Please Marie Collins

Please Marie Collins!!

I hate criticising any survivor of catholic clergy abuse, goodness knows we  have all been to hell and back, and have been carrying horrific scars and a huge burden, one that may never actually be possible to put down. 

We are all different, we are not clones, we have had different experiences, have had varying levels of support, and were the prey of varying clerical deviants, with a whole variety of sick predilections.

In our fights back against the criminal organisation that spawned those pedophiles and protected them, while abusing us further, we all make very different contributions.

Some are very public, others very private, each one of us makes a difference in our own way. Each contribution is valuable and precious.

So usually when another survivor goes their own way, I  don’t think I have the right to judge their motives.

But when the vatican is manipulating one of them and using their “victim” status to their own ends and in order to appear to be addressing their crimes, then I am afraid I have to speak about it.

I am talking about the choice of Marie Collins as the “token victim” by the vatican in their ridiculous “investigation commission” regarding clergy abuse.

Everyone is saying that they welcome this choice, but personally I am really quite shocked! 

I ‘m so sorry Marie, I am sure in your naivete you have good intentions, and I say all of this with  love for a fellow survivor who is perhaps struggling, like me, to make sense of the cruelty that we experienced. 

But what the hell are you  doing?

If Marie Collins is there to help fix her  broken church, and she has that agenda, then that of course is her choice. But please  tell it like it is! This has nothing at all to do with survivors of catholic clergy!  She absolutely does NOT represent survivors!

She is a catholic, and cannot possibly be objective or unbiased, she surely must know that  most survivors don’t want anything the hell to do with that church!

She is cynically wheeled out on a regular basis when the vatican needs a “victim”to display.

NO survivor should be used as part of their spin, and any investigation into their criminal behaviour has to be  be independent and secular.That survivors  could be part of.

We all are very active in our own ways in this battle, and it IS a battle, we have had to fight endlessly against this narcissistic organisation for even a scrap of justice, many of us have died fighting.

The church will NEVER do anything willingly or voluntarily, they have had to be dragged screaming at every turn.

Every time one of us plays a part, it takes an enormous amount out of us, we are damaged people, often ill, and each confrontation is painful. I am quite sure they are aware of that too, their delaying tactics suggest they have learned how to weaken people.

Every new  abuses  we hear about  is like a knife in our hearts.

Each time we are in the company of the smug, self satisfied clergy, insensitively still wearing their clerical regalia, our flesh creeps.

Every time we are asked to tell our "stories" again in full sordid detail, we re- live them.

Every time we hear of yet another fellow survivor taking  their own life or dying prematurely, it breaks our hearts again.

Every time we are dismissed, trivialised, lied about, cheated, and further abused, we are being damaged further, but we DO it because we HAVE to fight this criminal organisation , we are driven in our fight by our own unbearable and under acknowledged pain, and the knowlege that these abuses, often dismissed as “historic” are still happening, and there are future generations of children who will still be at risk.

If Marie Collins  really has survivors and future children at her heart, she would be categorically refusing to be part of this pantomime, as she should have refused the last time when she was wheeled out like a trophy at the vatican meeting. 

Marie Collins is not doing survivors , or our cause any favours at all, in fact may well be setting our cause back quite a way.

But  it is not too late for her to back out and tell them why!

So Marie, please,  if you really do have any concern for your  fellow survivors  all over the world who have been so cruelly treated by this, your  church, you will stand and be counted WITH us, not against us in this fight.

I have no desire to watch you being used and abused further simply because you want to make a difference.

Tell them you will not betray thousands of us by joining  in their game, and know that your refusal would be a far more powerful contribution than sitting for years with raging papists who’s sole agenda will be to protect the church ,dismiss survivors, and when cornered, only offer as little as they can get away with rather than as MUCH as they can possibly do.

There is still time to do the right thing!