Local Survivor of Church Abuse Scandal Speaks out

Fox Boston
September 24, 2015

http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/30101813/local-survivor-of-church-abuse-scandal-speaks-out

It's been more than 50 years since Susan Renehan and her sister were abused by a priest their Irish Catholic family trusted and more than 50 years later, she's still in a lot of pain.

"I went to a Catholic school and he came to confession on first Fridays and he would pull me out of the classroom after these confessions and would sexually assault me in the hallway of the school," Renehan said.

Renehan is no longer a practicing Catholic, but she has been watching the pope's visit from afar. She was upset Wednesday by the way the pope addressed the clergy sex abuse scandal when speaking to hundreds of bishops in DC.

In Italian, the pope said he knows how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon bishops and said he supports their commitment to bring healing to victims. But for Renehan, it's the bishops who should be apologizing after some helped cover up the abuse.

"That's the only thing he said about the sex abuse scandal and I think that when I look at his agenda," Renehan said, "He's not planning on meeting with the survivors so far and the whole crisis is not even on his agenda."

Renehan now works with the website bishop-accountability.org, which maintains a database of priests and bishops involved in sex abuse crimes. She says making that information more public is something Pope Francis could do to repair the situation with the survivor community.

"The pope has all the information," she said. "All the files on all the abusive priests are in Rome. And could open up those filing cabinets and he could give us the truth about what really happened."

Renehan thinks the sex abuse scandal is one reason the pope is not making a stop in Boston, because he'd face too much negative reaction here.