UNITED STATES
Aljazeera
Rob Reynolds
American Catholics say the clergy child sexual abuse scandal is the biggest problem confronting the church today. That’s one finding of a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted in February. The survey also shows large majorities feel Pope Benedict XVI and American bishops have done a poor job of handling the crisis and in dealing with sexual abusers in the clergy.
No one knows precisely how many boys and girls have been sexually molested by priests; one estimate says at least 100,000 children were abused in the United States alone.
Adrian Ramirez, a 38-year-old married father of two who lives in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, spoke to Al Jazeera about the sexual abuse that blighted his childhood and affected his adult life.
From the age of 11 Ramirez was brutally and repeatedly raped- hundreds of times over the course of two years.
The abuser was a man studying for the priesthood who had been placed in charge of youth activities in the parish.
“I’m constantly reliving it,” he says quietly. “After the youth groups he would rape me in his car. He would…even at church he would do it—in the pews. He would say, ‘imagine it’s God touching you. ‘ Who does that to a kid, you know? I was 12-years-old and I’m like, ‘Really? God is saying this is OK?’”
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