Sexual abuse within church adds to trauma of abuse

By Jalyn Souchek
KWWL
August 28, 2018

http://www.kwwl.com/story/38980515/2018/08/Tuesday/sexual-abuse-within-church-adds-to-trauma-of-abuse

Therapists for sexual abuse victims say abuse damages a person but abuse done so within a church only heightens the trauma.

Currently, the Vatican is struggling to respond to claims that Pope Francis helped cover up sexual abuse. He's accused or protecting American Cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, who last month resigned in disgrace. This all comes after a Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed hundreds of pedophile priests and suggested victim numbers may in the thousands.

Allegations against the church are nothing new nor are they new to the state of Iowa. In Dubuque, the archdiocese has paid over $5 million in settlements to sexual abuse survivors from cases that spanned the 1940's to the 1970's.

"With all sexual abuse there's an element of power and control but then when you have the whole weight of the heighten of the church," Catherine Essers, a sexual assault therapist at Riverview Center in Dubuque, said.

Essers, who has worked at the center for over a decade, said some of her clients are survivors of abuse by clergy members.

"There's a sense of sacred, or a soul violation, and such a deep betrayal of trust and also such confusion," Essers said, about past victims. "This is someone I look up to, that my family looks up to."

Inside Riverview Center there are a countless number of decorated masks along its walls. 

"These are the masks, each one of these are done by a survivor," Sarah Stangl, who also works a therapist at Riverview. "This is a way for them to be able to express how it is that they're feeling on the inside."

Stangl says the center serves victims of all ages.

"There's a lot of fear especially when we see an entity like the church when there has been so much cover up and so much that has been hidden. With that, what we encourage with all individuals, to know that you are not alone and that there is always a safe place to come to," Stangl said.

She said, like in the situation with Dubuque, allegations against the church are widespread,

"What is happening in other areas, has happened here. It does, it creates an environment of distrust. Places where people would go for safety, it keeps people away," she said.

Essers said the individual damage from sexual abuse within the church is multilayered. It can cause a person to lose their faith and have anger in God.

"To lose that soul connection that they may have had with their faith is another added trauma," she said.

Essers and Stangl say it's important for religious groups to have transparency in dealing with sexual abuse.

Services at Riverview are confidential and free. They serve 16 counties in Iowa and Illinois.

The Archbishop of Dubuque, Michael Jackels, said in a statement, "sex abuse of minors by clergy is a grave sin against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue, a crime against the law of the Church, and a crime against the law of our land."

Jackels is preparing to lead a prayer service acknowledging the crisis facing the church on September 14 at 7 p.m. in the Cathedral of St. Raphael.

His full statement about the state of the church can be read here.