Q&a: a Conversation with Sue Lauber-fleming & Patrick Fleming

By Jeannette Cooperman
St. Louis Magazine
June 20, 2014

http://www.stlmag.com/news/q%26a%3A-a-conversation-with/

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

They set up a counseling practice together, fell in love, married. Both had treated victims of sexual abuse. Then Patrick Fleming, a former priest himself, began treating priests who’d been perpetrators, and he asked his wife, Sue Lauber-Fleming, to help him run a therapy group at the residential facility just outside St. Louis where these men now live. Sue shook the day that she told them her own story, of being abused by her pastor, a monsignor, when she was 4 years old. But since then, the Flemings have met hundreds of times, in groups and individually, with dozens of priests convicted of sexual abuse. In one of their books, Broken Trust, they note that in the media, “each priest appears as a sad news photo of a man in black and in trouble.” There’s no clue as to why they did what they did or whether they realize the damage. After counseling these priests for 12 years, the Flemings have some insight.

PF: We have worked with victims of all kinds of abuse, and we know how horrible the acts are and what damaging effects they have. So none of what I’m going to say about perpetrators is to excuse what they have done. But what we have seen is that this is clearly a sickness. These men have been scorned, vilified, raked through the coals, and really judged to be evil in some way. But pretty often, they have been sexually abused themselves—[about two-thirds] of the time—and nearly all of them experienced some other kind of trauma when they were growing up. As they start to recover, they start—in most cases, not all—to have deep remorse about what they have done and deep shame. Their level of pain is often as intense as, or greater than, their victims’. SL: As intense. I would not say greater.

How long can their denial last? SL: One priest, in group, kept saying, “But I didn’t abuse them. I just was loving them.” He’d spent time in prison already. This went on and on. PF: We challenged him regularly. We can tell these stories really directly: “This is what your victim experienced. This is the pain; this is the emotional damage; this is the sexual damage; this is the spiritual damage. Does that sound like love to you?” SL: Three years later, it finally clicked: “Oh! I was needing love, and I used them to fulfill my need for love.”

It took three years? SL: Yeah. And insurance says see somebody for six months.

So what worked? PF: I think it was the honesty of other people in the group, and gradually working his denial down—by this time, Sue had shared her own story. Rarely, actually, is it time and distance.

Because over time you can just shore up your own version of events? PF: Exactly.

Sue, how could you face working with priests after being abused by one? SL: I was scared to death. I was scared I would hate these men. [She takes a deep breath.] But I didn’t.

What was it like, telling the group your story? SL: Knots in my stomach. Dryness in my throat. An unconscious fear, probably, that I would be hurt. The first time, I read the story verbatim and cried and shook. We met in a small chapel at about 10 in the morning, on a gray day in late winter. The room was very quiet. PF: A number of them talked to me individually afterward. They made the connection to themselves, to what they had done to other kids.

What about their stories—are there any that stay with you? PF: One man had sexually abused early-adolescent girls—quite a few victims, maybe eight or 10. He came to us when he was already in his early seventies. He had managed to step away on his own about 20 years earlier; he’d kind of banished himself to live alone in a trailer in the southwest U.S. He’d gone to prison for a time, also. And after prison, he’d gone back to ministry for a while, because in those days the church did that. He’d not had any counseling at all.

What was his attitude in the residential facility? PF: At first he was pretty distant, and at times pretty angry. But in time, he revealed to me that he had been sexually abused when he was 12. He had never told another soul. Also, he was a World War II combat vet with [post-traumatic stress disorder], and his father had been very verbally abusive. After he’d spent a year and a half in counseling, one of his victims called and asked if they could meet. I suggested that I be there, to help them talk it out in a way that was healing. So we met. He apologized in a very heartfelt way, and she forgave him and had a few questions about memories that were vague. Then, with his permission, I told her what we’d uncovered, that he’d been sexually abused when he was 12. And her eyes filled with tears, and she said, “Oh, I am so sorry that happened to you, too.”

Is there something especially damaging about abuse by a priest? PF: First of all, I think be-

cause people expect priests to be holy, they expect them to be trustworthy, so the damage done by the betrayal of the trust is even greater. All abuse victims’ trust has been betrayed, but it’s worse with a victim of clerical abuse. Many survivors have spiritual difficulties, spiritual wounds. The priest, who is supposed to represent God, has abused them. SL: They experience it like God abusing them. Or they decide they are so bad, God could not possibly love them. PF: It disrupts their faith.

