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	Article from Fortnight Magazine Road to Recovery October 12, 2009 http://www.road-to-recovery.org/news "Fortnight" Magazine Northern Ireland by Murrough O'Brien "It's soul murder," says Fr. Bob Hoatson. "It's unique because it takes even God away." Soul murder – that sounds about right for what a priest does when he abuses innocence. Fr. Bob knows what he's talking about: he was abused himself. What this does to self esteem he sums up with savage concision. "You think, 'I must be a real piece of shit, because even God doesn't love me in the right way'." On the 20th of May, the Ryan Report (nine long years in the forging) presented a horrifying story of systematic child abuse in Ireland's religious reformatories, and the dust from this event, far from settling, has swirled about in toxic clouds. Thirty thousand children were sent to places where they were beaten, raped, strapped, threatened, and silenced. We now wait for the outcome of the Dublin report, with little hope that it will yield a happier tale. Amidst all the condemnation (justified), the demands for compensation (twice and trebly justified), one question appears to have received little attention. What about forgiveness, or (more to the point), reconciliation? Can the victim ever truly be healed and can the perpetrator ever truly be forgiven? We say of some person enslaved to a vice that we happen not to share, "I've done many things in my life, but I've never done that." As is well know, prisoners – and by prisoners I mean murderers, rapists, robbers – give blistering hell to the pedophiles on their block. And wider society does the same. Everything can be forgiven, we say – except this. Someone who preys on the young for no cause higher than his own gratification is a thing apart, especially when the predator is a priest – the emblem of protection, of consolation. Earlier this year, Pope Benedict referred to the mass abuse of children committed by the clergy as "structural sin," a resonant if somewhat hazy expression. Fr. Bob, who co-founded Road to Recovery, an organization that seeks to rebuild the lives of victims of clerical abuse, made the same point, but with rather more vehemence. He was, as he puts it bluntly, "groomed." A senior priest in the Archdiocese had remarked to him, "You're a cold person, Bob – I'm going to need to warm you up." This particular priest played no direct part in such odious "warming," but he groomed Bob for the warming to come. Such compound trauma could have broken his heart. But in that, too, his abuser failed. His anger is inspired not only, or even primarily, by what happened to him, but by the memory of kids being "massaged" by senior clerics, of a cousin "who put a bullet through his head." He shows me pictures of his cousin – young, good-looking, and, above all, confident. On forgiveness, he has this to say: "I've forgiven the people who abused me, but not the system that continues to create these monsters." And at this point he shows typical robust compassion: "They didn't help me, and they didn't help the ones who abused me." And in the Church, where he found his vocation, Fr. Bob remains, a vital witness from within. Questions about how the unforgivable can be forgiven led me to a remarkable film. "Beyond the Fire," directed by Maeve Murphy, depicts an intriguing, beautiful, profound, thought-provoking variation on the girl-meets-boy theme. Katie, a survivor of rape, finds herself, on the anniversary of her rape, ready for sex at last. She meets Sheamy, a former priest, attractive but uncertain of himself, whose somewhat shadowy past is not initially a bar. Even when Sheamy finds out about Katie's ordeal, he takes it in his stride, and she feels she can take him in hers. All seems set fair (the tenderness between Sheamy (Scott Williams) and Katie (Cara Seymour) is palpable), but Sheamy has fear of sexual intimacy that cannot quite be accounted for by his priestly past. He had come to London in search of his mentor – Fr. Brendan. Yet what Sheamy has refused to accept is that his loving, gentle guru, now working with AIDS victims, has once preyed on him in the ugliest way possible, and "in the presence of God." The film (which won Best Feature at the London Independent Film Festival) has at its heart a bold suggestion: that sex can cooperate with spirit in healing spiritual trauma and that things spiritual can aid sexuality in healing sexual abuse. This oughtn't to be so much of a paradox, but our culture is still uneasy with it. "Beyond the Fire" seems to offer a third way: the abuser can be redeemed, but only if he faces the horror of his actions in all their reality. A Golgotha of self-realization must be endured before resurrection, or transformation, is possible. Maeve Murphy herself rightly concentrates on the one abused. She quotes the Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda: "Brace yourself firmly, say to yourself: "I am not a person who will allow such an incident to destroy my life." Colm O'Gorman, the head of Amnesty International in Ireland, construes forgiveness in a way very much his own. The documentary, "Suing the Pope," told the story of how he took on a clerical establishment and won compensation. His example was followed by many. As one of the victims of the infamous Father John Fortune, he can claim some authority in the matter of abuse and its effects. His view of forgiveness is radical and humbling, whether one agrees with it or not. "For me, forgiveness was bound up with absolution: God forgives and the priest conveys that forgiveness to you. I didn't realize that forgiveness could be personal. Absolution meant that "it" could be fixed, and I had to accept that it couldn't be fixed. I've never met a human being who was incapable of redemption. What I would wish for anyone is that they take responsibility for their actions, and then have some compassion for themselves. There was no way I could make "that" okay, until I realized that myself. I had to look at those times when I prostituted myself, and accept that – okay – those were the choices I made. I could understand my choices, and therefore have compassion for them. I found a way back to loving myself, and through that, to living by love – and I couldn't possibly not wish that journey for them. Of course, I wish that for them – but I can't give them that. "They" have to do that. At a Q and A on the radio a few months back, these three views of forgiveness met and clashed – though amicably. Colm O'Gorman suggested that the penultimate sequence of "Beyond the Fire" "corrupted an otherwise fascinating and credible film." Bob Hoatson disagreed, telling me later, "the film is spot on, everything in it is spot on. It is brilliant…forgiveness is an intrinsic part of the recovery process." Neither Colm for Fr. Bob struck me as murdered souls. They glitter with wit and shine with sanity and strength – here are eagles, not broken sparrows. They can pity those who preyed on them. Our culture suffers from cognitive dissonance on this whole matter: we are swift to scoff at the notion that sexual abuse can ruin a life, and yet we still regard the pedophile as beyond redemption. Both assumptions must change before any intelligent or compassionate solution can be found.
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