Denial is a funny thing, isn’t it? I’m sitting at a dinner party, freshly wounded from a failed relationship, and someone is talking drunkenly about Jimmy Savile. “Well all those people who have come forward as victims, I bet it’s just for the money, isn’t it? Those people just want attention.” And at that moment, something inside me shatters. I fall through the glass floor of my own denial and remember that I was sexually abused. By my grandad, starting from around the age of five or so.
Part of my mind reels, trying to stagger away from the memories. No, no – it shrills desperately – it didn’t happen didn’t happen didn’t happen.
It did though, of course. According to statistics from the NSPCC one in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. One in three children who have been sexually abused by an adult don’t tell anyone. Late one evening, at the age of seven, I remember finally plucking up the courage to tell mum that granddad kept touching me there. She immediately sent me back to bed and we never said anything else about it. My parents still invited him round for Sunday lunch, just as before, and he still abused me afterwards.
The experiences are often internalised, leading to overwhelming shame, self-loathing, worthlessness, fear and disgust
It’s two years after the dinner party. I’m sitting in a horseshoe with nine other women, in a drab room in north-west London. The group is called “Recovering from Childhood Abuse”. It’s probably the first time, for all of us, that we feel we’re not suffering alone. As the weeks progress, we swap stories. One woman was gang-raped at gunpoint by members of her extended family. Another is tortured by her mother. Most of us are on anti-psychotics. Most of us are on benefits. We all have a string of failed relationships behind us. The experience of abuse is powerfully defiling – your wellbeing is shockingly outraged. These experiences are often internalised and lead to overwhelming feelings of shame, self-loathing, worthlessness, fear and disgust. Early abuse cripples your sense of self and blights your capacity to trust. Often the only way a child can make any sense of the situation is by assuming they are doing something wrong. That they are somehow to blame. This is, of course, inaccurate. The survival mechanism of self-blame often means that anger churns and boils beneath the surface. It’s difficult for a child to develop confidence in the world if an adult – a grown-up who is not just physically huge in comparison, but also in terms of resources, status and significance – chooses to victimise them in this way.
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I’m astonished by the structure of the support group, our syllabus of healing. The two amazing women who run it are pragmatic, compassionate, safe. There is also a manual, published by the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre. In it, we read: “If you were abused as a child, you may have been denied the opportunity to learn that you were precious, that you deserved love, that you were special and that you were OK just the way you were. You may not have been given the chance to feel good about yourself.”
As a child, the trauma and torment forced me into a fantasy world. I collected photos and pictures in a desperate attempt to build highly detailed inner landscapes I could escape to.
Then, growing up, I became a wildly self-destructive teenager. I abused alcohol, self-harmed with razor blades, narrowly avoided expulsion from school and became outrageously promiscuous. This behaviour dulled pain in the short term, but ultimately attracted more censure and seemed to further confirm all the distressing beliefs I had about myself. I must just be bad – worthless, unlovable, disgusting.
At 16 I went to art college, full of the romantic notion that if you didn’t fit in the real world, you could find acceptance at art school. But I was too weird, even for art school. The feelings of otherness, of being outside and inferior, still plagued me. But making things – pictures, stories, clothes – continued to be a refuge and a coping mechanism.
Meditating with the furious desire to fix yourself is a tragic misdirection of energy
I first tried counselling for depression and anxiety at the age of 25, following a break-up and an enforced move back to the family home. At the time, I was so frozen in depression, so terrified and conflicted, that counselling felt like an excavation – unearthing the buried shrapnel of repressed pain. My lovely counsellor encouraged me to try mindfulness meditation. It was not a success. I was so ferociously at odds with myself that there could be no peace or acceptance anywhere. We briefly mentioned the abuse but I couldn’t talk about it. In the end, with her encouragement, I managed to write down the experiences for her. I saw her once more afterwards and then ended our sessions.
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A couple of years on and I was again in therapy, but not talking about the abuse. I’d sort of managed to bury it again. This time it was cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). We focused on compassion, and again on mindfulness meditation. Through those sessions, as the candle flame of compassion started to flicker, it began to illuminate the depths of my longing and distress. We practised a compassionate visualisation exercise, and formed a compassionate image. (Mine was Aslan from the 1988 BBC adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). The meditation frequently led to tears. But the tears were a release. I started meditating more often, and became increasingly aware of the inner roar of self-hate. The barrage of self-criticism that was the white noise of my life.
Things improved and I (paradoxically) became suicidal. I lied to my therapist about the severity of the depression. But the CBT eventually led to some positive changes – I moved back to London and got a book deal – I was still escaping into heightened imaginative worlds. I tried internet dating, fell in love, got dumped.
And here we are again, back at the dinner party – with the talk about Jimmy Savile.
After crashing through the denial into something like a nervous breakdown, I was lucky enough to see an excellent GP who referred me to the support group. There was a year-long wait for the group to start, but that was spent in one-to-one therapy, and in crying. I cried for most of the year. I was still meditating, it was getting easier, but lots of the meditation time was still spent lost in labyrinthine thinking. Anyone who has experienced the deeply soothing acceptance of mindfulness meditation knows that meditating with the furious desire to fix yourself is a tragic misdirection of energy.
In the new year, the group finally started. During our first session, we discussed our fears about entering therapy.
In my diary that day, I wrote: “As we compiled the lists of fears, I realised they’re all exactly the same as my own feelings – the inability to trust, the drive to self-isolate, the self-destructive sabotaging of relationships. They feel it too. They’re the same. It’s something that comes from the abuse. IT’S NOT MY FAULT.”
This felt like a revelation.
Together, we tried to come to terms with what we’d lost – a loving and nurturing childhood, important people who had ignored our suffering and tacitly allowed us to be abused. We wrote letters (which weren’t sent) to verbalise our sense of rage and grief. We worked on our negative and distressing core beliefs which had been forged in childhood. We looked at thinking biases, self-criticism and reframing our thoughts in a compassionate way. At first, we all blamed ourselves for the abuse, but gradually we learned to apportion appropriate blame. The blame for abuse always lies with the abuser, never the victim. We found it easy to be compassionate with each other, and then it became easier to extend compassion to ourselves. For all of us, I think, it was the first time we felt truly understood. Truly cared for and supported. Those women saved me.
