SNAP World Conference Part 1 : The hurt I felt.

SNAP World Conference:
Dublin.
 ‘Accountability’

26th, 27th, 28th April 2013

Part 1: The Hurt I felt

This ‘World ‘ Conference has just ended in Dublin, Ireland.  An occasion to meet other survivors coming from around the globe.  To learn what was happening about clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. To hear what survivors were doing.

It should have been a World collaborative effort to gather resources, experience , ideas and skills to tackle clergy sexual abuse of children and adults.

My introduction to the conference, weeks before, set the ‘tone’ for me.  I always enjoy such events, for in the past it felt like I was ‘coming home’ to a group of sisters and brothers who shared a common pain and common assault …we would ‘be’ together. It never mattered who was running the event for that was immaterial.  It mattered that we were all together, respected and heard.

This conference was different. It felt different ever since , weeks before I had asked to present my PhD work on ‘Clergy Sexual exploitation of Adult women‘.  I was told  ‘no’, I was told the programme was fixed. Then I asked if I could put up a poster session and I never received a reply.  So I prepared three large display boards of what 63 survivors of sexual violation by clergy said in my research.  I felt I was carrying and conveying the voices of these women. This I had promised to do after my research was completed.  I promised to convey my findings (their experience) worldwide. So in Dublin, I felt there was such an opportunity to voice their words through these displays. What’s more, now being ill and in a wheelchair a world conference was at my door and it would be ‘easy’ to do!

On the Friday evening when I arrived, I asked a senior SNAP person could I put them up.  The answer ‘NO’. why, I asked, dumbfounded…why not?

“because this conference is about SNAP”, was the reply.

This shot through me like a bullet.  And it hurt.  I said , rather loudly, “This is NOT about SNAP this conference is about victims”.

The next morning I got up a 6am, finished one board and put them on the walls.  To hell with ‘permission’ I decided, I was charged to voice voices and I was going to do it.

The SNAP person caught me in the corridor; “they will have to come down” she said angrily.  This time my mood was even more raging.  ‘I am NOT taking these boards down, you can, but I am not”.

She took them down, not only took them down but put the sticky sides on the back onto the fronts of the next board so that in separating them the words there were torn, ‘abused’.  And I mean this, taking down those boards was, in my eyes, another violation of women whom clergy had sexually manipulated, tormented and controlled. SNAP was ‘controlling’ these women’s voices again.  I was raging and very tearful, for I am such a victim, so is my twin and so are the 63 women of that research, and other voices taken from newspapers and other reports.

That was Saturday.  I was so upset and could not comprehend the SNAP logic/rationale.  Should we not, as sisters and brothers equally violated, not just be equally sharing our voices?  Apparently not.  I told Mannix Flynn, the Chair of the Conference, an Irish survivor, he said “leave it to me”, but I heard no more.

On Sunday morning I spotted a ‘general’ table where leaflets from people’s organisations were being left.  There was not a lot, but I assumed that this was the public display area so propped up my boards on the table and a nun helped me.

Several participants came to look, and I talked to one person who was supporting some women in Canada. Then that SNAP woman, Barbara Dorris, came along and took them down…again…a stony unwavering resolve on her face.  She took them down and hid them behind the table.

Seeing them there welled up in me the deepest tears, the deepest anger and the deepest love for those women whose ‘voices’, experiences were now shuffled to behind a table and all because…’This Conference was about SNAP’.

I stormed in deepest distress to the auditorium and told about 60 gathered

“I just want to tell you that I have not been allowed put up my display boards on clergy sexual abuse of adults because I’m told this conference is about SNAP.  No, no, it is NOT, it is NOT about SNAP, it is about victims of clergy sexual abuse.  I want you to know this and say something about it”…

at the end I was sobbing…uncontrollably. I left and in the corridor roared at Barbara Dorris, and I don’t regret it…”Shame , Shame, Shame…” I shouted.

Mannix Flynn, the person chairing the conference rather manfully , too ‘manfully’ for my taste, told me to ‘take time out’ .  I said, “Mannix, don’t tell me what to do, I’m angry, I’m upset” and I went back into the auditorium, but the sobbing continued and I felt that awful sense of powerlessness and lack of control of my abuse, and those women’s abuse and it was just…awful.  Deirdre Kelly, from I in 4 Ireland came up and gave me a hug, into her dark black hair I sobbed and cried “how can they do this?”, “it’s the woman’s voices”? “how can they take them off the wall?”

Of course there were no answers. No answers to the scene of survivors controlling other survivors.  No answers to the shame of a survivor group feeling their ‘corporate image’, their ‘organisation’, their ‘club’, was in fact more important than victims voices from another place (mostly the UK, and some Irish amongst those 63 women on my boards).

But then the last speaker spoke, (Fr) Tom Doyle, during question time strongly told the participants that the work we do is not about ourselves, nor about our organisations…it was about the victims, children and adults.  The victims were the focus and must remain the focus. Mannix Flynn in summing up said likewise. Mannix gave me the microphone and I did not say anything about SNAP or Barbara Dorris, or the boards Id prepared and ignominiously taken down…I spoke of POWER, I spoke of misuse of power and how as survivors, as people we needed to understand power, power not only in our churches, by clergy, but power in our doctors, our therapists, our friends, our organisations.  I reminded people there was good and bad power and we needed to understand it.

Now it’s Monday, the weekend is over, I am exhausted.

However I am contemplating the dangers of power, of the mis-use of power. I am pondering the dynamic of oppressed becoming oppressors. I am thinking deeply of the whole area of ‘responsibility’ and where we , as survivors, are called in doing advocacy or campaigning work.

We are not called to self aggrandisement, we are not called to build corporate empires, huge organisations, we are not called to get the next award or praise for our work, we are not called to ’take over’ another’s voice, control the voices of victims/survivors.  We are not called to sweep in and show or tell other victims/survivors ’how to do it’, so that we get the praise and power for helping others, we are not called to replicate mis-use of power.

So what are we called to do?  It is very simple.  We are called to serve.  We are called to uphold the oppressed, to voice for the voiceless, to facilitate voices of the voiceless.  We are called, yes, to educate and share to share the stories of shame, guilt, and humiliation of those so harmed they cannot do this themselves.

But we cannot ’pick and chose’ which voices should be heard and which should not.  Censorship of voices can only be on the basis of preventing more damage, more harm…can only be if the ’voice’ is abusive, violent or dangerous to others.

But the SNAP conference had voices aplenty and in part 2 I want to share those voices of prophecy, of wisdom, of courage and of strength.

The voice of survivors still challenges, still calls for justice.  And this voice cannot be stifled.


Written by me,
Victim/survivor of clergy sexual violation as an adult.  

Go to part 2 read about the good of the SNAP conference