By LAURIE GOODSTEIN APRIL 20, 2016
Synopsis:
But they often wait years before they are ready to speak. They are too ashamed, or confused, or afraid of not being believed. But eventually they tell someone, and once they start speaking, some cannot stop. That’s why the sexual abuse story has emerged so slowly, over years, in waves. Abuse victims are like combat veterans: The war is long over, but the coping is not. Years after the Vietnam War ended, people are still writing memoirs and making movies, still processing what happened.
Of course, child sexual abuse is an issue everywhere, not just in the Catholic Church. The Times has written about it in schools, scouting organizations, camps, United Nations missions and other faiths. My colleagues on the Metro desk wrote a disturbing series on the cover-up of child abusers in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York. I have covered cases of sexual abuse in such a wide variety of religions that I have trouble keeping track: Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the most bizarre story of all — an international Christian cult called the Children of God.