A challenge in today's society, one seldom addressed, is understanding, recognizing and correcting modern day "hate" crimes. Children, victims of clergy sex abuse, families and unsuspecting adults, experience hate crimes in ways still unrecognized.
Hate crimes occur within public, religious, private school, church and employment environments. Most of the time, hate crimes are never addressed with the proper government agencies, with expertise to identify and rid our society of hate, discrimination and retaliation, through the enforcement of hate crime laws and legislation.
The clergy sex abuse scandals erupted 4 years ago and along with the scandals, erupted a modern-day form of hate crimes. Public disclosures have revealed so many failures to protect precious children and vulnerable adults from horrific clergy sex abuse crimes.
There is no doubt that religious, government, law enforcement agencies and families have a responsibility to correct the wrongs committed against children and it will not be an easy task. Unfortunately, our country's leaders still resort to managing corporate, private, religious and government communities, very similar to a "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation", also known as SLAPP.
Why is our society still focusing on protections from scandals and lawsuits? Intimidating freedoms of speech, press and opinion is a step backwards especially when it relates to the protections of children and the interests of the general public. Civil liberties are being violated daily each time one of our country's guaranteed freedoms are threatened or intimidated by those in positions of power, wealth or authority.
A hate crime is defined as: A criminal act, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim: Disability, Gender, Nationality, Race or Ethnicity, Religion, Sexual Orientation, or association with a person or group of persons with one or more of the preceding actual or perceived characteristics.
Who are the targets of hate crimes? Children, mandated reporters (those who protect children, teachers, priests, nuns, coaches, parents and concerned adults), single parents, sex abuse or crime survivors seeking justice and protections of others, homosexuals, minorities, journalists, attorneys, government leaders and persons who exercise freedoms of religion, opinion, press and speech in public forums.
The sex abuse scandals, lawsuits and monetary damages have forced our society to answer the scandals with moral, legal and financial accountability so why the continued intimidation, expensive public relations campaigns and hiring of lobbyists to defeat legislation that would demand justice in a court of law?
As a Catholic wife and mother, our family has been the target of a modern-day, four year hate crime. This is opinion of course, and the acts have been carefully hidden, with potential intent to silence and punish a family who will never stop supporting clergy sex abuse survivors, their families and mandated reporters who protect children -- we now know what it is liked to be denied dignity, respect and due process.
How can anyone forget what has been public disclosed during the past 4 years? God bless those with the courage to bring personal stories of clergy sex abuse public. Goliath often appears with strategies most likely not new to many survivors of clergy abuse -- but it was new to our family, until we started to listen to personal stories of clergy abuses.
Soon after my husband reported an illegal gun possession on a Catholic high school campus (the principal's son had the gun), he was terminated from 8 years of employment. Goliath was not happy about a mandated reporter's decision to report a gun possession, in the midst of the clergy sex abuse scandals, in Orange County, California.
The last four years of family experiences cannot be explained in one setting, but when two of our children were told they could not finish their senior years at a Catholic high school, 3 days after my husband filed a civil Whistleblower lawsuit, we met Goliath and felt Goliath's power. It was this event that provided insight to the pain and struggles that clergy abuse victims and their families, have been fighting most or all of their lives.
This week, another hate crime appeared, without advance notice. In my opinion, Goliath is very good at dividing and conquering survivors of clergy sex abuses, mandated reporters, priests and nuns of integrity, attorneys representing those seeking justice, courageous journalists and the Davids of the world. As a supporter in the Survivors of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and founder of www.catholics4justice.com, I thought nothing could shock me anymore - wrong again.
We have four chilldren, 23 years old, 2 are almost 21 years old and our youngest daughter Laurel, an 18 year old senior, attending a prominent and affluent high school in Orange County, California. Laurel's senior prom is Saturday at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. She asked her friend Nick, a former student at the high school, also from a loving hispanic family in Orange County, to attend the prom as her date.
Nick is a former student of the high school and only left the high school for his senior year, at the school's request. This request was for academic reasons -- not crime, sex or drug-related reasons. Another great quality of the No Child Left Behind Act -- schools want to keep those statistics high for funding purposes.
Two days before the prom, school administrators via voicemail, inform me that Laurel's request to bring Nick to the prom has been denied by the school's administrative team. We were told that the public school "reserves the right to deny attendance at any school event. Request denied". Despite multiple requests by me, the school refused to provide a reason for the denial.
As an amateur writer, mother, wife and legal secretary for the past 25 years, my passion for the courage of clergy sex abuse victims, their families and mandated reporters, who made a choice to protect children, before their own career security and ego, has evolved over the past 5 years.
My husband, Michael, is a former Catholic high school teacher and coach, who was forced to make a career change without due process of the law. He will soon complete his Masters Degree in Special Education, his new-found passion. Our children, Nicole, Rachel, Brent and Laurel are a gift to us and all who meet them. We pray our children and the world's children will witness society correcting the wrongs committed against innocent children and families. Without justice, there will never be peace; without peace, faith and our country's laws are empty.
I understand what you are going through.....it's horrible! It's also very difficult for most other people to understand...just why this would be so upsetting......they get irritated!
I want to tell you something though...and this is more than an opinion; it's my profession.
These abusers come across as committing a hate crime because they project their own feelings of guilt and disgust and hate towards themselves, and others; ( i.e. an employer)...... their own bad lives, situations and existence ...onto the victim. (most often the victim is an innocent child, and/or vulnerable...or a woman like you who goes out of her way to help others....or a disabled or mentally ill person who cannot protect themselves)
They sense, or smell their victims.....they hate them, because the natural 'goodness' they sense intensifies their own inadequacies . They do not want to feel the way they do because it is very unpleasant for them..they don't feel in control. (Again, all of this is unconscious) So they export all of their garbage onto the victim , and who most often imports it. In turn, they feel unburdened and clean and free again.....in control! They see 'their own garbage' in the other person as if looking into a mirror. In short, the victim is used for the purpose of making the abuser feel better about himself. It really is not about the other at all.
It's a complicated psychological process called 'projective identification' , and it's much more difficult to deal with than something like a 'street crime like a mugging', in which case you know this is about the other and not personal,
Most men fear nothing more than being/becoming victims themselves...they are cowards...they think 'victims' suit women and children. If they are victims, they will not admit it, not even to themselves.... they lash out.
(of course this is not limited to men, but true for many women as well)
The whole thing is 'crazy -making' for the victim. And when they think the worst is over ...like yourself...you are not prepared for the surprise .... it's only beginning.
The agencies and people who are supposed to help you...the ones who talk so freely about fighting abuse and neglect...so sure of themselves and their good intentions.....all they do in reality is enable the abuser. He is stronger and more powerful than you or them...he scares them...and he is so very much in control, and he speaks so rationally compared to the victim who is understandably disturbed, injured, emotional , angry and upset.
The abuser is a 'leach'......the neglect of the enabler becomes more hurtful than the original abuse. It goes on and on in a vicious cycle.
I don't know how to help you other than explain what I did, because I myself have not recovered from a situation that is not so very different in the dynamics. I wish you well and I hope you have more support than I did.
Katrin
by
Katrin R. (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 522 comments)
on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at 3:01:47 AM
