UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Dennis Coday | Jul. 17, 2017
On the NCR website this week, we will run a series of stories that will challenge our readers to look at the scandal of sexual abuse of minors by clergy from several different viewpoints: from the perspective of a victim/survivor, from the perspective of a convicted offender, from the perspective of a family member of a victim, and from the perspective of professional advocates and watchdogs. …
Wednesday and Thursday, we will run extensive interviews with Gilbert Gustafson and Susan Pavlak. Pavlak, a lifelong resident of St. Paul, Minnesota, was sexually abused by her high school religion teacher, a former nun, in the 1970s. She recounts her struggle to come into, as she describes it, “right relationship,” overcoming alcoholism and trauma from the abuse. Gustafson is a priest of the St. Paul Minneapolis Archdiocese who was convicted of molesting a teenage boy in 1983. He served a jail sentence and years of probation. He also continued to serve as a priest on restricted ministry, holding various administrative jobs until 2002 when he was removed from public ministry. Over the last 30 years, he has done extensive personal work on recovery and, he says, has not offended since his conviction.
Gustafson and Pavlak met each other about 10 years ago. After several years learning to trust each other, they agreed to work together on programs that they hoped would bring healing to victims, abusers and the wider church community. Their main contention, in Pavlak’s words, is that “a person, however broken, doesn’t fall outside of the love of God and the love and care of the community. … We have to find a way to be safe together — that is my responsibility, not only to the kids and vulnerable people but also to the perpetrator.”
The interviews with Pavlak and Gustafson were conducted 2015 by Jesuit Fr. Luke Hansen. He had some trouble finding an outlet to publish the interviews and offered them to NCR last year. We agreed to run the interviews, but didn’t feel we could do that without providing readers with some context and background to the issues their stories raise.
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