Historical child sex abuse: ’If my mum knew what happened to me, she wouldn’t believe Pell’, News.com.AU (April 7, 2019)

Historical child sex abuse: ’If my mum knew what happened to me, she wouldn’t believe Pell’

A victim of child sex abuse has penned an emotional plea to the public in the wake of convicted child sex offender George Pell’s sentencing.

The sentencing of Cardinal George Pell garnered mixed reactions last month, as the convicted child sex offender was handed a six-year prison sentence for his horrific child sex crimes.

Some celebrated. Others were outraged.

But for one man, who wishes to remain anonymous, the case hit much too close to home.

In a news.com.au exclusive, he shares his harrowing story.

The final dark moments of George Pell’s life as a free man were unmissable; plastered across newspapers, computer screens and TVs.

The way he abused those boys was similar to my own experiences. It was molestation betrothed with power.

Paedophilia is a funny word because in the minds of the public it can be both a verb and a noun. An act as well as the name of a desire. I believe Pell’s lust — like my own abuser’s — was for power, not little boys.

In short, Pell is a paedophile in that he sexually abused children, but I doubt he is a paedophile in the sense of maintaining sexual desire for children.

When the abuse occurred, Pell had just been promoted to Archbishop of Melbourne, he was a young man at the top of his game with only ascension ahead of him. Ascension through an organisation that is inherently about control and power.

He’d heard about child sexual abuse allegations made against his fellow priests. Why shouldn’t he give it a try? No one could touch him.

This is my read of the abuse, on the evidence available anyway. And I think it’s supported by the fact that there’s no further claims of abuse and that he didn’t ejaculate during the abuse.

My partner said I should stop following the coverage so closely. It obviously affected me. I let work slip, I was detached from friends and family. I cried profusely in the toilet after the sentencing. It was the first time I’d cried in years.

But although it hurt, it was cathartic too. Hearing Judge Kidd’s syllables form words and sentences that damned this particular evil man also damned my own evil man. Even if that man only really lives in my head.

That which I do know of him lends me to believe he suffered at the hands of others far worse than I did at his. In abusing me he was a copycat.

Which is why Judge Kidd treating Pell as a human was so important. Here was a man, removed from the church, being sentenced for very human, very intimate acts.

Because my abuser too is a human, not a monster. Because he suffers just as I did. I feel remorse for what I could have been without the weight I carry, but also feel pity for him.

My abuse wasn’t in an institutional setting, so no redress scheme for me. Although navigating that particularly secretive, bureaucratic and cold process doesn’t sounds like much fun anyway.

If my mum found out, it would break her. She’s suffered a lot of loss over the last few years and any time she has left would be so darkened by shadow it wouldn’t be worth it.

It doesn’t define me most of the time. But sometimes unprompted, although normally in predictable ways, it turns me inside out. Like someone tightening a knot in my gut: pulling all my pain and fears into a spot right below my sternum towards my spine. It can be paralysing.

Which is awkward during sex. Flashbacks are a real mood killer. The sex life my partner and I should have isn’t there, because sometimes sex is the last thing I want to think about or do.

And this hurts her, and it hurts our relationship. And that’s really what’s been taken from us. The ability to live a simple life of sex and love. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it can feel like it sometimes.

And the sad thing is, no one knows how many people are like me. People who suffer in relative silence because public confrontation, on balance, wouldn’t be worth it.

There might be thousands of us, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Quietly getting on with our slightly more dysfunctional than usual lives. Just wanting to live an existence defined by our own choices, not someone else’s.

When I spoke to Mum about Pell a few weeks ago, she said she didn’t believe he was an abuser. It wasn’t an unpopular opinion across some media at the time. I try to take a dialectic view of most things, but this stumped me. Maybe it was just too close to home.

Two ex-prime ministers — men my mum admires — wrote references for Pell, one of which said, “None of these matters alter my opinion of the Cardinal.”

There is a malaise in society. It manifests itself in many ways, one of which is sexual abuse of children.

But it runs deeper. It is the abuse of power by men and the wilful ignorance of those unaffected.

Men who see themselves as winners and who only know how to practice winning by punishing the weak. And most everyone else just plays along because confrontation and change are hard. The weak are liars in the eyes of the powerful and the rest of you just tend to agree.

The wilfully ignorant are complicit. They give tacit endorsement to abusive powerful men to continue unchanged. Why would an Archbishop change if he knew an ex-prime minister would always be there to jump to his defence, no matter the evidence?

And those of us keeping quiet? We too are guilty. Because if my mum knew what happened to me, she wouldn’t believe Pell. And if enough mums and dads were confronted with abuse as a reality, not just a concept, they too would change.

And I want so much to contribute to changing the culture of wilful ignorance of abuse by men in power. But to do so would irreparably change my relationship with family and friends. It would ruin what’s left of my Mum’s life.

Just because it didn’t happen to someone you love doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.