Karl says ‘The church has colluded again and again’ to suppress the truth about child sexual abuse
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Karl was sexually abused in the 1960s by a member of the Church Army.
His parents told the church, but the abuser was allowed to progress in his career.
Karl’s aunt was married to a man named Stephen, who sometimes joined the family on trips and outings. He sexually abused Karl on a couple of occasions, touching his penis.
Karl was 12 years old when this began, and he felt unable to tell anyone about it, although he says he knew it was wrong.
The following summer, Stephen invited Karl to stay overnight with him so he could attend a church event. Karl was made to share a bed with Stephen, and during the night he woke to find the man masturbating him.
He describes how he felt ‘unnatural and afraid’. The next morning, he escaped from the house early and walked around, not knowing what to do.
After some time he called his father and told him he had ‘been interfered with’. His father drove immediately to collect him and confronted Stephen. Karl says that the abuser ‘dissolved into tears’.
Karl’s father took him home, and the matter was never spoken about again. He thinks that refusing to mention it was his parents’ way of dealing with what had happened.
His parents told him some years later that they reported the abuse to two men from the church, but they did not feel the meeting was ‘productive’. Karl loved his parents but was very upset they had failed to protect him and that they acted behind his back.
He feels strongly that they should have gone to the police but says there was ‘an unspoken feeling’ that no one should know about the abuse because it ‘would cast a shadow’ on the family in their local community and church.
Many years later, Karl found out that Stephen progressed in his church career, being made a priest and deacon. At some stage, he had been convicted of sex offences against children, along with other men from the church, but had been allowed to return to the ministry.
Karl was very angry and upset when he read that church members had forgiven Stephen.
He feels that the church shows great ignorance about the risks posed by sex offenders, and misuses the doctrine of ‘forgiveness’. His faith and respect for the Church have been damaged beyond repair.
Reading about reports of child sexual abuse in the media has brought Karl’s experiences up all over again. But, he adds, it is positive that changing attitudes have enabled him to talk in more detail about his experiences after feeling unable to do so for 50 years.
He had a successful career and a happy marriage, with children who make him very proud.