These days I can finally meditate and be (comparatively) at peace with myself – it’s such a relief.
Part of the healing came from the realisation that the morass of distress which felt so unique and personal is all being lived by other victims and survivors, too. It isn’t our fault and we are not to blame. There are kind people who understand. Nothing can ever erase an abusive childhood, but healing is possible. We don’t need to struggle alone any more.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2015-07-16 03:19:022015-07-16 03:19:02The day I realised the child abuse I suffered wasn’t my fault, The Guardian
Because the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” is a “living document” open to differing interpretations, those in charge of implementing the charter at the diocesan level face a variety of challenges, according to the head of the bishops’ national office.
“We’re dealing with a charter that is loose in the way it is written … in order to respect the bishop’s right to govern his own diocese,” said Deacon Bernie Nojadera, executive director of the Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington.
“We’re 12 years into the (sex abuse) crisis and we’ve done quite a bit to get to where we are,” he added, referring to the first audit after the 2002 adoption of the charter by the bishops in Dallas. “But there are always things to learn.”
Deacon Nojadera said U.S. Catholics at every level need to guard against “a tendency for complacency” toward the sex abuse crisis.
“We have established procedures and policies, and we think that we have that in place,” he told Catholic News Service. “There might not be that ongoing mindfulness and certain small things might start to slide. They are not really paid attention to the way they should.”
In a separate interview, Francesco Cesareo, chairman of the National Review Board, echoed Deacon Nojadera’s concerns. The board is the all-lay group that monitors dioceses’ performance in dealing with sexually abusive priests and creating a safe environment for children throughout the church.
“We have made significant strides in the church to deal with questions of sexual abuse, and many aspects of the charter are now instituted in dioceses and parishes,” said Cesareo, who is president of Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. “But we have to make sure that we pay attention to the details in the charter and be diligent.”
In a June talk to the U.S. bishops in St. Louis, he outlined a number of recommendations to boost the charter’s effectiveness and clarify its requirements. Some of those recommendations might be incorporated into proposed charter changes that will come before the bishops in November;a draft of the proposed changes has not been made public.
Asked which of his recommendations he considered the most crucial for the bishops to adopt, Cesareo said he believes every allegation of sex abuse or boundary violations should be presented to the diocesan review board.
“This allows the bishop not to have to rely on a gatekeeper to determine if an allegation needs” further investigation, he said. “Every allegation is given that same level of scrutiny. … In our review of cases that went wrong, what we found often is that allegations did not go before the diocesan review board.”
Another problematic area is that the charter calls for diocesan review boards to meet “regularly” but regularly is not defined, Cesareo said. “In many dioceses the board meets quarterly, others only once a year,” he said. “Some only meet when there is an actual allegation.”
But for review boards to work effectively, they “have to come to understand their role and know how to effectively implement that role,” he added. A meeting might be scheduled just to review diocesan policies and to discuss the board’s role, he said.
Another challenge facing the bishops’ child protection efforts is budgetary concerns, Deacon Nojadera said. “Some of our colleagues are wearing four or five hats,” he said. “They are trying to do what they can with a limited budget.”
Only a few church jurisdictions have the resources that the Archdiocese of Chicago, for example, devotes to its child protection efforts. Its Office for the Protection of Children and Young People has four divisions — child abuse investigations and review, office of assistance ministry, safe environment office, and prayer and penance program — and a staff of 10.
But in some dioceses, the chancellor or school superintendent might also head up the local church’s child protection office. In others, Deacon Nojadera said, it might be “a one-person operation” or an office entirely staffed by part-time volunteers. “It runs the gamut,” he said.
Eastern-rite Catholic dioceses, called eparchies, face special challenges in complying with the charter’s requirements because they are spread out geographically across the country, making it difficult to conduct mandated training sessions for clergy, volunteers and children in the eparchy.
In 2014, the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, and five eparchies did not participate in an annual audit measuring their compliance with the charter. Three of the eparchies that did not participate last year plan to take part in the audits in 2015, Cesareo told the bishops in June.
Under canon law, dioceses and eparchies cannot be required to participate in the audit, but it is strongly recommended.
The Diocese of Lincoln said in a 2008 statement that after participating in the initial USCCB audit, the diocese “has exercised its option to refrain from participation in the audit, as its application, though perhaps helpful in some dioceses, has not proven to be so in the Diocese of Lincoln.”
Deacon Nojadera said the USCCB has been encouraging larger dioceses to “share resources and talents” with smaller, budget-challenged dioceses and eparchies. In addition, diocesan officials can network and share ideas at an annual conference, he said.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2015-07-16 03:14:012015-07-16 03:14:01NANCY FRAZIER O'BRIEN , Twelve years in, sex abuse charter faces ongoing challenges, Catholic Philly
Whoopi Goldberg admitted that the evidence against comedian Bill Cosby is overwhelming on Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” with the comedian saying, “If this is to be tried in the court of public opinion, I got to say all of the information that’s out there kind of points to guilt.”
As recently as last week, Goldberg has maintained that Cosby should be considered innocent until proven guilty. But during a discussion with ABC News’ chief legal analyst Dan Abrams, he explained that there is virtually no legal recourse at this point for his accusers as the statute of limitations has expired for them to press criminal charges.
“I always thought that rape cases were open-ended,” Goldberg said. “What we have learned is there’s no recourse for these women except what they’re doing.”
“Now, again, I always thought they would have the opportunity to take him to court,” Goldberg said. “I do think that we can say to women if something happens, don’t wait because what waiting does, it can make it harder to prove your case. If you want to get an a– … bonehead off the street, if you want to get him off the street, we need you to step out and if you step out then he can be put away.”
“You got a serial rapist, he’s been on the streets for 30 years,” Goldberg continued. “I have to say I thought that yeah, here’s all the information, take his a– to jail. I find out from you that that’s not possible. so I can’t say any more innocent until proven guilty because there’s no way to prove it.”
Both Abrams and Goldberg encouraged people to write to their legislators to reform state rape statutes. “You say to your legislators, ‘Rape is a crime that shouldn’t have a statute of limitations. Women should be able to come forward when they decide to. They shouldn’t be forced into a particular time frame,'” Abrams said.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2015-07-15 03:25:532015-07-15 03:25:53Joe Otterson, Whoopi Goldberg Flip-Flops on Bill Cosby: 'All of the Information … Points to Guilt', MSN
Survivors of assault and abuse are sharing their experiences on a powerful new Tumblr, Lasting Impact.
Founder Alison, who asked that her last name remain private, created Lasting Impact to raise awareness about the long-lasting impact that incidents of sexual assault, domestic violence, and emotional and physical abuse have on those who experience them. The project is also a place for survivors to share stories of healing.
“As a survivor of childhood sexual assault, I struggled for many years with mental health issues that impacted almost every aspect of my daily life and left me feeling confused and alone,” Alison told The Huffington Post. “It wasn’t until I began to connect with other survivors that I came to realize that this is a common and valid response to trauma, and it was only then that I truly began to heal.”
The Tumblr entries come from survivors who write in to share how their experiences affected and changed them. Some also share how they have healed from their traumas and found hope for the future.
“Survivors often face a myriad of psychological, emotional, social, and physical challenges following an assault, and I wanted to expand the conversation about sexual assault and domestic violence to include the complex, long-term toll trauma takes on an individual,” Alison told HuffPost.
Alison also hopes that the Tumblr will be a positive place for survivors.
“While the campaign focuses primarily on the challenges faced by survivors, it also shows that we all have an incredible capacity for courage, resilience, and growth,” she told HuffPost. “Survivors’ stories do not have to begin and end with fear, violation, and despair. It is my hope that when survivors read these stories, they recognize that their experiences are valid and understand that no matter what they are feeling, they are never alone.”
Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/this-is-the-lasting-impact-of-sexual-assault-and-domestic-violence_n_7655684.html
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2015-07-14 13:11:372015-07-14 13:11:37Nina Bahadur, 9 Harrowing Images That Capture The Lasting Impact Of Sexual Assault, The Huffington Post
Well now. I recently chanced on a Huffington Post story that came out in mid May but which was so gripping, it thought that it deserves comment even six weeks later. Consider this a kind of a GetReligion “file of guilt” post.
If the headline: “Buried in Baltimore: The Mysterious Murder of a Nun Who Knew Too Much” doesn’t get you reading the nearly 7,500-word story, nothing can.
Yes, it’s about clergy sex abuse and no, we shouldn’t ever be tired of reading about these stories. Because in this case, a nun found out about the abuse and paid for it with her life. Start here:
On a frigid day in November 1969, Father Joseph Maskell, the chaplain of Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, called a student into his office and suggested they go for a drive. When the final bell rang at 2:40 p.m., Jean Hargadon Wehner, a 16-year-old junior at the all-girls Catholic school, followed the priest to the parking lot and climbed into the passenger seat of his light blue Buick Roadmaster.
It was not unusual for Maskell to give students rides home or take them to doctor’s appointments during the school day. The burly, charismatic priest, then 30 years old, had been the chief spiritual and psychological counselor at Keough for two years and was well-known in the community…This time, though, Maskell didn’t bring Wehner home. He navigated his car past the Catholic hospital and industrial buildings that surrounded Keough’s campus and drove toward the outskirts of the city. Eventually, he stopped at a garbage dump, far from any homes or businesses. Maskell stepped out of the car, and the blonde, freckled teenager followed him across a vast expanse of dirt toward a dark green dumpster.
It was then that she saw the body crumpled on the ground.
The body was that of a nun who had found out that Maskell was raping and abusing teenaged girls at the school.
The story goes on to talk about a Baltimore police detective who suspected the killer was a priest but that the archdiocese put pressure on his department to let the case go.
In Baltimore in 1969, (the detective) said, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to investigate a Catholic priest for any crime. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is the oldest in the United States, and the church considers it to be the premier Catholic jurisdiction in the country. More than half the city’s residents identify as Catholic. According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Baltimore City prosecutors have charged only three of the 37 Baltimore priests who have been accused of sexual abuse since 1980. Just two of those priests were convicted, and one of those convictions was overturned in 2005.
Decades passed and the nun’s murderer was never found.
Meanwhile, Wehner, the girl at the start of this article, filed suit against the archdiocese and the priest in 1992 on sex abuse allegations. She also went to police for the first time to tell about the priest showing her the corpse of the murdered nun when she was a 16-year-old, a story picked up by the Baltimore Sun. Wehner’s attorneys found about 30 girls who had been abused or knew of it during the late 1960s but the priest was never convicted.
Why? Maryland had an extremely short window in which a sex abuse victim can file a civil lawsuit. It has to be three years from the time it happened or the time when they discovered it and back in the 1990s, the victim had to have filed such a suit by the time they were 21. Maryland upped that age limit to 25 in 2003 but most abuse victims don’t gather the mental fortitude or stamina to report abuse until at least their 30s.
An aside here: Maryland’s refusal to raise the age limit for civil claims is partly due to pressure from the Catholic Church. I personally encountered this while reporting on a sex-abuse victim who wanted to sue the Washington archdiocese, which is just down the road from Baltimore. By the time he had come to terms with his trauma, he was well past 25 and powerless to go after his abuser. I began to hear about the archdiocese personally lobbying state delegates in Annapolis to go soft on the church. Some Maryland politicians have been trying to change the age limit for years but the church fights that to this day. Even the jaw-dropping testimony this past spring by a Maryland state delegate telling of the rapes and beatings he endured as a child failed to get the state legislature to change its mind. A major reason? The opposition of the Maryland Catholic Conference, which includes both archdioceses.
Back to the story of the nun’s murder: The mystery was reignited in 2013 when some of the women who attended Keough teamed up with a retired Baltimore Sun reporter to see if they could get to the bottom of it all. The story says the investigation now has its own private Facebook page (which I could not locate any sign of) and this Huffington Post piece was the latest salvo at trying to get some justice for the slain nun and the abused girls. The article does give the archdiocese room to respond and adds that one of the victims was paid $40,000 as part of an abuse settlement and got an apology from the archdiocese.
Having done similar reporting in the past in the same geographical area, I’m impressed by the amount of people the reporter got to go on the record. One may or may not agree with other work HuffPo has done on the sex abuse crisis, but this one was a winner.
