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	Why Don't People Care? By Virginia Jones The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing January 13, 2010 http://web.me.com/virginiajones/Compsassionate_Gathering/The_Garden_of_Roses/Entries/2010/1/13_Why_Don%E2%80%99t_People_Care.html UNITED STATES -- Catholic clergy abuse survivors feel wounded that the people and leadership of the Catholic Church are indifferent and sometimes hostile to their sufferings. "Why don't they care?" I've been asked over and over. This lack of compassion causes many survivors to conclude that the Catholic Church is evil. I know what alienated clergy abuse survivors are talking about. I've experienced it myself. When I was thrown out of my parish for advocating for survivors of clergy abuse, I was co-teaching a catechism class with another woman. She seemed sympathetic to my cause because her brother-in-law had been abused by a priest when he was a boy. The day I was thrown out of church, I felt the need to warn her that I could not come back and teach any more classes with her. I didn't tell her any details about what happened. I just sent her than e-mail that said, "Don't believe anything you hear. They (church leadership) will lie to you." She sent me back an angry e-mail back telling me that she had heard from two different people about my bad behavior. I was stunned that she listened so readily to what others said about me and yet seemed so uninterested in my side of the story. When Fr. Armando Lopez invited me back to Ascension parish, I approached this woman again. She was still not interested in my side of the story. She said to me, "It's people who won't let go of the issues who are the problem." Then she added "I come to church to be uplifted." I was stunned by that comment. How could ignoring sufferings of survivors possibly be uplifting? I felt like she was saying, "I want my faith to be light and easy." OK, so many Christians want their faith to be light and easy. That's depressing, but as I have been walking across Oregon and meeting many survivors of many forms of abuse, I have found out that clergy abuse survivors are not the only people facing indifference from people who ought to care. In one small Oregon town I met a grandmother who is struggling to advocate for her grandson. Her son died and her daughter in law is caring for the child alone. The young woman's parenting skills are poor, and her stress levels are high. She yells at her son and threatens him and beats him with a stick. Once every couple years this boy ends up with a broken bone. The last time it happened his mother claimed that he had fallen out of a tree, but the grandmother noticed that he had bruises in the shape of hand prints on his broken arm. How could he get those bruises from falling out of a tree? She reported her suspicions to Child Protective Services (Department of Human Services in Oregon). They found no wrongdoing in the boy's case. The grandmother tried harder and harder to get officials to take her charges seriously. Eventually they simply told her that she was the problem, not the boy's mother. It is human to be angry and upset when you see or experience injustice, particularly the unjust treatment of a child. But it is also human to Feel stressed by someone is angry. When we feel stressed, we shut down and stop listening. In cases of abuse, this creates a cycle. The more the abuse survivor or their supporter cries out for help, the more other people turn away. The truth is lack of compassion towards others the human condition. These last few weeks I experienced a lack of compassion from others over an issue not even remotely related to abuse. I got divorced in 2004. I used to have good health coverage through my husband's job, but when I got divorced, I lost that coverage. I bought a catastrophic policy with 80 % coverage of medical bills after I pay the first $5000. After less than a year the insurance company raised the cost of coverage by 12%, so I applied for an even more catastrophic health insurance policy -- 70% coverage after $7500 in medical bills. The insurance company requested my medical records. They discovered that I had a history of depression. My total expenses for treatment of depression over my lifetime are only a few thousand dollars, but the insurance company called my depression a pre-existing condition and dropped my coverage and referred me to Oregon's high risk insurance pool. First, treating depression as a pre-existing condition might be good business but it is pretty heartless. The reason that I have struggled with depression all my life is because I am a sex abuse and rape survivor. Second, even a high risk catastrophic health insurance plan would cost me hundreds of dollars a month for very few benefits so I don't have any insurance at all anymore. I feel how can I trust a for profit health insurance company to be there for me when I am really sick when they drop me over a few thousand dollars worth of medical costs over a lifetime? In the meantime, I found a little lump on my breast last March. It was on my breast and not in my breast. I thought it was probably benign. I tried putting salicylic acid on it to eat it away. I managed to eat it away, but it came back. So I put more salicylic acid on it which ate away more of the surrounding tissue. It came back again anyway. Finally I decided to do something about it. The Susan G. Komen Foundation which runs the Race for the Cure (for breast cancer) focuses most of their financial resources on researching new and better drugs to treat cancer, but they do work cooperatively with the state of Oregon to provide some funds for mammograms and breast exams through the Breast and Cervical Cancer Program (BCCP). I called the Program and found that they had run out of money for 2009. They gave me the names of three clinics and told me to call anyway and tell them about the lump. I decided to wait until the first business day in January to call the clinics. Two said that they no longer accepted new patients. The third said, "We will call the BCC Program to see if you qualify. Then we will have a scheduler call you." I waited two days but no one called me so I called the BCC Program again. This time I found a clinic that would see me. Unfortunately 4 business days into January, they had already seen their quarterly quota of mammogram candidates from the BCC Program. They had to call and get a special exemption for me, which I qualified for because I have