Impact Statement from Victim

The StarPhoenix
December 31, 2014

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/Impact+statement+from+Victim/10692421/story.html

[Sexual assault by priest haunts victim - The StarPhoenix]

From the victim impact statement of a 46-year-old woman who was 10 years old when Omer Desjardins sexually touched her in 1978:

"You sexually assaulted me many years ago, when I was only a child. This betrayal has affected me from that night on to the present day.

I did tell my grandmother the very next morning that you had done this to me, but she did not share this with my mother, her own daughter.

You were a priest, supposedly a man of God. How could you do this to an innocent child?

For many years, I tried not to think of what you had done to me and how it has affected me from that day forward. I became a mother (in 2003) and was blessed with a beautiful daughter. ... I once again started to think about the sexual assault after the birth of my daughter. She is my world and I want to protect her from all the evil in this world, especially sexual predators like you.

I finally decided last year that it was time to report this crime to the police. Even though it had been 30-plus years, the world and your family needed to know what you did to me as a child.

A man of God, you call yourself. People are supposed to trust and feel safe around a priest.

You deceived me and your crime has affected my life so drastically that it has been a life of pure sadness, hatred and mistrust. I hate the person that I am and have become. Your betrayal has provided me with a life of unhappiness. I do not trust anyone and I find it very difficult to forgive.

I kept this buried for too long and because of that, I have lost out of so much in life.

You wrote me a letter of apology and I have read it a few times, but, Omer Desjardins, I cannot forgive you at this time and may never, for taking away my innocence and my belief in God. You are old, but you are, and always will be, a sexual predator of innocent children, in my mind.

The sight of any Catholic priest disgusts me and when I see one, I think, 'I bet that priest has sexually assaulted a child,' just like you did to me.

For years, I tried not to think of what you did to me, but as I look back and think of that night, I realize your betrayal has and always will affect the person I have become.

So this is how your sexual assault has affected me physically and emotionally: As a child and into my 20s, if I was staying at my dad's, I would try to stay awake as long as I could, fearing that my dad would sexually abuse me, which he never did, but I never trusted anyone because of you.

I don't know what it feels like to be happy. I don't trust anyone, especially men. I'm always angry. I do not feel loved, and I do not deserve to be loved. I am sad and lonely and feel very alone. I feel empty. I have thought of taking my own life.

I do not believe there is a God, because you, as a man of God, have taken that from me. I am unable to work because of my illness and have lost my nursing registration because I have been unable to return to work.

When my daughter - please listen to this - when my daughter sits on my husband or grandfather, I watch to make sure that they are not touching her inappropriately. How sick is that of me? Omer Desjardins, this is only a short list of how your sexual assault has affected my family and me."