AUSTRIA
The Local
Published: 10 Nov 2014
Defectors from a Catholic community called The Work (Das Werk), which is based in Bregenz in the west of Austria, have spoken out about abuse in the community.
Darren Canning, originally from England, told Austrian state broadcaster ORF that he spent six years as a member of The Work and cried every day. “It was hell, I hoped and prayed that I would die,” he said.
He left in 2003, with no money and no education, and said he had to start a new life from scratch in England.
The Work was founded in 1938 in Belgium by a woman called Julia Verhaeghe, and was given papal approval in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Both nuns and priests belong to the community, as well as non-ordained male and female members.
The Work’s headquarters are in Bregenz but it also has communities in several European countries, the US and Jerusalem.
‘Temptresses’
Canning said that it operated a “system of religious mania, surveillance and oppression that must be stopped”. He said contacts with people outside ‘the family’ were discouraged and that all telephone conversations and letters had to be screened by a religious superior.
Canning said that when his grandfather died he wasn’t even allowed to travel to England for his funeral – the reason given was that his grandfather hadn’t been a Christian.
A spokesman for The Work told the ORF that although these rules had been in place, they had now been abolished – and said that if Canning had insisted, he would have course have been allowed to attend the funeral.
A former priest who was part of The Work has also spoken out, although he wished to remain anonymous.
He said that he knows of cases of abuse in the community and that even in confession priests typically viewed women as “temptresses”. “Even if a woman had been sexually abused, she was seen as being complicit, just because she was a woman,” he said.
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