Can the power of the priest’s role exacerbate a sexual compulsion? SL: You put on the role and then you are not yourself. PF: Yeah, it exacerbates it in several ways. One is that they can use their power over the vulnerable. Their sickness uses the power, and the power has been what’s maintained the secrecy. There’s a phrase I use: Abuse happens at the intersection of power, vulnerability, sickness, and secrecy.

Why do victims so often feel shame? PF: First of all, they are young, and they are trusting an older person who says either “It’s OK to do this” or “This is your fault. You want this. And don’t ever tell.” Even when they are not told it’s their fault, a child feels that there is something wrong with this. The adult’s acting like it’s OK, but it feels wrong; it feels yucky. It feels bad, so I must then be bad. SL: In the normal development of the child, whatever happens in my world, I caused. PF: And there’s one other factor: Sometimes it’s pleasurable, physically. So I must be bad for enjoying it. SL: It’s crazy-making. A lot of anxiety disorders come out of this. PF: And it’s just simply that the neurons are connected in powerful ways.

In your opinion, is sexual abuse a single, diagnosable sickness? PF: It can be several sicknesses. With some, the abusive behavior grows out of a sexual addiction. They become compulsively sexual—it’s almost like using sex as a drug. They lose control of their sexuality.

For others, it’s situational: They are not sexually addicted, but they find themselves in a situation where they are stressed and vulnerable, and they medicate their depression or stress by acting out sexually. And for some, it’s a psychosexual immaturity. They don’t know how to have adult relationships, but they need the sense of closeness, even if it’s a false closeness.

Is celibacy a cause of sexual abuse? PF: You know, I’m a former Catholic priest. I left because I realized I was not called to celibacy. So I have feelings that celibacy ought to be optional. I think when I first started this work, I was kind of ready to blame celibacy. However, from what I’ve seen, I don’t think it’s the primary problem. I think it’s sometimes a contributing factor. The larger factors are trauma, abuse, becoming sexually sick, becoming sexually addicted. I’ve treated victims of rabbis and Episcopalian priests and ministers. Celibacy is not the primary issue.

Isn’t choosing a celibate vocation more appealing, though, if you’re already sexually troubled? PF: Oh, I think that was a factor in some cases, yes. SL: Until recently, seminaries would talk about celibacy and the sacredness of it, but they weren’t saying, “You are a sexual being, and you will have sexual feelings, and here’s how to deal with these feelings.” PF: In my seminary training, there was some spiritual preparation for celibacy. SL: Pray it away! PF: But there was no preparation psychologically and emotionally of “How do you live with this?”

Does aging lessen a perpetrator’s compulsion? PF: The libido and the sex drive decrease to some degree, but they really have to get the psychological wounds healed and develop a whole new psychological framework, or the problem continues. It might morph into an addiction to pornography or a different kind of sexual acting out…

So a residential facility makes sense. Do they make the choice to live there? PF: Almost none of them do. One of the residents, when anybody would be in denial about why they were there, he’d say, “None of us are here because we prayed the rosary backwards.”

Have you worked with anyone you couldn’t reach? PF: Of three dozen, we’ve been able to get all but three to acknowledge the abuse. One sort of admitted it to me but never would be direct; he was pretty ashamed, but I think he also was afraid of the legal implications. Another was so arrogant that he would sort of admit it, but mostly not. He’d say, “Well, you know, I was drunk, and the young person, you know—” SL: “Came on to me.” PF: Yeah, “and so I did it, but it really wasn’t a big deal.”

How do you stay in denial when you’re living in a residence for abusers? PF: Denial can be a powerful thing—and not just for sexual abusers.

Until activists forced the issue, there was a culture of silence in the church. Was it a “good soldier” sort of obedience? PF: I think it’s more complex than that. To put this in historical perspective, society was in denial about abuse until the mid-’80s. The church reflected that, but the secrecy was even greater there, because the shame was greater. I think all institutions have kind of an institutional reflex to try to look good and suppress what makes them look bad. The Catholic Church probably has more than average. And its hierarchical structure has its strengths, but one of its weaknesses is, it’s a closed world. That helps to maintain secrets.

This scandal knocked a lot of stalwart Catholics off balance. PF: I don’t think the church has paid enough attention to that. It’s a healing they need to engage in. SL: They need to say, “We know you are hurting, too.” And not from the pulpit—face-to-face, sitting in a circle.

What about the other abusers, those in power who overlooked incidents of abuse? PF: You know, we’ve never worked with them. I think that’s something the church needs to address also. There should be consequences.