INNOCENCE LOST

Don’t you just cringe when christians bring every conversation around to what Jesus would have said about this or about that,how they manage to find opportunities to spout their message at every turn? 

I grew up in that kind of cringe making environment, signs and messages everywhere and quick “eye to the main chance” comments when ever anyone pretty much said anything!

I remember losing one of my children when he was three, he had wandered out of the family’s shop and someone, thinking he was lost, took him to the lost children’s kiosk on the beach! I was frantic, 8 months pregnant and running up and down the street screaming his name until  I  eventually found what had happened.

Before I found him, one of my Aunts, head on one side in  that  awful religious  “beatific”  pose said “Never mind dear, remember our blessed lady lost her lad” ! -  I nearly went for her throat! 

Any pain or tragedy one suffered   was always trivialised  at the side of 

“Think what our blessed lord suffered” !

I have an internal scream every time I encounter it!

So I am loathe to always bring every occasion and event around to clergy sexual abuse , despite the fact that it pretty much effects every little thing we survivors do.

But as I held my new born grandson in my arms, I could not help but think about those  appalling effects and the scientific research showing  that the damage done to my brain by being abused, and the damage to my immune system and metabolic system, the shortening of my life span, can be passed on to the next generation and the next....

And I can do NOTHING about it,regardless of how much I want to change it I  can’t.

I remember thinking about my own children and what they might have inherited, and feeling suicidal.Then my other grandchildren, how much have they been affected ? 

But even killing myself would not have changed it! 

Of course this does not mean they can take everything away from me,there is still enormous joy in this lovely new baby, in my children’s and grandchildren’s achievments, in the people I meet and am touched by,  in my work and my home.

But it was DISTORTED! For me, for my children and for their children, by a greedy inadequate sweaty ugly pedophile and the  narcissistic church that incubates these creeps, and then trivialises our pain.

Please do not tell me, or any other survivor,  as we await the UN’s decision regarding childhood clergy abuse, that experiencing this, and then knowing the lifelong effects for ourselves and our loved ones is not torture!