Dancing With The Devil: A Personal Essay On My Encounters With Sexual Abuse In The Catholic Church

Abstract

In this article, I will address the polarized reactions evoked by my roles as speaker, writer, advocate, and expert witness in the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis. The volleys of horror and awe, terror and transcendence, often characteristic of work with survivors of sexual abuse, are even more powerful when the evil reported was committed by sexually violating priests, the hierarchs who protected them, and the people in the pews who supported them.

Keywords:

• catholic church sexual abuse scandal
• counter-trauma
• institutional sexual abuse
• spirituality
• the Devil
• terror and transcendence

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea

Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D., has engaged clinically with adult survivors of sexual abuse and other developmental traumas for over 30 years. In 2002, she was the only psychologist to address the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at their seminal meeting on sexual abuse and subsequently wrote Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. She also coauthored Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Dr. Frawley-O'Dea appeared as herself in the Oscar-nominated documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, and she serves as an expert witness in sexual abuse litigation. She is currently executive director of Presbyterian Psychological Services in Charlotte, NC, a nonprofit, interdisciplinary mental health resource.