Nuns face similar problems with authoritarian religious systems.
last nites CBC Documentary. You may enjoy reading this excerpt:
The sins of the father
Reporter: Frédéric Zalac
Producer: Marc Cotton
Editor: Pierre Beaudoin
Camera: Georges Laszuk, Gugulakhe Radebe and Serge Brunet
Web: Owen Wood and Daniel Schwartz
Airdate: March 25, 2002
Officials at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development and at Caritas, another Catholic organisation, made disturbing discoveries in the early nineties. They heard testimony from nuns abused by priests in 23 countries around the world. The situation was particularly worrisome in Africa, where AIDS was rampant. According to a confidential 1994 report, some priests had sexually exploited nuns, “because they too had come to fear contamination with HIV by sexual contact with prostitutes and other at risk women.” Although the authors of the report declined our request for an interview, a few members of the church are now speaking out.
“I think that the hierarchical and patriarchal and clerical nature of the church somehow gives the atmosphere that makes it possible,” says Sister Mary John Mananzan of St-Scholastica College in The Philippines. According to her, silence prevails when a sexual scandal troubles the Church. “That’s why people do it with impunity, they have this kind of thinking that well, nothing will happen, we will not be punished anyway and our bishops will protect us. That’s why it’s going on.”
Father Philippe Denis, University of Natal, South Africa
Cases of nun-abuse also trouble Father Philippe Denis, a theologian at the University of Natal in South Africa. “Sex is something that is not easy to talk about, women are taught to accept whatever men ask them to do, and, if it’s a priest, people are also taught in the community to respect the priest and the word of the priest is sacred.” To go against the stream, “You have to be terribly courageous, terribly assertive, to actually respond to this triple challenge.”
Before Yvonne Maes left the retreat centre, Frank Goodall had asked her to keep quiet. “I still thought it was my fault, I must have done something. It was like women were always to blame. I must have worn the wrong clothes, said the wrong thing, I didn’t protest enough, I didn’t fight so I must have wanted it.”
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