?It goes with­out say­ing that the T&T Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence is deeply up­set over the week­ly re­ports ap­pear­ing in the for­eign me­dia, on­ly some of which are re­peat­ed in the lo­cal me­dia, about the abuse of chil­dren by priests in the Ro­man Catholic Church. Equal­ly up­set­ting is the of­fi­cial cov­er-up of such abuse and the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­sponse when such abuse is dis­cov­ered which has been to send the of­fend­ing per­pe­tra­tors to a dif­fer­ent post­ing with­out warn­ing the new parish­ioners of the dan­ger to which their chil­dren have been ex­posed. The dis­may aris­es be­cause of the suf­fer­ing of the chil­dren. Not least be­cause the re­ports are on­ly deal­ing with the abuse of boy chil­dren. Since re­search in­di­cates that on­ly about eight-ten per cent of all men are ho­mo­sex­u­al, and a very small per­cent­age, per­haps 1.5 per cent, of those are pae­dophiles, what about the acts com­mit­ted by�the oth­er 90-92 per cent of the male cler­gy?

If the sta­tis­tics hold, there would be an es­ti­mat­ed 13.5 per cent of het­ero­sex­u­al priests who have pae­dophil­i­ac ten­den­cies, in­volv­ing girl chil­dren. I can't help but won­der about the girls that have been abused by het­ero­sex­u­al cler­gy who are al­so sworn to celiba­cy and there­fore de­nied by their re­li­gion a nor­mal sex­u­al out­let? In­ter­net re­search on priests' sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren re­sults in 1,760,000 en­tries, the ma­jor­i­ty of them deal­ing with the abuse of boy chil­dren. And why is no in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing done about the abuse of girl chil­dren? Over the last 40 years that I have been in the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, I have had nu­mer­ous one-on-one re­ports from women who were sex­u­al­ly abused as chil­dren by "celi­bate" priests. There­fore, in all the "trans­paren­cy" now com­ing out about child abuse in that church, I find it is cu­ri­ous that no one is men­tion­ing the girls.

It doesn't even ap­pear that there is a cov­er-up where the girls are con­cerned. It is as if they don't mat­ter, and that apart from the bat­ter­ing and oth­er phys­i­cal abuse of girls by nuns in Catholic schools, ju­ve­nile de­ten­tion in­sti­tu­tions and or­phan­ages in Ire­land and Chica­go, which did get some ex­po­sure a few years ago, noth­ing about the abuse of girl chil­dren is deemed to be im­por­tant. The sex­u­al abuse of girls in the Catholic Church by cler­gy can­not have been un­known to their own au­thor­i­ties. Not that the abuse of girl chil­dren on­ly hap­pens in the Ro­man Catholic Church. In Trinidad we have had re­ports about such abuse from vir­tu­al­ly every re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tion, al­though in the ma­jor­i­ty of those cas­es the per­pe­tra­tors did not claim to be celi­bate. They talked, with equal hypocrisy, about "pas­toral care," "pas­toral coun­selling" and, iron­i­cal­ly enough, "us­ing the rod of cor­rec­tion."

Pun­dits have their own vo­cab­u­lary about "cleans­ing rit­u­als" and "re­mov­ing evil spir­its." The re­ports of sex­u­al abuse of girls in gov­ern­ment schools by male teach­ers al­so seem to have been main­ly hushed up, even af­ter re­ports have been made to the min­istry, if an­guished re­ports from par­ents are to be cred­it­ed. Teach­ers car­ry great au­thor­i­ty over the young. If girls are warned by the abuser that, if they tell any­one, "I will make sure that your fa­ther is fired," or that "your lit­tle broth­er will fail his ex­ams," they be­lieve with­out ques­tion. At least in this there is no gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. Abuse of boys in schools in Trinidad is al­so sel­dom dealt with. Al­though ma­chin­ery ex­ists, it in­volves re­ports go­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and is so slow, bu­reau­crat­ic, and time-con­sum­ing that the abused child has to face the per­pe­tra­tor every day for months be­fore any­thing is done.

Few chil­dren can with­stand the emo­tion­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure. And few ever do. Abusers know that. Two wrongs, or ten wrongs, do not make a right.

Any abuse of chil­dren by fig­ures of au­thor­i­ty in schools does not lessen the wrong done by mem­bers of the cler­gy. Abuse of boy chil­dren by mem­bers of the cler­gy in oth­er de­nom­i­na­tions does not ex­cuse abuse of boys by mem­bers of the Ro­man Catholic Church who vow "celiba­cy." Or the of­fi­cial cov­er-up of such abuse. And ex­po­sure of the sex­u­al abuse of boy chil­dren (and, yes, "grop­ing" is clas­si­fied as sex­u­al abuse) does not ex­cuse the abuse of girl chil­dren.

?Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att

Chair, T&T Coali­tion

Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence