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Molested at five, silent no more
Priestly abuse: It happened to me
Merilyn Jackson
Pope Benedict's insistence that he "Will not be intimidated" by accusations against the Vatican, and by what he calls "Petty gossip" finally moves me to respond to the thoughtful and sensitive articles on priestly sex abuse by Bob Ingram and Dan Rottenberg, and also to Thom Nickels's ridiculously romanticized apologia, "What hath Vatican II wrought?"
"The latest abuse cases emerging from Ireland, Germany and South America," Nickels remarks, "may represent the last of this great tsunami, although in a deteriorating world economy, who knows how many of these cases are just desperate attempts to extract cash from Vatican coffers?"
Believe me, no one wants to go public with admissions that they were abused by a priest. That is why so many of us have kept silent for 40 or 50 years and more. I am so seriously nauseated by Nickels's defense that I am moved to describe here, for the first time in public, what it's like to be molested by a priest. I do this because every Catholic I know refuses to believe or understand the heinous nature of these crimes.
A deep sleep, and then…
In the late 1940s, when I was between four and five years old, I was sent to Mother Superior's office because I did not feel well. This was in St. Hedwig's Parrish, which at the time was located where Park Towne Place now sits, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Mother Superior left me to nap on a cot in her office.
Feverish, I fell into a deep sleep and woke groggily to feel what at the time I thought was an arm rubbing between my buttocks. Something black surrounded me so I couldn't see what was happening. I was being crushed so I could not breathe.
I began to cry and struggle. The blackness disappeared and so did the rubbing. I saw Edward Klosinski, St. Hedwig's pastor, leaving the room and shushing me to be quiet. The next thing I recall, Mother Superior was wiping me and cursing me for wetting my pants. But I cried that I had not.
This was my earliest sexual memory, and it has haunted me all my life. I woke up screaming, even as an adult, from nightmares of something black and heavy crushing my body and taking my breath away. It was only as an adult that I realized the "arm" was a penis, the "blackness" was a cassock, and what the nun was cleaning off my backside must have been semen.
Each time I saw Klosinski after that, I screamed until the adults around me got me out of his sight. He glared at me intimidatingly but never came near me again.
Wages of humiliation
He did, however, pull down my sister's panties down in front of her eighth grade class, to give her a spanking. Earlier she had been molested by the minister at her kindergarten in the Protestant church at 25th and Brown. She told our mother, who removed her from that school, but nothing was ever done to punish him.
I believe these humiliating events contributed to my sister's mental illness. Today she is bi-polar and receiving Supplemental Security Income payments for her disability.
I didn't report the incident, because I had no idea at that age what had happened, only that it was dark and dirty and secret. But as I grew older I hardly knew a boy, including my brothers at Roman Catholic High School, who hadn't been at least solicited, and we did furtively snigger at the priests in question.
Today Klosinski is dead, and St. Hedwig's Church, which subsequently moved to 24th and Brown Streets in Fairmount, is defunct. As for me, I went through plenty of therapy to get past my experience with Father Klosinski, but of course the current publicity on this rampant rape of children's innocence dredges up beyond belief anger. The Church can never make it up to me or the thousands of children it failed to protect.
Therapists are also to blame, because throughout the '60s, '70s and beyond they did not encourage victims of church abuse to go public, thereby alleviating some of our own undeserved shame and exposing untold numbers of children to abusers.
But the parents too are guilty— of protecting their priests over their own children. Any parent who allows his or her children near a priest is guilty of delivering them up for sexual sacrifice.♦
To read responses, click here.
"The latest abuse cases emerging from Ireland, Germany and South America," Nickels remarks, "may represent the last of this great tsunami, although in a deteriorating world economy, who knows how many of these cases are just desperate attempts to extract cash from Vatican coffers?"
Believe me, no one wants to go public with admissions that they were abused by a priest. That is why so many of us have kept silent for 40 or 50 years and more. I am so seriously nauseated by Nickels's defense that I am moved to describe here, for the first time in public, what it's like to be molested by a priest. I do this because every Catholic I know refuses to believe or understand the heinous nature of these crimes.
A deep sleep, and then…
In the late 1940s, when I was between four and five years old, I was sent to Mother Superior's office because I did not feel well. This was in St. Hedwig's Parrish, which at the time was located where Park Towne Place now sits, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Mother Superior left me to nap on a cot in her office.
Feverish, I fell into a deep sleep and woke groggily to feel what at the time I thought was an arm rubbing between my buttocks. Something black surrounded me so I couldn't see what was happening. I was being crushed so I could not breathe.
I began to cry and struggle. The blackness disappeared and so did the rubbing. I saw Edward Klosinski, St. Hedwig's pastor, leaving the room and shushing me to be quiet. The next thing I recall, Mother Superior was wiping me and cursing me for wetting my pants. But I cried that I had not.
This was my earliest sexual memory, and it has haunted me all my life. I woke up screaming, even as an adult, from nightmares of something black and heavy crushing my body and taking my breath away. It was only as an adult that I realized the "arm" was a penis, the "blackness" was a cassock, and what the nun was cleaning off my backside must have been semen.
Each time I saw Klosinski after that, I screamed until the adults around me got me out of his sight. He glared at me intimidatingly but never came near me again.
Wages of humiliation
He did, however, pull down my sister's panties down in front of her eighth grade class, to give her a spanking. Earlier she had been molested by the minister at her kindergarten in the Protestant church at 25th and Brown. She told our mother, who removed her from that school, but nothing was ever done to punish him.
I believe these humiliating events contributed to my sister's mental illness. Today she is bi-polar and receiving Supplemental Security Income payments for her disability.
I didn't report the incident, because I had no idea at that age what had happened, only that it was dark and dirty and secret. But as I grew older I hardly knew a boy, including my brothers at Roman Catholic High School, who hadn't been at least solicited, and we did furtively snigger at the priests in question.
Today Klosinski is dead, and St. Hedwig's Church, which subsequently moved to 24th and Brown Streets in Fairmount, is defunct. As for me, I went through plenty of therapy to get past my experience with Father Klosinski, but of course the current publicity on this rampant rape of children's innocence dredges up beyond belief anger. The Church can never make it up to me or the thousands of children it failed to protect.
Therapists are also to blame, because throughout the '60s, '70s and beyond they did not encourage victims of church abuse to go public, thereby alleviating some of our own undeserved shame and exposing untold numbers of children to abusers.
But the parents too are guilty— of protecting their priests over their own children. Any parent who allows his or her children near a priest is guilty of delivering them up for sexual sacrifice.♦
To read responses, click here.
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