UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Review of Books
August 10, 2018
By Arthur McCaffrey
THE LATE, GREAT Barbara Blaine founded the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in the late 1980s as an advocacy forum and support group for victims of sexual abuse like herself. A priest in her Catholic parish in Ohio began molesting her when she was 13, and continued until she graduated from high school five years later. Like so many young victims of powerful, prestigious predators, the experience left her feeling confused — in her own words, “very guilty, ashamed, dirty and embarrassed.”
She was traumatized into silence, and another decade would pass before she could confront what had happened to her. After reading a story about another abusive priest that triggered repressed memories and made her physically ill, she began to address her own need for healing, and “learned to care for the wounded child still living in my soul.”
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