a lump on my breast. Hopefully I go in next week and find out for sure that the lump is benign. So that is where I am. I still think the lump is benign, but I have read about benign lumps that turned into cancer. I didn't tell anyone about that lump for a long time, because I didn't want to be bombarded with lectures from well meaning people about the need for mammograms and other forms of healthcare I really don't have the money for. I was hoping I could handle this by myself and just make it go away. It didn't work that way. In any case, the health insurance issue that is so prominent in our country right now is personal to me. I live it. What if this little lump turns out to be cancer or turns into cancer at a later date? I've heard the sense of betrayal from clergy abuse survivors that their issue gets so little airtime in the media anymore. I agree that the media gives too little airtime to the issue, but the media gives too little airtime to most serious issues. Health care is one of those issues. Forty-eight million people go without health insurance in the United States. Close to 45,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance and can't afford medical care. Congress is in the throws of a massive fight over the issue, but it feel like there is very little coverage of real life experiences of real people who are being hurt by the current system who could be helped by various potential changes to the current system. Fortunately, the National Geographic did devote one page to the issue in their January 2010 issue. Did you know that the United States (US) spends $7,290 per person on health care while the country that follows US in the list of most money spent per person, Switzerland, spends only $4417 per person on health care. We have a life expectancy around 78 years whereas Switzerland has an average life expectancy around 81.5 years. In Japan they spend only $2581 per person and have a life expectancy great than 82.5 years. The United States is the only industrialized country with a private, for profit health care system. As I recall Japan and Switzerland do have private health insurance but both are heavily regulated and not-for-profit. They don't pay their insurance executives millions of dollars the way US companies do. Why is health care in the United States so expensive? Why does no one care? Why aren't these facts discussed much more in the news? Much more attention is paid to the opinions of pundits and radio talk show hosts than to the real life experiences of real people. Some media stories do include statistics and stories. Other radio talk shows and television shows are filled with angry rhetoric -- we don't want those heartless government bureaucrats and greedy politicians deciding for us what health care we can have or telling us what to do or raising our taxes or taking away the good health care system we have now. But I had a private business insurance bureaucrat deciding that I was too high of a risk to insure. That faceless, nameless person who worked for a big business, but who had never met me made very important decisions about my life. Well anyway, I am on Facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with people I went to high school with. I grew up in a conservative rural town in Reagan country in Northern California. One of my former schoolmates forwarded to me an e-mail from other friends from the hometown. These old school mates and Facebook friends were asking people to contact conservative Republican representative, Tom Coburn, to sign a letter he had written in opposition to health insurance reform. The e-mail didn't mention the precise reason to oppose health care reform, but it stated that this was a nonpartisan effort. Well, I knew that Tom Coburn is a conservative Republican opposed to taxes and government programs such as universal healthcare or even that pale imitation of universal health care -- the public option -- programs that would be very helpful to me. I felt anger. Until now I have kept the lump on my breast and my dilemma with health care private to all except the small number of people who know me very well. I acted quickly, without thinking. I posted my feelings in Facebook and because Facebook doesn't allow much space, I had to post four times. My bottom post mentioned the lump on my breast and being dropped from my health insurance plan. My top post was all angry rhetoric -- "Don't trust Tom Coburn on healthcare. Don't trust any Republicans on healthcare." Immediately I felt concerned that people would be turned off by my anger. I didn't look at my e-mails or Facebook for a day or so. I wondered what people would say to me. And then when I did look, there was no response at all. Nothing. Here I was talking about having a lump on my breast. Breast cancer can lead to death even when you do have health insurance. When you don't have health insurance, well, you tell me what can happen to me with a lump on my breast and no health insurance? No one cared. Or maybe they did care but were too afraid and too overwhelmed to know what to say to me. Were all the people on Facebook who cared not one whit about me having a lump on my breast and no health insurance bad people? No. Am I a bad person for being angry that other people so blindly oppose single payer and public options for healthcare reform? No. However, my cause would have been helped if I had simply stuck to telling my story instead of attacking the trustworthiness of Republicans politicians. So what is the lesson in all of this? Are Catholics evil because very few do anything to actively support clergy abuse survivors? They are no more evil than the millions of ordinary Americans who oppose health care reform when so many people in our country lack health insurance. The people who sent out the e-mail asking for people to contact Republican senators and members of Congress and advocate against health reform were a working class family. They have health insurance, but the wife has a chronic health condition. They aren't wishing me ill. They are just afraid to lose the health care coverage that they have and so desperately need. No one is evil. Everyone is wounded. Some wounds are bigger and some wounds are smaller. But few people are able to see beyond their own wounds to the wounds experienced by others. So what is the answer? I have some more thoughts about the issue to share in my next blog, "Raped, Abused and Abandoned: How Do I Heal?"
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