Raphael says the individual who abused him ‘knew very well the power he had over people who believed’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Raphael attended a Catholic school.
He describes his family as devout Catholics and says it was always inevitable he would be sent to such a school.
When Raphael was about 14 years old, one of the individuals at the school, ‘A’, began waiting for him in places around the school. He would invite the boy to come to his private room.
Raphael says ‘I felt I couldn’t say no to him … there was no escape’.
‘A’ started sexually abusing Raphael, touching him and rubbing up against him. Raphael says he still remembers the smell of his unwashed clothes and semen.
This abuse brought back a memory for Raphael of another incident of abuse that he had suffered a few years earlier. Raphael told his father who reported the matter to the police.
Raphael found the police involvement very stressful and for this reason he didn’t want to tell his parents about the abuse by ‘A’. He adds that his mother ‘was an extremely zealous Catholic’ and that also put him off disclosing.
But after some time, he did tell his mother what was happening to him when she was driving him back to school one day. He knows that his mother had a meeting with his housemaster but, he says, ‘nothing was mentioned’ and ‘A’ ‘carried on as normal’.
At school, Raphael tried to avoid contact with the abuser by spending time with teachers he trusted.
The abuse by ‘A’ ended when Raphael was in the sixth form and found the courage to tell him to stop, and get away from him. He says ‘I was older and had more self-confidence I suppose’.
But he describes how ‘I was still trying like hell to avoid contact with him, and he kept up the pressure’.
Raphael adds that media reports of child sexual abuse left him feeling overwhelmed by memories of what he had experienced. He attempted to take his own life more than once, and received psychiatric treatment.
He still suffers with depression and feels angry at what he sees as the hypocrisy and arrogance of the church. He is no longer able to work, and says that he drinks too much. He describes the despair that he sometimes feels as being like ‘sitting on the cliff edge and the wind blowing you from behind and knowing that you can’t stand up as you would be blown off’.
Raphael feels that the apologies expressed by the church are meaningless. He says that going into any church, for him, ‘is not a pleasant experience … it makes me cringe’.
He feels strongly that lessons should be learnt about the governance and monitoring of large religious institutions that also offer schooling for children. He considers that often religious orders can ‘run as private empires within the Catholic church'. He adds that the practice of moving those who have been accused of abuse to other parishes must not be allowed.