There is humanity in that concern.
Indeed, it was survivors themselves who first raised concerns about the distress caused to older Christian Brothers receiving High Court summonses in cases where they may have had no personal involvement in the abuse.
Survivors should never have been placed in the position of having to worry about causing such distress.
The reason individual Brothers have been drawn into these proceedings is important. The Order’s leadership has declined to nominate a person to accept proceedings on behalf of the congregation, leaving survivors seeking civil justice having to pursue individual members instead.
This is a choice the leadership of the Order continues to make in its dealings with survivors of sexual abuse, including those whose abusers have been convicted. It is a choice that also has consequences for its own innocent members.
At the centre of this discussion must be the children who were abused. The word “abuse” can sometimes conceal rather than convey the reality. Many children were subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence and humiliation.
These were children, and they are the injured parties. They did not choose what happened to them, the imbalance of power between child and adult, or the consequences they would carry throughout their lives.
That reality matters when we are asked today to consider where our compassion and understanding should lie.
A religious congregation which places the Gospel at the centre of its identity can reasonably expect its leadership to be judged against Gospel values. Compassion, justice, truth, humility and concern for those who have been harmed are not standards being imposed from outside. They are values Christianity itself proclaims.
People tend to be vocal and magnanimous in their condemnation of “historic” abuse, (although for survivors that term is a misnomer as the consequences are lifelong); however, the secondary harm being caused in the present is ignored and confronted by silence.
The reason for this may be indifference or perhaps a lack of understanding. Regardless, when those who do speak up and question whether the response of a religious institution reflects its own values, they should not be dismissed as occupying some moral high ground. It is a legitimate question as to how institutional power is being exercised over survivors seeking justice today
As children, survivors experienced a devastating imbalance of power and control. Their ability to choose, to resist, to be heard and, in many cases, even to be believed was taken from them. That is why many survivors experience the Christian Brothers’ current litigation strategy as abuse by other means.
The abuse of childhood and the litigation strategy of today are plainly different but, for survivors, the experience of powerlessness can connect for them in a damaging way. The leadership of the same religious Order now exercises power and control over the process by which survivors seek justice. For people whose childhoods were defined by coercion and the loss of agency, that dynamic can be familiar and re-traumatising.
Secondary harm should not be diminished because it occurs decades later or takes a different form. The restoration of choice and agency to people from whom both were taken as children is fundamental to healing. Listening to survivors has little meaning if the institutional response that follows leaves them facing further obstacles to how they pursue justice.
Fr Flannery, in his Rite and Reason column of August 16th last, also refers to mediation, as described in the Christian Brothers’ own statement. But that is the Order’s account of the process. For survivors, whose pathway through the civil courts is effectively blocked, mediation, if offered, takes place against the backdrop of the Order’s litigation strategy and with individual Brothers rather than the congregation itself. Questions of power, control and agency remain.
I agree with Fr Flannery that forgiveness can have an important place in healing. But years caught in the Order’s litigation strategy hardly create the conditions in which peace, healing or forgiveness can flourish. The toll extends beyond the courts, intruding on family life and the space survivors need for therapy and healing.
There is certainly room for the compassion Fr Flannery asks us to extend to individual Christian Brothers. However, while his account of the formation of young Christian Brothers may help to explain the environment in which they lived, it offers little comfort to survivors. Understanding how Brothers themselves were formed cannot diminish responsibility for what was done to children, nor can it explain decisions being made by the Order’s leadership today.
The litigation strategy being pursued presently carries a human cost. Responsibility for that rests with the Order’s leadership, not with innocent Brothers drawn into proceedings or survivors seeking justice.