There’s a woman. Let’s call her Hannah. She’s in her seventies. I met Hannah when I studied Social Work some years ago and we became friends. Of course I’ve changed her name to protect her identity. Hannah’s experience is common to so many people. You see Hannah was sexually abused as a child by a man she knew and trusted. It happened repeatedly over a number of years. Before she became a teenager Hannah worked up the courage to tell her parents about what was happening to her. They told her she must be mistaken. After that she protected herself from her abuser by refusing to see him again, even though he was known to her family and they stayed in contact until he died.
And she shut herself down from the inside. She grew up and pursued a successful career but at her core she knew she was worthless, unbelievable, a fraud. It affected her mental health and all her relationships, including with her husband and later her children.
In her forties she started to contemplate suicide. She worked up the courage to speak with her husband about how she was feeling. He was supportive but ill equipped to provide adequate assistance. He recommended she get help. For the next 30 years she saw a psychiatrist, during which time she was diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder. In time she was able to talk with her psychiatrist about what had happened to her. She worked up the courage to tell her husband some things and, when her children were old enough, she let them find out too.
By that time her abuser and her parents were all dead. There was no option for confrontation, for getting to the truth or for exacting revenge. In order to live a fulfilling life Hannah and her family needed to find their own ways to live with what had happened and not let anger and misery consume them. It is something they continue to struggle with, each in their own ways.
But the struggle has taught them the folly of perceiving your happiness to be conditional upon the actions of someone else. No matter the righteousness of Hannah’s position or the earnestness with which she might wish for some apology or vanquishment, she could never be guaranteed it would happen.
The same is true for the survivors of child sexual abuse by the catholic church and other organisations charged with the responsibility of caring for children. There are endless column inches being produced at the moment focused on what Cardinal George Pell might say or do as he gives evidence to the Royal Commission and meets with abuse survivors. The media is keen to point out that what Pell says has the potential to either bring some succour to the survivors or to further traumatise and offend them.
Don’t get me wrong. I wish with all my heart he would tell the truth. I wish that he could remember all the details of that time so many years ago when he helped to silence survivors in much the same way as Hannah was silenced, and when he enabled criminal priests to continue to sexually abuse children all over Australia. I’d like to see him humiliated and punished. But whether that happens is not the most important thing.
More important than what happens to Pell is what happens to the survivors. And I fervently hope they can find a way to move on without the vindication they so richly deserve. In the end that is the only thing which will guarantee them any comfort.
