NEW YORK
Time Warner Cable News
[with video]
By: Katie Gibas
Updated 07/08/2014
Child sexual abuse victims around the world are responding to Pope Francis’ apology this week. After meeting with several people who were abused by priests as children, Pope Francis begged for forgiveness for the church for failing to prevent the abuse. He also promised action to protect young parishioners, as well as to punish those who committed child sex abuse. But as Katie Gibas reports, while many church leaders are praising the Pope’s statements, some survivors said words aren’t enough.
Charles Bailey carried a dark secret with him for 40 years. At age 50, Bailey finally told someone he was abused by a Roman Catholic priest in the Syracuse Diocese in the early 1960’s when he was in fifth and sixth grade.
“It’s like your childhood is ripped from you in an instant. Up to that fall day when I was 10-years-old, I was a happy little kid with a big grin on my face. From that day forward, my childhood was gone. I didn’t fit in with my peers. I was too young to fit in with the adults. You feel like you’re solitary, alone, an outsider,” said Charles Bailey, a child sexual abuse survivor.
He said telling his family and getting counseling helped him get the support he’d needed for 40 years to begin to recover. In 2007, he published his story in a book called “In the Shadow of the Cross.” In addition to sharing what happened to him, he uses his writing as a way to help people manage their recovery.
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