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Over 35 years ago, when I became the director of a small but growing support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, I vowed to never “rank” the pain of any victim.
“It’s all horrific,” I told myself.
Every survivor is hurt differently and heals differently, I quickly realized, and nothing could be gained by assuming or believing that one was “hurt worse” or was “more vulnerable” than another. Though it may seem counterintuitive, I believe, a child who was groped over his clothing once may be just as traumatized as another child who was raped repeatedly.
The first real challenge to this belief came in the early 1990s when I heard from several…
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