Via the website A Matter of Truth, which serves survivors of clerical abuse, Rev. Tom Doyle has put out a call to gather information about abuse at orphanages.
Apparently he received a large response within days and recently sent out a message to express his gratitude. An addendum that followed a short while later was especially striking to me.
Even though our documentary All God’s Children deals with missionaries’ children in boarding school who were physically, emotionally, sexually and spiritually abused by other non-Catholic missionaries, some of his words resonate strongly with what we have found in our research.
One very obvious conclusion I have reached, just based on my review of the information and the sheer volume of it, is that the experts who assert that about 70-75% of those sexually abused by clerics or religious men or women remain silent, are correct. Those who, through wishful thinking or just plain delusion, claim that the “crisis” is over simply because its not front page news on a daily basis, are dead wrong. Its far from ended.
A second conclusion is that the extent of the sexual and physical abuse of children and minors by clerics and by nuns is far greater than any of us, even the most cynical, ever expected. I believe that the bishops and other office holders in the institutional church are either intentionally misleading the public with their claims that the abuse phenomenon is passed and under control, or they are so out of touch and in such a state of psychological denial that they are impeded from both realizing and accepting the tragic reality before us.
You can contact Tom Doyle via email: amatteroftruth@aol.com