The story threads a clear narrative through a confusing thicket of events stretching back more than 40 years. In stories like these, the reporter always knows a lot more than what gets into print. There were probably names she could have used, things she could have written, but she may have lacked that extra piece of proof to withstand a libel claim.
What the reporter did get in shows a stunning amount of work with a group of people notorious for being afraid to talk with the media. I don’t think most readers have a clue as to the personal toll these stories take on a reporter and the determination many journalists feel in wanting to see justice done. I remember looking into a similar story several years ago about a high official in the Catholic Church whose crimes never made it into print.
Several journalists knew about him and, like me, tried to get his victims to talk. They would not, fearing they would end up like the slain nun. When I expressed my frustration to some Catholic friends, “What difference does it make?” they asked. “So many years have passed and you will destroy all the good this man has done.”
This Huffington Post story illustrates that it does make a difference to bring wrong to light, no matter how long the passage of time. It brings closure to the victims or their children so they do not go to their graves thinking the abuse was their fault.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2015-07-10 14:36:072015-07-10 14:36:07Julia Dulin, Huffington Post digs up a solid story on abuse in Baltimore archdiocese, Get Religion
With the latest revelations about Bill Cosby arising out of a deposition in a civil lawsuit from a decade ago, the country is talking about sexual assault, celebrity, and what to do about the problem. This is an important conversation.
With dozens of women having come forward alleging that Cosby drugged them and then sexually assaulted them, and some like Janice Dickinson and several others suing for defamation after he denied their allegations, there are few people left who are actively defending Cosby. There are some die-hards like Whoopi Goldberg, but for those familiar with patterns of sex abuse and assault, this story line is all too familiar.
The American instinct is to hear this most recent information and immediately ask about criminal charges. We believe in putting things right through the law. Sadly, just as with so many child sex abuse victims, though, the vast majority of these sex assault victims are cut out of that system by statutes of limitations that favor predators rather than the vulnerable, as I discuss here. But the statutes of limitations are just one part of the story.
Why Are There So Many Secrets About Sexual Assault?
Rape shield laws have protected the identities of victims, but the identities of perpetrators have also been kept beneath the radar through a combination of factors.
First, as mentioned above, the statutes of limitations often favor the predator over the victim. That keeps claims out of court, which is the most reliable pathway to public disclosure.
Second, prosecutors have prosecutorial discretion. They cannot possibly charge every sexual predator brought to their attention. They need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, as well as corroborating evidence, and they have necessary discretion to reject cases that are likely to be losers in court (even if they completely believe the victim(s)).
Third, these crimes are fraught with humiliation and shame, sometimes leading survivors to choose to not press charges or to keep civil proceedings in the dark. It is not that they want to keep the identity of the predator secret as much as they don’t want their own identity released, or they are not in a place of strength to handle public disclosure.
Fourth, until relatively recently, judges and lawyers often believed that these were singular cases and that a perpetrator might well only assault one victim. The phenomenon of serial predation is a relatively new arena for study and public education. If the rapists weren’t likely to do it again, there was little need to publicly disclose their identities. Now we know differently, but the instinct to secrecy on these issues dies hard.
Enter the new information on Cosby arising out of his deposition in a civil case ten years ago. How is it that so many women could accuse Cosby, but this near-confession was suppressed for 10 years? The answer is that courts too often seal records in sex abuse and assault cases to help the powerful, whether it be a religious or nonprofit institution or a celebrity.
Another Frontier in the Fight Against Sexual Assault: Sealed Admissions in Civil Cases
These latest revelations raise a new topic of discourse in the war against sex assault: the sealing of court records. The only reason the world knows that Cosby made this damning admission is because the Associated Press sought the records. There was a confidential settlement agreement binding the survivor, and therefore she could not reveal the information. For all those survivors out there who might be contemplating walking away from a confidential agreement to reveal their attacker to the world, think about that carefully, because you can be sued for breach of contract as well as asked to return any damages you received as part of the settlement. The survivor in this case was saved from that decision, because the AP stepped up and because the court’s hands were free to release the information under state law.
Thus, this is a relatively unusual case, because according to the court, the settlement agreement was not approved by the court, and therefore the court was under no obligation to keep it confidential. In addition, the law of the state permits sealed records to be released after two years if the court finds that there is a public purpose in the release; it did so find, citing the fact that Cosby is a “public moralist.”
Cosby’s lawyers argued that the records should not be released because they would cause embarrassment. That argument is what has kept so many admissions in the dark.
Few know how often courts are asked to seal the proceedings in sex assault and sex abuse cases. Religious entities, schools, and organizations that have been sued for sex abuse routinely ask to have the proceedings under seal. Why? Again, to avoid public embarrassment. And courts for decades have routinely granted such requests, reasoning that these are “private” crimes, that the public need not know, and out of deference to the powerful like celebrities, bishops, and politicians. Professional courtesy in a sense, I suppose, though it now seems like a deal with the devil.
Of course, we now know for a fact that the public does need to know who the sexual predators are. It is time for a victim-centered system wherein sealing of records relates solely to the needs of the victim, and where the risk of “embarrassment” to the defendant is presumed to be an inadequate reason to protect the powerful.
The Role of the Press
There was a time when the press, like the courts, nodded in silence as the powerful asked for anonymity when accused of horrific sex crimes. That day passed once the Boston Globe uncovered the cover up of abuse by Catholic bishops and the waterfall of information on abuse by the powerful and those in important institutions started flowing.
Had the Associated Press not pursued these records, Cosby’s admission would have remained mired in legal limbo. The press has played a critical role in revealing the sweep of sexual assault and abuse nationwide from the churches to the Boy Scouts to Penn State to Horace Mann and even, finally, families. It was the press that pushed the revelations about Josh Duggar to the surface, opening the door to justice for at least one of his victims.
So if you are wondering why you never knew that sex assault and abuse were so common, the answer is because we constructed a system that suppressed that knowledge. We are finally unpacking it, and the Cosby revelations wrung out of a released civil lawsuit deposition are another big step in the right direction.
