If someone I meet then finds out the topic I covered was pedophile priests, it is like a litmus test. If they can't handle it, I don't want them as my friend, in fact I wonder about them. When they continue to be my friend, I know they are capable of complex thought and there is potential for a further friendship there.
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Yes I probably would have been more successful if that molestation by a priest hadn't happened but I don't really know that.
When I was five-six years old I was diddled by a priest and then everyone told me to stop talking about it. That may have driven me to be a journalist in the first place, because always inside I knew there was some injustice, some wrong thing, and I had to tell it to the world. Without that experience, I probably would be a grandmother now surrounded by children and experiencing holidays. But I also could have died of Some Mundane and Ordinary Disease decades ago.
I am not a victim. I'm a human being who went through a horrible experience and now I'm an old lady living in a difficult time in history with a tremendous amount of survival skills. I don't feel like a victim at all.
Life goes on, even after death. Also posted at CofA25 this same date
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I am not sure, but pretty sure, that I never used the word "victim" to describe myself until I connected with SNAP. From the start in support groups they repeated, "You are not a victim, you are a survivor." Until that time, I wanted to be an activist. In 1996 I was reaching out in San Francisco looking for others who’d had this experience to find others, to Take Action.
I Know I started to use the word "survivor" after connecting with SNAP but to me even that word did not describe me.
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I never was a victim. A pedophile priest got to me. It happened, I'm still here, it affected me. It was a felony and he and everyone who enabled all the pedophile priests should have been prosecuted. WTF. That aiding and abetting was the real crime.
