By Beth Miller
The News Journal
11/21/2005
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20051121/NEWS/511210351/0/NEWS01&theme=PRIESTABUSE

[See links to other articles, documents, and transcripts of interviews in this series.]

The sexual abuse of children -- no matter who commits the crime -- can twist the lives of survivors and leave them with chronic psychological and physical problems, experts say. And when children are abused by a trusted person -- a parent, a teacher, a doctor, a minister -- the effects are compounded.

The secrecy, isolation, emotional manipulation, and mental, physical and spiritual anguish all take their toll.

Abuse by a parent is the hardest on kids, said Dr. Mark Borer, a Dover psychiatrist with almost 20 years of experience in treating victims, including children, adolescents and adults. Next-hardest is abuse from a special cadre of people.

"People hold professionals to a higher standard, and they let them in closer into the intimacy of their lives -- whether it's their spirituality, their physical health, the integrity of their body," he said. "Those are the areas where you don't let just anybody in. You let select people into that realm. When those people overstep boundaries, it betrays basic trust -- not just trust in general, basic trust."

A victim of abuse by a specially trusted person may never trust anybody again, he said.

Borer is a member of the Diocesan Review Board, which reviews allegations of sexual abuse by priests in the Wilmington diocese. His comments were made in relation to the effects of child sexual abuse generally -- not specifically to abuse by priests here.

Diane Langberg, a psychologist, has treated victims of clergy sexual abuse -- and offenders -- for more than two decades.

When the abuse is inflicted by a spiritual authority, the confusion is all the more complicated, according to Diane Langberg, a Pennsylvania-based psychologist who has treated victims of clergy sexual abuse -- and the offenders themselves -- for more than two decades.

"Children are malleable," Langberg said. "Abuse trains them in many ways, especially when it is more chronic. They end up shaped by abuse, lies, etc. When this is done by a person who represents God himself, the abuse ends up providing the control beliefs through which faith and truth are filtered.

"So, for example, a child may believe God loves children, but not me. Or he may believe that God hears prayers, but not mine. Such a child carries those beliefs into adulthood, and it requires much hard work over a long period of time for those control beliefs to be changed so they accurately reflect what God says is true as opposed to what the abuse said was true."

Michael J. Bland was abused as a teen by a priest, then became a priest for a time. Today he helps abuse victims.

Chicago psychologist Michael J. Bland has firsthand knowledge of many levels of the problem. Bland was a teen when he was sexually abused by his parish priest. He later became a priest himself -- serving in a religious order until he decided it was no longer a healthy place for him. He now is in private practice and serves part time as clinical and pastoral director for the Archdiocese of Chicago's victim assistance program. In addition, he serves on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' National Review Board, convened after the scandal drew national attention in 2002.

"Did it shake my faith?" Bland said. "Yes. It took me awhile to realize I was abused by a priest and not by the church."

Bland decided not to walk away from the church, and his focus now is finding ways to help victims become "thriving survivors." It takes hard work, he said, and compassionate help.

"Victims don't need piety, pity or apologies," he said.

Rather, he said, they need dependable, healthy connections with those in positions to help.

"What we do know is that therapy helps, and that is a starting point," he said. "I don't think it's fair to just say, 'Go to therapy and you'll be OK. Mail us the bills.' There's no relationship or connection there. It may be that based in the therapy is the recommendation to see a psychiatrist for medication, to get drug and alcohol treatment, to have couples counseling and family counseling, pastoral care and spiritual direction to help them understand what's going on."

Bland convened a weekend retreat last month for victims in Chicago. Three invited guests also visited for a few hours, making the experience uncommonly powerful -- Cardinal Francis George, of Chicago, and two auxiliary bishops. A reunion already is planned, he said.

"It was truly a grace-filled moment, not only for the survivors, but also for the cardinal and the bishops," Bland said.

Restoring connections with anyone is difficult for sexual abuse victims, Langberg said in the 1999 book she wrote for them, "On the Threshold of Hope."

