HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot News
August 14, 2019
By Jay Sefton
If the Catholic Church had offered me any amount of money in 2007 when I reported the sexual abuse I experienced as a child, I would not be writing this.
I was a 36-year-old active alcoholic struggling to make ends meet and ruining relationships with the people I loved. My abuse came from a pedophile priest named Thomas Smith who cast 13-year olds in a Passion Play he directed every year at my grade school. It was his way of satisfying his “depraved and sadistic” sexual desires, as documented in the 423-page Grand Jury Report from 2005 covering abuses in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. I played Jesus.
The Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP) began in November of 2018 and ends this fall. Catholic Church child abuse survivors can file claims to be reviewed by the administrators of the program, Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros. A New York Times article, “From 9/11 to Orlando, Ken Feinberg’s Alter Ego in Compensating Victims,” reports, “The goal with many of these payments is grounded in stark financial reality: Offer victims enough compensation quickly enough, and they will agree not to sue.”
When I called the victims’ assistance hotline in 2007, I was offered therapy. With a skilled therapist, I began the long road of untangling the abuse and deceit I had been exposed to for the first eighteen years of my life. Violent nuns (not all of them) and predatory priests (not all of them) did most of the heavy lifting to shape my self-loathing. I was baptized into a culture of shame and fear that equated being assertive with being selfish, self-love with sinning. I was trained to be a well-behaved Catholic boy who didn’t question authority. During therapy, I regained two things the Catholic Church had stolen from me—my voice and my ability to think critically.
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