Full article: http://hamilton-griffin.com/the-story-behind-the-cosby-story-sexual-assault-and-secrets-justia-com/
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The day I realised the child abuse I suffered wasn’t my fault, The Guardian
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformDenial is a funny thing, isn’t it? I’m sitting at a dinner party, freshly wounded from a failed relationship, and someone is talking drunkenly about Jimmy Savile. “Well all those people who have come forward as victims, I bet it’s just for the money, isn’t it? Those people just want attention.” And at that moment, something inside me shatters. I fall through the glass floor of my own denial and remember that I was sexually abused. By my grandad, starting from around the age of five or so.
Part of my mind reels, trying to stagger away from the memories. No, no – it shrills desperately – it didn’t happen didn’t happen didn’t happen.
It did though, of course. According to statistics from the NSPCC one in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. One in three children who have been sexually abused by an adult don’t tell anyone. Late one evening, at the age of seven, I remember finally plucking up the courage to tell mum that granddad kept touching me there. She immediately sent me back to bed and we never said anything else about it. My parents still invited him round for Sunday lunch, just as before, and he still abused me afterwards.
The experiences are often internalised, leading to overwhelming shame, self-loathing, worthlessness, fear and disgust
It’s two years after the dinner party. I’m sitting in a horseshoe with nine other women, in a drab room in north-west London. The group is called “Recovering from Childhood Abuse”. It’s probably the first time, for all of us, that we feel we’re not suffering alone. As the weeks progress, we swap stories. One woman was gang-raped at gunpoint by members of her extended family. Another is tortured by her mother. Most of us are on anti-psychotics. Most of us are on benefits. We all have a string of failed relationships behind us. The experience of abuse is powerfully defiling – your wellbeing is shockingly outraged. These experiences are often internalised and lead to overwhelming feelings of shame, self-loathing, worthlessness, fear and disgust. Early abuse cripples your sense of self and blights your capacity to trust. Often the only way a child can make any sense of the situation is by assuming they are doing something wrong. That they are somehow to blame. This is, of course, inaccurate. The survival mechanism of self-blame often means that anger churns and boils beneath the surface. It’s difficult for a child to develop confidence in the world if an adult – a grown-up who is not just physically huge in comparison, but also in terms of resources, status and significance – chooses to victimise them in this way.
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I’m astonished by the structure of the support group, our syllabus of healing. The two amazing women who run it are pragmatic, compassionate, safe. There is also a manual, published by the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre. In it, we read: “If you were abused as a child, you may have been denied the opportunity to learn that you were precious, that you deserved love, that you were special and that you were OK just the way you were. You may not have been given the chance to feel good about yourself.”
As a child, the trauma and torment forced me into a fantasy world. I collected photos and pictures in a desperate attempt to build highly detailed inner landscapes I could escape to.
Then, growing up, I became a wildly self-destructive teenager. I abused alcohol, self-harmed with razor blades, narrowly avoided expulsion from school and became outrageously promiscuous. This behaviour dulled pain in the short term, but ultimately attracted more censure and seemed to further confirm all the distressing beliefs I had about myself. I must just be bad – worthless, unlovable, disgusting.
At 16 I went to art college, full of the romantic notion that if you didn’t fit in the real world, you could find acceptance at art school. But I was too weird, even for art school. The feelings of otherness, of being outside and inferior, still plagued me. But making things – pictures, stories, clothes – continued to be a refuge and a coping mechanism.
Meditating with the furious desire to fix yourself is a tragic misdirection of energy
I first tried counselling for depression and anxiety at the age of 25, following a break-up and an enforced move back to the family home. At the time, I was so frozen in depression, so terrified and conflicted, that counselling felt like an excavation – unearthing the buried shrapnel of repressed pain. My lovely counsellor encouraged me to try mindfulness meditation. It was not a success. I was so ferociously at odds with myself that there could be no peace or acceptance anywhere. We briefly mentioned the abuse but I couldn’t talk about it. In the end, with her encouragement, I managed to write down the experiences for her. I saw her once more afterwards and then ended our sessions.
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A couple of years on and I was again in therapy, but not talking about the abuse. I’d sort of managed to bury it again. This time it was cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). We focused on compassion, and again on mindfulness meditation. Through those sessions, as the candle flame of compassion started to flicker, it began to illuminate the depths of my longing and distress. We practised a compassionate visualisation exercise, and formed a compassionate image. (Mine was Aslan from the 1988 BBC adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). The meditation frequently led to tears. But the tears were a release. I started meditating more often, and became increasingly aware of the inner roar of self-hate. The barrage of self-criticism that was the white noise of my life.
Things improved and I (paradoxically) became suicidal. I lied to my therapist about the severity of the depression. But the CBT eventually led to some positive changes – I moved back to London and got a book deal – I was still escaping into heightened imaginative worlds. I tried internet dating, fell in love, got dumped.
And here we are again, back at the dinner party – with the talk about Jimmy Savile.
After crashing through the denial into something like a nervous breakdown, I was lucky enough to see an excellent GP who referred me to the support group. There was a year-long wait for the group to start, but that was spent in one-to-one therapy, and in crying. I cried for most of the year. I was still meditating, it was getting easier, but lots of the meditation time was still spent lost in labyrinthine thinking. Anyone who has experienced the deeply soothing acceptance of mindfulness meditation knows that meditating with the furious desire to fix yourself is a tragic misdirection of energy.
In the new year, the group finally started. During our first session, we discussed our fears about entering therapy.
In my diary that day, I wrote: “As we compiled the lists of fears, I realised they’re all exactly the same as my own feelings – the inability to trust, the drive to self-isolate, the self-destructive sabotaging of relationships. They feel it too. They’re the same. It’s something that comes from the abuse. IT’S NOT MY FAULT.”
This felt like a revelation.
Together, we tried to come to terms with what we’d lost – a loving and nurturing childhood, important people who had ignored our suffering and tacitly allowed us to be abused. We wrote letters (which weren’t sent) to verbalise our sense of rage and grief. We worked on our negative and distressing core beliefs which had been forged in childhood. We looked at thinking biases, self-criticism and reframing our thoughts in a compassionate way. At first, we all blamed ourselves for the abuse, but gradually we learned to apportion appropriate blame. The blame for abuse always lies with the abuser, never the victim. We found it easy to be compassionate with each other, and then it became easier to extend compassion to ourselves. For all of us, I think, it was the first time we felt truly understood. Truly cared for and supported. Those women saved me.
