A pediatrician’s lament: My 30-year journey with clergy sexual abuse

CANADA
LaCroix Internationa

February 26, 2020

By Sister Nuala Kenny OC, MD

“See, O Lord, how distressed I am; my stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me (Lamentations 1:20)

‘I pray for this effort to finally address coherently the theologies necessary to reform the cultural and systemic factors operative in the clergy abuse crisis’

As a pediatrician, I know the devastating harms of the physical and sexual abuse of children and youth by family members and trusted others in society.

I have held the shaking and bleeding body of a raped 12-year-old boy and tried to comfort a seven-year-old girl terrified of being touched after assault.

As a religious sister, I have wept often in 30 years of work on sexual abuse by clergy.

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