This is a church that covered up for priests who molested children and moved them elsewhere so they could get a fresh start -- and thereby hurt more children -- but it thinks it desperately needs to know who is gay.The above is still sticking in my craw two months later. Ideally, this should really be a post on a Reddit I own called r/ImNotYourMommy which is currently a space for me to talk about how to fix rape culture basically, but it's not going to go there because I will likely link to multiple blogs of mine and I get sick of forums accusing me of self promoting and throwing my sorry ass out.
smh
I've written about rape, childhood sexual abuse and recovery from such for a lot of years. It's a tough topic and people frequently find it shocking for me to openly speak of my experiences. They feel traumatized by hearing it and they project their shock and pain onto me and give me a pity party.
I'm recovered. I don't need a pity party. So I have spread my story around various blogs and such for a lot of years and intentionally NOT concentrated it in one place. It's just too much for people to deal with and it's not an effective means to promote the idea that I'm fine and recovery is possible.
And it's not because I wasn't seriously fucked up by being molested as a child. In my teens and twenties, I could identify with the bipolar Orion girl on Star Trek:
He is my lover and I must kill him.
I also was absolutely certain that if anyone raped my young sons, I was going to hunt them down in cold blood and murder them, then go to my kids and tell them "You can sleep now. Your monster is dead." -- and then spend the rest of my life in prison because there is no way a trial would have gone well for me in my youth.
I would have ranted and cussed at the judge and jury both about how "You are on the side of the devil!" for trying me for murder instead of commending me for protecting my children (or something).
I have two special-needs sons. I did an excellent job dealing with their issues and after they got to be adults and figured out how well I handled their issues, they began telling me "You are an awesome mom and I am so glad you raised me."
So I can say with some confidence that I was likely right in feeling that no one else could do for my kids what I could do for them and they really needed me, even though I wasn't mentally stable when I first had them.
I felt very strongly that if someone molested my kids and I went to jail over it, it would essentially be child abandonment because I could predict the outcome ahead of time and this was wholly unacceptable because I felt strongly that my kids needed ME in specific to raise them. So in my mind it was imperative that no one molest my kids.
And no one did molest my kids due in part to the following policy:
I taught my children that hugs and kisses required consent. I taught that from birth. Even a baby too young to talk can turn their face away because they don't want a kiss or hold their arms up enthusiastically to receive affection.I'm recovered in part because of something noted elsewhere on this blog:
When they were older, I told them if they told someone "no" and their decision was not respected, come get me.
In addition to having great parents, the remarkable experience that someone who hurt me genuinely made amends, and having real rights as a military wife, my sons and ex husband are part Norwegian -- henceforth known as Viking.And this is the story of how my brother made amends to me: When the family safety net fails.
As also stated previously on this blog, I attribute my recovery in part to the fact that my father was part Cherokee. As noted on Native Influence, I find it challenging to write about this topic because I worry about sounding like I am smearing the Native community rather than saying "My father molested me under influence of a head injury when he returned from Vietnam but I believe he STOPPED and did his best to make amends largely because of his Native heritage."
There are currently two posts on r/ImNotYourMommy labeled Head Trauma. One of them links to a source mentioning one of the few studies about pedophilia showing head injury prior to age 13 may be a factor.
My brother had at least three head injuries that I know of prior to age thirteen. I don't really think he's a pedophile per se because he's not really that much older than me.
My father came back from Vietnam after a month trapped behind enemy lines with newly acquired shrapnel embedded in his head. He spent six weeks recovering from that in Walter Reed Hospital and I have been told he slept with his boots on in the muggy jungles of Vietnam for that entire month and when they peeled his socks off, his skin came with it.
I don't think my father was really a pedophile. I think he had a NEW and RECENT head injury along with other significant physical and psychological trauma, he probably just wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird. Then at some point he was like "Uh, no. THIS IS NOT OKAY." and he stopped and did his best to protect me from further harm and make amends in some way.
He did so even though it involved breaking promises to my mother, for which she never forgave him.
So the two people who molested me as a child BOTH stopped of their own accord at some point and BOTH felt compelled to in some way make amends. And this is a very important part of why I healed.
My relatively conservative comments on Hacker News with which I started this blog are a very tame version of how I feel about the policies of the Catholic church where they hound and fire gay priests but quietly reassign child rapists so they can hurt more kids.
I believe pedophilia is most likely due to a head injury syndrome from a head injury in childhood. Maybe someday the world will be able to cure it.
But I also know FOR A FACT that not all pedophiles -- i.e. people who find children attractive -- act on their impulse. Some of them suppress it and do not molest children.
If straight priests can be expected to be celibate and gay priests can be fired for dating, then we can expect pedophile priests to NOT RAPE CHILDREN as a condition of maintaining employment as a moral authority for their community.
The ONLY appropriate response to learning that a PRIEST has done egregious harm to the children in his congregation is to DEFROCK him and charge him for his crimes in a court of law. I am appalled that the Catholic church de facto believes and acts upon the idea that two adult men having consenting sexual relationships is somehow worse behavior than a moral authority for the community molesting or raping children.
If you have been molested by a priest and are finding it hard to really recover, this is because the church is remiss in keeping these people employed, covering up their crimes and quietly moving them without warning their new congregation so they can get away with hurting more children. It's monstrous in the extreme.
Not everyone is like that. The Catholic Church is the ONLY organization I personally think deserves the toxic label of The Patriarchy that some people use to speak of things like rape culture.
The fact that the Catholic church so egregiously mishandled the pedophile priests scandal is a large part of why I feel that way.
Footnote
One of my most upvoted comments on Hacker News is about rape. It is the second comment linked to on the blog post Fourteen Comments.If you really, really want to read things I have written about topics like rape and recovery, searching Hacker News for my current handle (DoreenMichele) or my previous handle (Mz) and key words like "rape" will likely bring up a fair amount of material. I was especially sharey under my previous handle and have intentionally toned it down since switching handles.
See also: Anger Management
If I could have ONE wish before I died, it would be for Catholicism to cease to exist because they are never going to reverse their PRO CHILD MOLESTATION, homophobic institutional policies.