These days I can finally meditate and be (comparatively) at peace with myself – it’s such a relief.
Part of the healing came from the realisation that the morass of distress which felt so unique and personal is all being lived by other victims and survivors, too. It isn’t our fault and we are not to blame. There are kind people who understand. Nothing can ever erase an abusive childhood, but healing is possible. We don’t need to struggle alone any more.
The day I realised the child abuse I suffered wasn’t my fault _ Anonymous _ Comment is free _ The Guardian
NANCY FRAZIER O’BRIEN , Twelve years in, sex abuse charter faces ongoing challenges, Catholic Philly
/in Pennsylvania /by SOL ReformBecause the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” is a “living document” open to differing interpretations, those in charge of implementing the charter at the diocesan level face a variety of challenges, according to the head of the bishops’ national office.
“We’re dealing with a charter that is loose in the way it is written … in order to respect the bishop’s right to govern his own diocese,” said Deacon Bernie Nojadera, executive director of the Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington.
“We’re 12 years into the (sex abuse) crisis and we’ve done quite a bit to get to where we are,” he added, referring to the first audit after the 2002 adoption of the charter by the bishops in Dallas. “But there are always things to learn.”
Deacon Nojadera said U.S. Catholics at every level need to guard against “a tendency for complacency” toward the sex abuse crisis.
“We have established procedures and policies, and we think that we have that in place,” he told Catholic News Service. “There might not be that ongoing mindfulness and certain small things might start to slide. They are not really paid attention to the way they should.”
In a separate interview, Francesco Cesareo, chairman of the National Review Board, echoed Deacon Nojadera’s concerns. The board is the all-lay group that monitors dioceses’ performance in dealing with sexually abusive priests and creating a safe environment for children throughout the church.
“We have made significant strides in the church to deal with questions of sexual abuse, and many aspects of the charter are now instituted in dioceses and parishes,” said Cesareo, who is president of Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. “But we have to make sure that we pay attention to the details in the charter and be diligent.”
In a June talk to the U.S. bishops in St. Louis, he outlined a number of recommendations to boost the charter’s effectiveness and clarify its requirements. Some of those recommendations might be incorporated into proposed charter changes that will come before the bishops in November;a draft of the proposed changes has not been made public.
Asked which of his recommendations he considered the most crucial for the bishops to adopt, Cesareo said he believes every allegation of sex abuse or boundary violations should be presented to the diocesan review board.
“This allows the bishop not to have to rely on a gatekeeper to determine if an allegation needs” further investigation, he said. “Every allegation is given that same level of scrutiny. … In our review of cases that went wrong, what we found often is that allegations did not go before the diocesan review board.”
Another problematic area is that the charter calls for diocesan review boards to meet “regularly” but regularly is not defined, Cesareo said. “In many dioceses the board meets quarterly, others only once a year,” he said. “Some only meet when there is an actual allegation.”
But for review boards to work effectively, they “have to come to understand their role and know how to effectively implement that role,” he added. A meeting might be scheduled just to review diocesan policies and to discuss the board’s role, he said.
Another challenge facing the bishops’ child protection efforts is budgetary concerns, Deacon Nojadera said. “Some of our colleagues are wearing four or five hats,” he said. “They are trying to do what they can with a limited budget.”
Only a few church jurisdictions have the resources that the Archdiocese of Chicago, for example, devotes to its child protection efforts. Its Office for the Protection of Children and Young People has four divisions — child abuse investigations and review, office of assistance ministry, safe environment office, and prayer and penance program — and a staff of 10.
But in some dioceses, the chancellor or school superintendent might also head up the local church’s child protection office. In others, Deacon Nojadera said, it might be “a one-person operation” or an office entirely staffed by part-time volunteers. “It runs the gamut,” he said.
Eastern-rite Catholic dioceses, called eparchies, face special challenges in complying with the charter’s requirements because they are spread out geographically across the country, making it difficult to conduct mandated training sessions for clergy, volunteers and children in the eparchy.
In 2014, the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, and five eparchies did not participate in an annual audit measuring their compliance with the charter. Three of the eparchies that did not participate last year plan to take part in the audits in 2015, Cesareo told the bishops in June.
Under canon law, dioceses and eparchies cannot be required to participate in the audit, but it is strongly recommended.
The Diocese of Lincoln said in a 2008 statement that after participating in the initial USCCB audit, the diocese “has exercised its option to refrain from participation in the audit, as its application, though perhaps helpful in some dioceses, has not proven to be so in the Diocese of Lincoln.”
Deacon Nojadera said the USCCB has been encouraging larger dioceses to “share resources and talents” with smaller, budget-challenged dioceses and eparchies. In addition, diocesan officials can network and share ideas at an annual conference, he said.
What Newly-Unsealed Testimony Could Mean For Bill Cosby And His Accusers _ Here & Now
Joe Otterson, Whoopi Goldberg Flip-Flops on Bill Cosby: ‘All of the Information … Points to Guilt’, MSN
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformWhoopi Goldberg admitted that the evidence against comedian Bill Cosby is overwhelming on Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” with the comedian saying, “If this is to be tried in the court of public opinion, I got to say all of the information that’s out there kind of points to guilt.”
As recently as last week, Goldberg has maintained that Cosby should be considered innocent until proven guilty. But during a discussion with ABC News’ chief legal analyst Dan Abrams, he explained that there is virtually no legal recourse at this point for his accusers as the statute of limitations has expired for them to press criminal charges.
“I always thought that rape cases were open-ended,” Goldberg said. “What we have learned is there’s no recourse for these women except what they’re doing.”
“Now, again, I always thought they would have the opportunity to take him to court,” Goldberg said. “I do think that we can say to women if something happens, don’t wait because what waiting does, it can make it harder to prove your case. If you want to get an a– … bonehead off the street, if you want to get him off the street, we need you to step out and if you step out then he can be put away.”
“You got a serial rapist, he’s been on the streets for 30 years,” Goldberg continued. “I have to say I thought that yeah, here’s all the information, take his a– to jail. I find out from you that that’s not possible. so I can’t say any more innocent until proven guilty because there’s no way to prove it.”
Both Abrams and Goldberg encouraged people to write to their legislators to reform state rape statutes. “You say to your legislators, ‘Rape is a crime that shouldn’t have a statute of limitations. Women should be able to come forward when they decide to. They shouldn’t be forced into a particular time frame,'” Abrams said.
