General
Healing a Wound at the Heart of the Church and Society (2012)
Symposium Toward Healing and Renewal, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University, February 6-9, 2012
Healing a Wound at the Heart of the Church and Society. The truth will set you free: Listening, Understanding and Acting to Heal and Empower Victims by Marie Collins and Sheila Hollins
We have been asked to speak about the challenges faced by victims in their experience and recovery from clerical sexual abuse. I will introduce myself, and Mrs. Collins will introduce herself shortly. Both of us want to thank you for making yourselves open to listening to the experiences of victims.
I speak as a psychiatrist with more than 35 years of clinical experience, initially as a child and family psychiatrist, and later as a psychotherapist and researcher with an interest in trauma and sexual abuse, and as a specialist psychiatrist working with people with intellectual disabilities and people with autism. I also speak as the mother of two adult disabled children. My family experience informs my insights into the challenges faced by victims and their families, including coping with serious trauma and assault. In 2011 Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor invited me to assist him in the Vatican Visitation to the Diocese of Armagh in Ireland. I participated in all of the meetings, private and public conducted during the Visitation over a two and a half week period in 2011. It was primarily a listening exercise to hear about clerical sexual abuse from victims and their families, from parishioners, priests, religious and others.