Letter: Female abuse victims exist in surprising numbers

Buffalo News
December 28, 2018

https://bit.ly/2LCe9Rz

The writer of the Dec. 23 letter, “Allowing priests to marry does not solve the problem” is accurate in her opinion that neither celibacy nor homosexuality causes a person to be a pedophile. Pedophilia is an issue that needs addressing as to cause and effect.

I would like to address the question in the reader’s letter as to why 90 percent or more of all children abused by priests are mostly male. It is estimated that about 40 percent of victims of priest abuse are female.

Female victims have a much more difficult time revealing their story. Some have been blamed by their abuser or the organization that has protected the perpetrator. Some have been brainwashed by Catholic guilt.

Some continue to hold guilt as if the crime done to them as a child is their fault and not that of the adult who violated a child.

Women reporting the crime are interviewed by men. These men interviewers have been priests until most recently.

The unimaginable is a female victim having the courage to come forward with her story of abuse being interviewed in a closed-door room by a priest. Yet this is what was happening at 795 Main St. in Buffalo.

Worse yet, if the intake priest finds the victim’s story credible she can face two retired judges to retell her story so a monetary value can be placed on the abuse she suffered.

Is this process not another scheme to keep the secrecy of priest abuse in general and more so priest abuse of female children or females from being revealed?

Judith Burns-Quinn

Hamburg