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Nuns as sexual victims get little notice
By Bill Smith Of the Post-Dispatch
01/05/2003 02:40 PM
Already shaken by a yearlong sex abuse scandal involving priests and minors, the Roman Catholic Church has yet to face another critical challenge - how to help thousands of nuns who say they have been sexually victimized.
A national survey, completed in 1996 but intentionally never publicized, estimates that a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.
Some of that sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment has come at the hands of priests and other nuns in the church, the report said.
The survey was conducted by researchers at St. Louis University and was paid for, in part, by several orders of Catholic nuns.
The study, recently obtained by the Post-Dispatch, indicates that the victimization often has had devastating psychological effects on the women. Many of the nuns said they were left with feelings of anger, shame, anxiety and depression. Some said it made them consider leaving religious life, and a few said they had attempted suicide.
"These women have been the stalwarts of the church for centuries, and a significant percentage of them have been victimized as a result of the structure of the very institution to which they have dedicated their lives," said study co-author John T. Chibnall, a research psychologist and associate professor at St. Louis University.
Another of the researchers, Ann Wolf, said she believes it is vital that the Catholic Church recognize the problem.
"The bishops appear to be only looking at the issue of child sexual abuse, but the problem is bigger than that," Wolf said. "Catholic sisters are being violated, in their ministries, at work, in pastoral counseling."
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the group was unaware of the St. Louis University study on nuns and its members have not addressed the issue. Officials with local orders of nuns who participated in the study say they remain concerned but have made no changes as a result of the report.
The survey is the only national scientific study dealing with the sexual victimization of nuns in the Catholic Church, according to its researchers. Despite the scope of its findings several years ago, no further studies have been done, they say.
The survey also solicited comments - many of them poignant - from the nuns who were questioned.
Of the more than 1,100 surveys returned to the university, several included brief, personal stories from women who said they had been targeted. One woman wrote that after a priest fondled one of her breasts during confession, she remained so upset that she did not return to confession for the next 18 years.
Another wrote that as a young girl, her uncle, who also was a priest, insisted on touching holy oil to her genital area "to keep me safe while dating." Later, her superiors forced her to attend religious retreats with the same uncle, she said.
Still another wrote that a priest-therapist treating her for severe depression encouraged her to become involved in "sexual experimentation." The woman said she later began a relationship with another nun.
Several of the women said such research was long overdue.
"Thanks for taking the time to admit there is a problem in this area," wrote one. "Best wishes. God bless."
Study is kept quiet
Findings of the study were published in two religious research journals in the spring and winter of 1998 but have never been reported by the mainstream press.
Review for Religious, published at St. Louis University, printed a summary of the survey results in its May-June 1998 issue. Review of Religious Research, an academic journal published by the Religious Research Association, printed the full results in December of that year.
Both are respected journals with limited circulations.
Chibnall said researchers agreed not to prepare a press release about the findings because a national women's Catholic group, Leadership Conference of Women Religious, believed that the information would be sensationalized.
"It was like this: 'We don't wash our dirty laundry in public; we'll take care of it,'" Chibnall said.
Paul N. Duckro, the St. Louis University professor who headed the survey team, said researchers "guaranteed" religious communities "that we would not handle this in any way that sought publicity."
The two publications chosen to report the results, Duckro said, were chosen carefully to get information to the people who needed it but "not out in front of everybody's eyes."
But a former Catholic priest who has said he was sexually abused as a boy by three different priests said last week that he believes it is crucial to get the results of the St. Louis University survey to the public.
Christopher Dixon, who left the priesthood in 1996 and now lives in St. Louis, said he hopes that the publicity over the survey will generate the same "groundswell" of action that resulted from recent reports of priests' sexual abuse of minors. Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell of Palm Beach, Fla., resigned in March after admitting he sexually abused Dixon more than 25 years earlier.
Female church leaders can be "as much a part of this toxic environment" of cover-up and denial as male church leaders, Dixon said.
The SLU study is the result of a 15-page survey returned by 1,164 nuns representing 123 religious orders throughout the United States. The large majority of nuns surveyed were highly educated; more than 9 of 10 who returned questionnaires had at least a college education.
The survey dealt with three main types of victimization.
The first, child sexual abuse, was defined as any sexually oriented contact with a person of the same or opposite sex where the target is younger than 18.
The second, sexual exploitation, was defined as any sexual advance, request for sexual favors, or other verbal or nonverbal sexual conduct that occurs when a woman entrusts her property, body, mind or spirit to another person acting in a professional role.
The third, sexual harassment, was defined as any unwelcome sexual advance that affects employment decisions, interferes with work, or creates a hostile or intimidating work environment.
Among the key findings:
Nearly one in five nuns said she had been sexually abused as a child. While most of the abuse came at the hands of a male family member, about 9 percent of the cases were attributed to abuse by priests, nuns or other religious people.
One in eight nuns said she had been sexually exploited. Of those, nearly three of every four maintained she was victimized by a priest, nun or other religious person. The exploitation included everything from pressure for "dates" to requests for sexual favors to sexual intercourse. Two of every five nuns who said they had been sexually exploited said the exploitation involved some form of genital contact.
Slightly fewer than one in 10 nuns said she was the focus of sexual harassment at least once during her religious life. Almost half of those were reported to be at the hands of priests, nuns or other religious people. More than half of the total harassment cases involved some type of physical contact, according to the survey.
In their report, the researchers noted that they believe the figures are more likely to underestimate rather than overestimate the true prevalence of sexual victimization among sisters. "The fear and pain of disclosure would be sufficient enough to discourage responding in some sisters," the report said.
The results of the nun survey on abuse seem to be in line with many other surveys of women. National surveys indicate that about 20 percent to 27 percent of all women have been sexually abused as children.
The harassment figure for nuns would appear to be lower. In a 1994 Louis Harris and Associates national survey, 31 percent of women claimed to have been harassed at work.
While the St. Louis University study of American nuns has received little attention within the Catholic Church, the church has addressed the issue of abused nuns internationally.
In March 2001, two major Catholic groups pushed for action by the Vatican after news accounts of abused nuns. Those stories primarily concerned sexual abuse of nuns by priests in Africa.
In a joint statement, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious said they were "deeply disturbed" by reports first published in the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly based in Kansas City.
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