Whoopi Goldberg Flip-Flops on Bill Cosby_ ‘All of the Information … Points to Guilt’
Nina Bahadur, 9 Harrowing Images That Capture The Lasting Impact Of Sexual Assault, The Huffington Post
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformFounder Alison, who asked that her last name remain private, created Lasting Impact to raise awareness about the long-lasting impact that incidents of sexual assault, domestic violence, and emotional and physical abuse have on those who experience them. The project is also a place for survivors to share stories of healing.
“As a survivor of childhood sexual assault, I struggled for many years with mental health issues that impacted almost every aspect of my daily life and left me feeling confused and alone,” Alison told The Huffington Post. “It wasn’t until I began to connect with other survivors that I came to realize that this is a common and valid response to trauma, and it was only then that I truly began to heal.”
The Tumblr entries come from survivors who write in to share how their experiences affected and changed them. Some also share how they have healed from their traumas and found hope for the future.
“Survivors often face a myriad of psychological, emotional, social, and physical challenges following an assault, and I wanted to expand the conversation about sexual assault and domestic violence to include the complex, long-term toll trauma takes on an individual,” Alison told HuffPost.
Alison also hopes that the Tumblr will be a positive place for survivors.
“While the campaign focuses primarily on the challenges faced by survivors, it also shows that we all have an incredible capacity for courage, resilience, and growth,” she told HuffPost. “Survivors’ stories do not have to begin and end with fear, violation, and despair. It is my hope that when survivors read these stories, they recognize that their experiences are valid and understand that no matter what they are feeling, they are never alone.”
Need help? In the U.S., visit the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline operated by RAINN. For more resources, visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website
Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/this-is-the-lasting-impact-of-sexual-assault-and-domestic-violence_n_7655684.html
Julia Dulin, Huffington Post digs up a solid story on abuse in Baltimore archdiocese, Get Religion
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformWell now. I recently chanced on a Huffington Post story that came out in mid May but which was so gripping, it thought that it deserves comment even six weeks later. Consider this a kind of a GetReligion “file of guilt” post.
If the headline: “Buried in Baltimore: The Mysterious Murder of a Nun Who Knew Too Much” doesn’t get you reading the nearly 7,500-word story, nothing can.
Yes, it’s about clergy sex abuse and no, we shouldn’t ever be tired of reading about these stories. Because in this case, a nun found out about the abuse and paid for it with her life. Start here:
On a frigid day in November 1969, Father Joseph Maskell, the chaplain of Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, called a student into his office and suggested they go for a drive. When the final bell rang at 2:40 p.m., Jean Hargadon Wehner, a 16-year-old junior at the all-girls Catholic school, followed the priest to the parking lot and climbed into the passenger seat of his light blue Buick Roadmaster.
It was not unusual for Maskell to give students rides home or take them to doctor’s appointments during the school day. The burly, charismatic priest, then 30 years old, had been the chief spiritual and psychological counselor at Keough for two years and was well-known in the community…This time, though, Maskell didn’t bring Wehner home. He navigated his car past the Catholic hospital and industrial buildings that surrounded Keough’s campus and drove toward the outskirts of the city. Eventually, he stopped at a garbage dump, far from any homes or businesses. Maskell stepped out of the car, and the blonde, freckled teenager followed him across a vast expanse of dirt toward a dark green dumpster.
It was then that she saw the body crumpled on the ground.
The body was that of a nun who had found out that Maskell was raping and abusing teenaged girls at the school.
The story goes on to talk about a Baltimore police detective who suspected the killer was a priest but that the archdiocese put pressure on his department to let the case go.
In Baltimore in 1969, (the detective) said, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to investigate a Catholic priest for any crime. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is the oldest in the United States, and the church considers it to be the premier Catholic jurisdiction in the country. More than half the city’s residents identify as Catholic. According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Baltimore City prosecutors have charged only three of the 37 Baltimore priests who have been accused of sexual abuse since 1980. Just two of those priests were convicted, and one of those convictions was overturned in 2005.
Decades passed and the nun’s murderer was never found.
Meanwhile, Wehner, the girl at the start of this article, filed suit against the archdiocese and the priest in 1992 on sex abuse allegations. She also went to police for the first time to tell about the priest showing her the corpse of the murdered nun when she was a 16-year-old, a story picked up by the Baltimore Sun. Wehner’s attorneys found about 30 girls who had been abused or knew of it during the late 1960s but the priest was never convicted.
Why? Maryland had an extremely short window in which a sex abuse victim can file a civil lawsuit. It has to be three years from the time it happened or the time when they discovered it and back in the 1990s, the victim had to have filed such a suit by the time they were 21. Maryland upped that age limit to 25 in 2003 but most abuse victims don’t gather the mental fortitude or stamina to report abuse until at least their 30s.
An aside here: Maryland’s refusal to raise the age limit for civil claims is partly due to pressure from the Catholic Church. I personally encountered this while reporting on a sex-abuse victim who wanted to sue the Washington archdiocese, which is just down the road from Baltimore. By the time he had come to terms with his trauma, he was well past 25 and powerless to go after his abuser. I began to hear about the archdiocese personally lobbying state delegates in Annapolis to go soft on the church. Some Maryland politicians have been trying to change the age limit for years but the church fights that to this day. Even the jaw-dropping testimony this past spring by a Maryland state delegate telling of the rapes and beatings he endured as a child failed to get the state legislature to change its mind. A major reason? The opposition of the Maryland Catholic Conference, which includes both archdioceses.
Back to the story of the nun’s murder: The mystery was reignited in 2013 when some of the women who attended Keough teamed up with a retired Baltimore Sun reporter to see if they could get to the bottom of it all. The story says the investigation now has its own private Facebook page (which I could not locate any sign of) and this Huffington Post piece was the latest salvo at trying to get some justice for the slain nun and the abused girls. The article does give the archdiocese room to respond and adds that one of the victims was paid $40,000 as part of an abuse settlement and got an apology from the archdiocese.
Having done similar reporting in the past in the same geographical area, I’m impressed by the amount of people the reporter got to go on the record. One may or may not agree with other work HuffPo has done on the sex abuse crisis, but this one was a winner.
