Institutional Child Abuse Causes Immense Psychological Harm…

Carr, A., Dooley, B., Fitzpatrick, M., Flanagan, E., Flanagan-Howard, R., Tierney, K., White, M., Daly, M., & Egan, J. (2010). Adult adjustment of survivors of institutional child abuse in Ireland☆ Child Abuse & Neglect, 34 (7), 477-489 DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2009.11.003

I was a student at St Pius X College in Adamstown, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, from 1975 to 1979. For most of that time, I was subjected to intense grooming by the now convicted paedophile priest, Fr John Denham. He was well aware of and in fact played upon my vulnerability as a child who he knew had already suffered severe abuse from birth up to and including that point in time. He would come to my parents’ home for dinner, he introduced me to alcohol, he took me on day trips to Sydney, and he fawned all over me in class. I did not realise it then but only a quarter of a century later, that Denham was effectively marking me as a fag when I was trying ever so desperately to hide my sexuality. Such cruelty was emblematic of his sadistic bent. St Pius X College, an all boys’ high school, was an extraordinarily homophobic and otherwise shockingly violent place.

In 1976, Denham bashed me after I thwarted his attempt to denigrate my father in front of other students, what was a blatant case of ‘splitting’ on his part. Routinely punched, kicked, spat on, beaten with rattans, called ‘filthy fucking poofter’ and every other derisory name besides by those same students and many others, I was terrified to go to school. In early 1977, when I could no longer stand the horrendous abuse to which I was being subjected at St Pius X College, I instead spent my days walking around the Watagan State Forest, enjoying the peace and solitude but also painfully aware that it could not last. Since at age 14, I was still legally too young to leave school, NSW child welfare authorities declared me ‘truant’. The officer in charge of my case, Stewart Petrie, simply reduced the immense problems that I faced to my failure to attend.

Even before I stopped going to school, my father had pleaded with Petrie, face-to-face, over the telephone, and in writing, to take prompt action to stop the abuse to which I was being subjected at St Pius X College. Petrie ignored those pleas because he completely dismissed my father’s capacity for rational thought. My father, a totally and permanently incapacitated war veteran, suffered with post-traumatic stress disorder from the end of World War II to his death in 1992. Instead, Petrie sought guidance from the School Principal at St Pius X College, Fr Thomas Brennan, on how my problems should be addressed. Brennan, a cruel and vicious man, who like Denham took delight in the pain and suffering of boys, declared that I was ‘weak-minded’ and in need of toughening up. In short, I had to have the fag beaten out of me.

After a stalemate that lasted several months, Petrie suddenly announced that, if I did not return to St Pius X College immediately, noting that nothing had actually been resolved there, he would have me charged and convicted as truant and incarcerated in a juvenile justice facility. That left me with the impossible ultimatum of either returning to that hellish school or, alternatively, being locked up behind bars with murderers, rapists, and child molesters. I made several suicide attempts, not as an earnest wish to die but as a desperate bid to escape the constant, gut-wrenching torment that constituted my life back then. When I did, albeit extremely reluctantly, return to St Pius X College, I was so shattered, so broken, it was as if no further damage could be done. I had learnt the harsh lesson of living in fear and dread of unexpected, unrelenting abuse.

At the end of Year 10 in 1978, I recall how a rumour went around my class, 10A, that Denham had frantically petitioned other teachers marking sections of the School Certificate examination in English, such that I would be assured of achieving first place in that examination. I did. Other students harangued me as if Denham had done me a ‘sexual favour’ out of his demonstrable, obsessive ‘love’ for me. Naïve and unaware as I was at that time, I never had any inkling why Denham fawned over me or bashed me or treated me. However, I did suffer immensely because of his sadistic, manipulative behaviours. Most significantly, he caused me irreparable harm by his deliberate and persistent identification of my homosexuality in a setting that was so dangerously homophobic. The perverse actions of Brennan regarding my homosexuality, further contributed to that harm.

Shattered, broken, afraid, I can never forget that exact moment in early 1979, when my body and soul told me that I could no longer approach that wall of abuse that was St Pius X College. I stood on a mound of dirt just near the priests’ living quarters on what was a cold and cloudy day. I can still feel the gravel under my shoes and the chilled air upon my face. I had absolutely no strength left to fight, nor any reserve from which I could draw. I conceded in my despair that my life was all but over. I would never achieve my dream of becoming a lawyer and I was grief-stricken that I would be a fag forever. That school, that evil school, had seared shame deep into my heart and left me paralysed with constant fear. On that day, I withdrew from the world. It would take me more than 10 years before I could face the world again…

And so, onto the article for review…

When I read this chilling account of adult survivors in Ireland who had, as children, been the victims of institutional clerical abuse (Carr, et al. 2010, p.477), I at first thought how different it is to be a child ‘on the inside’ of such abuse. How guileless and vulnerable children really are and how much they depend upon adults to protect their well-being and safety! The authors here define ‘institutions’ as including ‘residential care centres, schools, reformatories, churches, and recreational facilities’ (2010, p.477). What strikes me most about this article, however, and not that I did not know it already, is the severity of the harm inflicted by clerical abuse within institutional settings:

‘In the only published study of psychological disorders among adult survivors of institutional clerical abuse, Wolfe, Francis, and Straatman (2006) found that 88% of a group of 76 Canadian adult survivors of institutional abuse, at some point in their lives, suffered from a DSM IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) disorder and 59% presented with a current disorder. Post-traumatic stress, alcohol, and mood disorders were the most common conditions, and participants in the study also showed significant trauma symptomatology on the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI, Briere, 1996). The TSI scales most notably affected were those which assessed trauma, dysphoria, depression, intrusive experiences, defensive avoidance, and dissociation. Over half of the sample had a history of criminality, and more than two thirds had experienced significant sexual problems in adulthood’ (2010, p.478).

While there is nothing really that new about the results gleaned by Carr et al. (2010) in their study of 247 adult survivors of institutional clerical abuse (pp.482-486), they do expand upon what is a surprisingly limited body of knowledge about ‘why’ this particular form of abuse lays waste to so many of its victims in such a hideous fashion (p.487). This is not merely a binary power differential between priests (et al.) and adherents, but an abject betrayal and gross distortion of faith and trust (2010, p.487). The authors (2010) unreservedly condemn the relevant authorities in Ireland, who for decades sat back and allowed children to be so flagrantly abused (p.488). Moreover, they call for ‘evidence-based psychological treatment’ to be made freely available to adult survivors, on the understanding that:

‘Clinicians providing such services should be trained to assess and treat the range of anxiety, mood, substance use and personality disorders, trauma symptoms, adult attachment problems, and significant life problems with which such cases present. Research evaluating the effectiveness of such services is also required’ (2010, p.488).

Unlike Ireland, there has been no formal government or legal inquiry into institutional clerical abuse here in Australia. In fact, the Federal Government is positively hostile to the idea of even mentioning the existence of such abuse. There are few therapeutic services in Australia provided for the adult survivors of institutional clerical abuse and indeed, none for any adult survivor who was not a Ward of the State or a resident within a clerical institution. You might wonder why is Australia’s Federal Government so hostile to upholding the human rights of tens of thousands of its own citizens? I wonder that, too…