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	'Broken Trust' Offers New Approach to Sex-Abuse Scandal, Focusing on Healing after Betrayal By Kaitlynn Riely Catholic Online September 24, 2007 http://www.catholic.org/ae/books/review.php?id=25455 When confronted with a news story about Catholic priests who sexually abused minors as well as adults, the mainstream media adopted a narrative that focused on the innocence of the victim and the betrayal of the priest. In every situation, there was the victim and the victimizer, the weak and the powerful. Since this story about Catholic clergy breaking their vows of celibacy – and in many cases breaking laws – first appeared in newspapers and on television, the public has heard many lewd tales about inappropriate encounters between priests and those who trusted them. The public has heard the victims' side, about how they felt betrayed, confused and how they have struggled to recover. Broken Trust tells us a few of these stories, including that of one of the authors, who was herself sexually abused by a priest. But Broken Trust reveals a side of the story that most probably have not heard, because it shows us the priest as victim turned victimizer. The three authors, all of whom have professional experience working with victims of abuse and specifically members of the clergy who perpetrated the abuse, say the purpose of their book is to promote healing and to prevent further abuse. They tell eight stories in the book – five from the priests and three from victims of abuse at the hands of clergy members. The contribution Broken Trust makes in the fallout of this scandal is that it humanizes the priests. The five priests who told their stories all had something in their background that let them fall into patterns of abuse. Most of them were sexually abused when they were younger, and the authors point to research that shows between 62 percent and 81 percent of sexual offenders were sexually abused as children or adolescents. This book does not attempt to excuse the behavior of these priests. Instead, it tests our own powers of forgiveness, because it forces us to allow some humanity into our perception of these priest-abusers as monsters. The priests profiled in these stories and analyses are complicated human beings who gave into temptation but still experience feelings of regret. The stories give some explanation for how these priests could have betrayed the trust of those who looked to them for guidance, but it is disturbing to see how their behavior went unchecked by their superiors for so long. In one priest's story about his history of abuse, he describes trying to sexually assault a woman in a fairly public place as an almost unconscious attempt to be caught. One hopes that church leaders who read this book can learn how to read warning signs and can prevent members of the clergy from abusing their position. This is, as it must be, an uncomfortable and disturbing book to read. One starts the book wondering if the authors are, perhaps, too sympathetic to the abuser-priests. But the clinical analysis and the authors' intentions to prevent further abuse are reminders that we all sin, and we are all capable of being forgiven. The book's weakness is that, while it gives priests' stories and victims' stories, it does not tell the stories of the victims of those particular priests, nor the stories of the abusers of those victims. By the time you finish with the five priests' stories, you can think of the priests as vulnerable, imperfect human beings, but when you read the victims' stories, they are back to the priests being monsters again. It is difficult not to speculate whether the victims' abusers have reached the same level of realization and contrition and healing as the five priests profiled.
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