"The abuse is particularly life-altering for small children," she said. "They do not realize that the abuse becomes the pivotal event of their lives. They have no way of knowing how different their lives would have been if they had not been abused. Many victims of child sexual abuse struggle to survive in isolation. Either children tell no one about the abuse for various reasons, or they tell someone, and the response is unhelpful or damaging. The result is that these children must develop extraordinary capacities in order to go on."

If a child can muster the courage to report the abuse quickly and someone does something about it, much subsequent damage can be prevented.

"We even have some people who have been abused that have kept their faith, their family connections and have done well -- because they were believed and they were affirmed that they had been hurt," Borer said.

But children often suppress the memories of the abuse, Borer said, and it is common for them not to reveal their experience for decades.

"Some people have to really put it out of their awareness just to be able to cope day to day," he said. "It's almost like it's packaged away somewhere and not until years later, it will come out. Maybe there's some trigger, some reminder. Maybe their own child is at the same age they were when they were abused."

The suppression of traumatic memories presented an insurmountable legal hurdle for child sexual abuse victims until advocates persuaded lawmakers in some states to acknowledge the phenomenon.

Now many state laws -- including Delaware's -- have lengthened the time prosecutors have to bring criminal charges. In Delaware, that clock does not start ticking until the abuse is reported to an appropriate authority, even if it's decades later. However, victims have only two years from the time of the abuse to file private lawsuits.

Financial settlements -- whether made in court or out of court -- aren't satisfying to most victims, Borer said, but they are one form of acknowledgement, and acknowledgement is something all victims seek.

"A lot present difficulties in so many areas, they don't come to us looking for money. They come to us looking for survival -- for ways to survive emotionally," he said. "They're wanting treatment, they want an answer, and they want the perpetrator to be brought to some kind of justice, whether it's treatment or jail time, to be able to acknowledge what it is they've done."

Victims of child sexual abuse need treatment to recover trust, the ability to relate to others, healthy perspectives on their lives.

"I don't think people ever get over a real sexual abuse incident," Borer said. "If they get treatment early, they're able to process the trauma, rebuild some trust, and begin to expand their lives again with positive and healthy experiences."

Delayed treatment can complicate the process.

"When people don't have that luxury, when they have to go years with no trust, years without sharing, years of defining themselves as spoiled, defective and damaged, the trauma often becomes a definition of the self," he said. "When that happens, it's very hard to heal from that."

Borer pointed to recent research that demonstrates physiological changes in the brains of abused children. One study was published in Biological Psychiatry, a journal of psychiatric neuroscience, in 1999.

"It can affect such things as the ability of a person to concentrate, to process new information and emotional feelings. It's not just because of the trauma, but actual nerve-cell damage in the hippocampus of the brain," he said.

Memories often are vivid for abuse victims.

"They don't need someone to put memories there or to suggest memories," Borer said. "People come to you because memories are coming up and they don't know what to do with them."

But memories can also be obliterated -- along with the whole block of time around the trauma itself, Borer said. The good or neutral memories of that time can be lost, too.

"Memories often come back as a group, too," Borer said. "Often things will come flooding in -- a lot of feelings, thoughts, visual memories come all at once."

Borer said other professionals may see patients who have made things up. He has not.

"There must be a few who do that," he said, "but they don't seem to be the ones that I see. ... Whether or not they tell us about the trauma initially, they usually come in with significant psychiatric factors."

Those factors include depression, anxiety, substance abuse, marital difficulties, problems with other relationships and workplace problems.

"The sexual abuse is horrific -- it's a sin, it's criminal, it's immoral, it's horrific, and it affects every part of the individual's being," Bland said. "However, the emotional manipulation and grooming process the abuser does can be far more devastating and have lasting effects. 'Can I trust this person? Are they being manipulative? I'd just as soon be alone as taken advantage of.' "

Bland hopes, though, that victims will realize that isolation is not the answer and that real healing is possible.

"My true hope for all victims is that they can find a voice to be able to lead them to healing, so they truly can become thriving survivors," he said. "Their family, friends, loved ones need them, society needs them, the church needs them."

Contact Beth Miller at 324-2784 or bmiller@delawareonline.com.