UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
November 6, 2017
By Heidi Schlumpf
Sexual violence victims speak out, while church leaders remain quiet
Jessica Mesman Griffith was sitting outside her high school cafeteria, waiting for a ride home after dance team practice, when a janitor approached her with his penis exposed and started masturbating in front of her. She was 14 — and terrified.
About a year later, while hanging out with her girlfriends, each one started sharing stories of sexual assault or violence, by a babysitter, an uncle or their mom’s boyfriend. That’s when Griffith realized, “I’m a girl, and because I’m a girl, I’m not safe.”
Griffith didn’t share her own story about the janitor with those friends, in part because it seemed less severe than their revelations. But she never told anyone else about it either, because she was embarrassed and felt somehow responsible.
Only much later did Griffith realize that church teaching about sexuality may have contributed to her silence. Teachers and clergy at her Catholic grade school had only talked about sex in terms of sin, so she came to associate the two. When she was sexually harassed by the janitor, she felt sinful.
“It just felt so dirty and tainted,” said Griffin, co-founder of the Catholic blog Sick Pilgrim and co-author of the spiritual memoir Strange Journey. “Just by witnessing it, I felt I was culpable. I was sure I did something wrong to provoke this.”
Griffin is speaking out now, as reports of sexual harassment by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein have prompted more victims to go public. Those revelations also spurred a social media campaign in which victims have used the hashtag #metoo to indicate their own experiences of sexual assault, harassment, rape or other sexual violence.
One in three women (and one in six men) have been victims of contact sexual violence at some point in their lifetimes, according to the government’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.
Yet Catholic Church leaders have been conspicuously quiet on the issue. This silence — combined with teachings and systems that contribute to a culture in which sexual violence against women is rampant — makes the church complicit, say theologians and those who work with victims. And given the church’s own lack of accountability in response to clergy sexual abuse, its credibility on the issue is already damaged.
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