The story threads a clear narrative through a confusing thicket of events stretching back more than 40 years. In stories like these, the reporter always knows a lot more than what gets into print. There were probably names she could have used, things she could have written, but she may have lacked that extra piece of proof to withstand a libel claim.
What the reporter did get in shows a stunning amount of work with a group of people notorious for being afraid to talk with the media. I don’t think most readers have a clue as to the personal toll these stories take on a reporter and the determination many journalists feel in wanting to see justice done. I remember looking into a similar story several years ago about a high official in the Catholic Church whose crimes never made it into print.
Several journalists knew about him and, like me, tried to get his victims to talk. They would not, fearing they would end up like the slain nun. When I expressed my frustration to some Catholic friends, “What difference does it make?” they asked. “So many years have passed and you will destroy all the good this man has done.”
This Huffington Post story illustrates that it does make a difference to bring wrong to light, no matter how long the passage of time. It brings closure to the victims or their children so they do not go to their graves thinking the abuse was their fault.
Huffington Post digs up a solid story on abuse in Baltimore archdiocese — GetReligion
Marci Hamilton, The Story Behind the Cosby Story: Sexual Assault and Secrets, Justia.com
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformWith the latest revelations about Bill Cosby arising out of a deposition in a civil lawsuit from a decade ago, the country is talking about sexual assault, celebrity, and what to do about the problem. This is an important conversation.
With dozens of women having come forward alleging that Cosby drugged them and then sexually assaulted them, and some like Janice Dickinson and several others suing for defamation after he denied their allegations, there are few people left who are actively defending Cosby. There are some die-hards like Whoopi Goldberg, but for those familiar with patterns of sex abuse and assault, this story line is all too familiar.
The American instinct is to hear this most recent information and immediately ask about criminal charges. We believe in putting things right through the law. Sadly, just as with so many child sex abuse victims, though, the vast majority of these sex assault victims are cut out of that system by statutes of limitations that favor predators rather than the vulnerable, as I discuss here. But the statutes of limitations are just one part of the story.
Why Are There So Many Secrets About Sexual Assault?
Rape shield laws have protected the identities of victims, but the identities of perpetrators have also been kept beneath the radar through a combination of factors.
First, as mentioned above, the statutes of limitations often favor the predator over the victim. That keeps claims out of court, which is the most reliable pathway to public disclosure.
Second, prosecutors have prosecutorial discretion. They cannot possibly charge every sexual predator brought to their attention. They need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, as well as corroborating evidence, and they have necessary discretion to reject cases that are likely to be losers in court (even if they completely believe the victim(s)).
Third, these crimes are fraught with humiliation and shame, sometimes leading survivors to choose to not press charges or to keep civil proceedings in the dark. It is not that they want to keep the identity of the predator secret as much as they don’t want their own identity released, or they are not in a place of strength to handle public disclosure.
Fourth, until relatively recently, judges and lawyers often believed that these were singular cases and that a perpetrator might well only assault one victim. The phenomenon of serial predation is a relatively new arena for study and public education. If the rapists weren’t likely to do it again, there was little need to publicly disclose their identities. Now we know differently, but the instinct to secrecy on these issues dies hard.
Enter the new information on Cosby arising out of his deposition in a civil case ten years ago. How is it that so many women could accuse Cosby, but this near-confession was suppressed for 10 years? The answer is that courts too often seal records in sex abuse and assault cases to help the powerful, whether it be a religious or nonprofit institution or a celebrity.
Another Frontier in the Fight Against Sexual Assault: Sealed Admissions in Civil Cases
These latest revelations raise a new topic of discourse in the war against sex assault: the sealing of court records. The only reason the world knows that Cosby made this damning admission is because the Associated Press sought the records. There was a confidential settlement agreement binding the survivor, and therefore she could not reveal the information. For all those survivors out there who might be contemplating walking away from a confidential agreement to reveal their attacker to the world, think about that carefully, because you can be sued for breach of contract as well as asked to return any damages you received as part of the settlement. The survivor in this case was saved from that decision, because the AP stepped up and because the court’s hands were free to release the information under state law.
Thus, this is a relatively unusual case, because according to the court, the settlement agreement was not approved by the court, and therefore the court was under no obligation to keep it confidential. In addition, the law of the state permits sealed records to be released after two years if the court finds that there is a public purpose in the release; it did so find, citing the fact that Cosby is a “public moralist.”
Cosby’s lawyers argued that the records should not be released because they would cause embarrassment. That argument is what has kept so many admissions in the dark.
Few know how often courts are asked to seal the proceedings in sex assault and sex abuse cases. Religious entities, schools, and organizations that have been sued for sex abuse routinely ask to have the proceedings under seal. Why? Again, to avoid public embarrassment. And courts for decades have routinely granted such requests, reasoning that these are “private” crimes, that the public need not know, and out of deference to the powerful like celebrities, bishops, and politicians. Professional courtesy in a sense, I suppose, though it now seems like a deal with the devil.
Of course, we now know for a fact that the public does need to know who the sexual predators are. It is time for a victim-centered system wherein sealing of records relates solely to the needs of the victim, and where the risk of “embarrassment” to the defendant is presumed to be an inadequate reason to protect the powerful.
The Role of the Press
There was a time when the press, like the courts, nodded in silence as the powerful asked for anonymity when accused of horrific sex crimes. That day passed once the Boston Globe uncovered the cover up of abuse by Catholic bishops and the waterfall of information on abuse by the powerful and those in important institutions started flowing.
Had the Associated Press not pursued these records, Cosby’s admission would have remained mired in legal limbo. The press has played a critical role in revealing the sweep of sexual assault and abuse nationwide from the churches to the Boy Scouts to Penn State to Horace Mann and even, finally, families. It was the press that pushed the revelations about Josh Duggar to the surface, opening the door to justice for at least one of his victims.
So if you are wondering why you never knew that sex assault and abuse were so common, the answer is because we constructed a system that suppressed that knowledge. We are finally unpacking it, and the Cosby revelations wrung out of a released civil lawsuit deposition are another big step in the right direction.
Full article: http://hamilton-griffin.com/the-story-behind-the-cosby-story-sexual-assault-and-secrets-justia-com/