Posts Tagged survivors
Healing wounds from clergy sexual abuse
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Broken Vessels, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Voice of the Faithful on February 21, 2017
Over the past two years, Voice of the Faithful® has facilitated nine Broken Vessel™ Healing Circles around the United States. Participants have included victims/survivors and others harmed in some other serious way by abusive clergy and/or by hierarchical leaders who enabled abuse. In addition to enhancing the arduous work of personal healing, these participants have contributed to the healing of many other individuals who have been deeply wounded as well.
Those of us who have facilitated these circles remain deeply moved by and grateful for each participant’s willingness to pursue a path of healing through this experience. We welcome feedback from any participants who feel they have something to offer about the Healing Circle experience from their present personal perspective.
We deeply desire to offer Healing Circles to anyone who could benefit from them. We ask you, our readers, to reach out to those whom you think would benefit to let them know that a viable step along a path toward healing exists for them in the Broken Vessels™ program. Click here for additional information or contact Bill Casey at b13909@comcast.net. We assure complete confidentiality.
In addition, if any of you find yourselves in a place where you can provide any level of financial support for the costs of the Healing Circles, please make a donation to VOTF restricted to Healing Circles by clicking here or mailing your check, with “For Healing Circles” written on the memo line, to VOTF, P.O. Box 423, Newton, MA 02464.
Thank you so much,
Hundreds of church sex abuse victims continue to come forward / The Boston Globe
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Catholic Bishops, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Pope Francis, Vatican, Voice of the Faithful on January 6, 2017
“Over the past 12 years, the (Boston) archdiocese has spent nearly $35 million on counseling, psychiatric medications, and other services for survivors. Since 2003, it has paid about $215 million to settle legal claims, church officials say.”
Fifteen years after the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston broke into public view, hundreds of victims around the world continue to come forward, including some who say they were attacked as recently as 2001, advocates said Thursday (Jan. 5). Two victims’ support groups and a lawyer who has represented more than 2,000 survivors worldwide denounced church officials for doing too little to help those who were abused and to protect children from harm, despite ongoing revelations about the scope of the crisis.
“‘You have reportedly the most moral institution in the world acting the most immoral,’ attorney Mitchell Garabedian said at a news conference Thursday (Jan. 5) in downtown Boston. ‘There is no excuse for it.’
By Laura Crimaldi, The Boston Globe — Click here to read the rest of this story and see also “Our Fathful Revolution” by Voice of the Faithful.
Update on New York Archdiocese’s clergy sexual abuse victim compensation plan
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Clergy Sexual Abuse, Voice of the Faithful on December 21, 2016
By Stephen Rex Brown, New York Daily News
More than 60 victims have applied to a program founded by Timothy Cardinal Dolan to compensate people sexually abused as children by clergy in the New York Archdiocese.
“With still more time to apply, 65 people have provided accounts of abuse by priests when they were minors.
“Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, has thus far offered settlement amounts to 15 victims.”
‘Spotlight’ takes home Best Picture honors at Oscars / National Catholic Reporter
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Clergy Sexual Abuse, Vatican, Voice of the Faithful on February 29, 2016
“‘Spotlight,’ the film that follows The Boston Globe’s investigation into the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church, won best picture at the 88th Academy Awards held on Sunday (Feb. 28) night.
“‘This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican,’ producer Michael Sugar said in accepting the Oscar.
“‘Pope Francis, it’s time to protect the children and restore the faith,’ he added.
“‘We would not be here today without the heroic efforts of our reporters,’ said Blye Pagon Faust, another ‘Spotlight’ producer. ‘Not only do they affect global change, but they absolutely show us the necessity for investigative journalism.'”
By Brian Roewe, National Catholic Reporter — Click here to read the rest of this story.
Circles make safe spaces for victims / The Boston Globe
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Clergy Sexual Abuse, Voice of the Faithful on October 5, 2015
There was the man who had been sexually abused as a boy by his priest. The priest who felt shunned within the Catholic Church after he spoke out against such abuse. The husband who had never told his wife about his assault decades earlier. The couple in their 80s who raised seven children in the church but finally, tearfully, decided to leave the pews.
“They’ve all been participants in a healing circle, a pilot program launched in Boston a year ago by the Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), an organization of progressive Catholics formed in 2002 in response to the priest sex abuse scandal. Based on a restorative justice model, the circles allow those who have suffered harm to meet in a small group and tell their stories.
“This month, the organizers seized the occasion of Pope Francis’s US visit to try to win awareness of their project at the highest levels of the church. In a full-page ad in the National Catholic Reporter, VOTF issued an open invitation to the pope to attend a healing circle in New York during his Sept. 24-25 visit. ‘Welcome to the U.S. We invite you to join us in a Healing Circle. Time does not heal all wounds. Some wounds fester, like those the survivors of clergy sexual abuse suffer, and the wounds their families and communities experience. They are broken people, as is their Church,’ the ad read.”
By Bella English, The Boston Globe — Click here to read the rest of this story.
Scottish Church needs to start over / The Tablet
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Clergy Sexual Abuse, Voice of the Faithful on August 24, 2015
If anybody ever doubted the necessity for an independent review into child protection procedures inside the Catholic Church in Scotland, every page of the McLellan Report published this week will correct that impression. The report is, in effect, a vote of no confidence in the Scottish bishops’ safeguarding procedures based on their performance so far. Its central charge is that the Scottish Catholic Church for years paid lip service to the need for child protection while the manner in which it treated survivors amounted to further abuse …”
“In such a clerical culture, which Scottish Catholicism surely was and in many ways still is, an abusive priest may well have thought that the powers-that-be would protect him to avoid a scandal. Too often he was right. The cultural reform that the McLellan report thinks is necessary to abolish the scourge of child abuse, therefore, goes far wider than this one issue. The leadership of the Catholic Church in Scotland has to become accountable to its members. That journey has hardly begun.”
Editorial in The Tablet — Click here to read the rest of this editorial
Voice of the Faithful
A lay movement for governance reform in the Roman Catholic Church, responding to the clergy sexual abuse scandal and supporting survivors.
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