness of female victims
1. educate yourself by reading the articles on th-- 
 

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