Priests, Sexual Abuse and Illusions of Innocence

This past week, defrocked priest John Geoghan of Boston was sentenced to ten years hard labor for fondling a 10-year-old boy. Though the verdict ended this chapter, the unraveling mystery of sexual abuse cases in the Catholic church promises to yield more headlines in the months and years to come.

Media coverage of cases like Geoghan's has made Americans increasingly aware of the frequency of sexual abuse, both in church and in society, and the terrible emotional trauma that such abuse -- and its denial -- inflicts on innocent children. Reports of pedophilic priests like Geoghan have become common precisely because their victims have grown up, broken through their denial and fear, and acquired the courage to report their abuse. As a psychotherapist, I frequently bear witness to this process in my clinical practice, a process in which a patient will reconstruct shameful sexual experiences from childhood and struggle to realize that he or she was innocent and unfairly victimized.

As a culture, we have become increasingly preoccupied with the innocence of childhood and, in particular, its sexual innocence. And so we are often more outraged when children suffer sexual abuse than any other type of pain, neglect, or hardships, despite the fact that, in my clinical practice, I have often seen parental absence, addiction, depression, or illness damage children more than some forms of inappropriate sexual contact. Moreover, frightening stories of abductions by a sex-crazed stranger, although statistically rare, inflame us from the side of a milk carton, while stories about millions of children without health care or housing elicit mild concern.

We shouldn't have to choose between or rank evils. Sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and social hardship are all potentially deadly threats to the psyches of children. Why is it, then, that sexual threats to childhood innocence are more intolerable to us than others?

For example, the judge who heard the case of accused child molester Jerome Wilhoit told his courtroom during Mr. Wilhoit's arraignment that if someone had molested his own daughter, his attitude would be, "you touch her, you die." The fact that Mr. Wilhoit was found both not guilty of all charges and later deemed "factually innocent" doesn't mean that the judge's reaction isn't understandable. Most parents probably feel the same way. It does suggest, however, that when it comes to sex and children we have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. The question, again, is: why?  

Historians would certainly note that the image of children as innocent is only a recent phenomenon. In the past, children were routinely used, abused, and seen as containers for anti-social impulses that had to be curbed or even stamped out. My experience as a therapist, however, leads me to believe that our passionate defense of childhood innocence expresses not only our altruism but our vicarious wish to feel innocent and protected ourselves -- a wish that our psyches and our culture make difficult.  

My clinical work shows me every day that most of us have a difficult time feeling innocent. We grow up secretly feeling responsible and guilty for the emotional ills that befall us. We unconsciously take the blame for our parents' unhappiness, their narcissistic self-preoccupation, their temper tantrums, or even their direct abuse. It's said that we'd all rather be "sinners in heaven than saints in hell," underlining the fact that human beings have a hard time accepting the psychic reality of their own victimization.  

On a broader level, most people in our society buy into its basic meritocratic illusion, namely, that our social lot reflects our intrinsic worth as human beings. We privately feel like social failures if we can't achieve the "good life" of material wealth that our culture holds out as an ideal.