Speech
given to Governors' task force hearing on sexual abuse.
Capitol Hill, Boston. 2002
My name is Steven Lynch. I grew up on the north shore
of Boston.
I want to speak with you all to address some of the questions I've
heard in the newspapers and on the radio concerning sexual abuse by
the clergy. "Where are all these men coming from?" "Why
didn't they step forward before?" " Why didn't they tell
the truth before?"
A simple answer would be to say that my fellow man was not ready to
hear the truth before; you were not ready to hear us before. Because
many men and women did tell someone before and they were lied to or
deceived or not believed or were re-victimized for what they said.
Can you try to understand that I was nine years old when this happened?
The world was big, the people around me were big, and the powers that
surrounded me were big, at nine years old. Do you remember? And do
you know that my parents considered the priest to be God, my neighbors
spoke of this priest as God and my society revered this man as God
himself? So when a nine year old boy is in the room with God, and
there is unfathomable shame and excruciating stress and pain, confusion,
guilt, uncomfortableness and more shame absolutely filling this room,
what do you think happens? Does a nine year old boy blame God or put
the shame on God? Do you speak against God, knowing the whole of society
reveres this incarnation of God? It is an unresolvable, insane, impossible
choice to make at nine years old. Do you understand what I am saying
to you? What does a nine year old boy do with a roomful of shame,
knowing that his own father will most likely kick his ass for shaming
his fathers' God?
But I do remember that I stood in the middle of the street I grew
up on and I screamed. I held the back of my legs, near my buttocks
where I had been anally penetrated and I screamed. In the street,
at the top of my voice, I screamed my rage and I screamed my pain.
But you didn't hear. The people didn't hear. It was considered a childish
temper tantrum back then.
I think it was too much for all of you and my fear is that it may
be too much for all of you now. My fear is that you still don't hear
all the screams.
And at that point, at nine years old, I had to choose. I had to choose
to tell the truth, or possibly be molested again. I had to choose
to tell the truth or have my parents love withdrawn. I had to choose,
at nine years old, to tell the truth or be disenfranchised by my family
or my friends or the town I lived in, because my fellow man was not
ready to hear the truth. Do you know what a choice that is, psychologically,
for a nine year old boy? Do you understand? Yet I see how wise I was
to choose survival. How wise.
Now, at 42 years old, I have to choose again, to tell the truth, knowing
some people will feel betrayed. And some people will not listen and
will disown me and even send me threats on the internet, which is
what I have been living through. But I am telling you, I will not
betray my own heart, my own soul, my own self. I am telling you and
I am telling the leaders within this church that I will not be silenced
again and I will not betray that little boy. I will stand for that
little boy and I will speak for that little boy and that little boy
will have his voice. And maybe it is just too much for all of us to
comprehend or to fathom or to grasp.
Do I have a right to ask that you try to understand, to wake up, to
come out of your denials and hear my scream and the scream of so many
others? Maybe ALL of our survival depends on us turning to face life,
to come out of our illusions, to awaken from how we dreamed it to
be or wished it was. Maybe our very survival now, and our peace will
come when we face life and each other and the realities of our existence
and acknowledge how it really was, and is. I tell you we must face
the whole truth of our past to even have a chance, to have a possibility
of something different in the future.
Can you understand the pain, the sorrow, what it is to grieve the
loss of a childhood that didn't just slip away, but was stolen away?
Grieving 30 years of lost innocence and lost intimacy with my fellow
man? Fearing the very world I would have to live in, as if being given
a prison sentence of fear and shame and guilt? Not feeling safe in
the world or in my own body because of the thief who visited there
so early in my life? It takes a long, long time to grieve so much
loss, to cry so many tears.
I don't want your pity and I don't want you to fix it, because you
can't. And you can't give me back my childhood. Let me live through
it. And let the victims now stepping forward live through all the
pain and the anger and the rage and the sorrow and the loss and the
grief. All of it. You cannot fix it, but you can listen. What you
can do is realize that your fellow brothers and sisters now stepping
forward are afraid and broken and fragile and hurt. They are trying
to step into a world that threatened to destroy them, a world that
was totally against them, a world that hated them and a world that
never heard their screams.
And maybe it is just too much for all of us, such an experience, such
a world.
Do you hear the screams?
Steven Lynch
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