Submitted by Greg Bullough (not verified) on Jun. 04, 2009.
Jamie, you're clearly what I call a 'tertiary' victim of McKeon.
His primary victims were the boys he abused.
His secondary victims were their families, friends, employers, and all the other people who were affected by the scars which McKeon left.
His tertiary victims were those whose faith in him he betrayed. For them, an inevitable part of processing the information about who their mentors really were calls into question everything that for which they seemed to stand.
These are often the people who start out by lashing out and railing against the accusers, saying that they're lying, are only in it for money, etc. You haven't done that.
However, your statement "And, in collusion with the church hierarchy, he was forced to stay silent, to be dishonest about his illnesses and pain" is false; it is self-delusional and says more about where you are in your grieving process than anything else.
For you are grieving: Your "loss" is your image of an individual who was kind to you and helped you.
That the assertion is false is clear. These people have, and always have had, a wealth of options avaliable to "take themselves out of the game." Many more, in fact, than the "average Joe" and just about all of them paid
for by the Church. And where psychological treatment was concerned, in many cases higher quality than most of us could find, short of being independently wealthy. McKeon could have done one or more of the following:
Gone to his bishop, stated his problems, and requested treatment at any one of a number of specialized residential facilities for clergy with substance and sexual issues
Checked himself into a treatment facility
Insisted on assignement to a ministry where he would have no contact with young people or vulnerable adults
Entered a closed community (with full disclosure) such as a monastary
Gone to his local district attorney, confessed his crimes, and requested incarceration to protect society from him
Instead he chose to continue to offend.
He continued, apparently, to hold 'boys only' weekends.
He continued, apparently, to soften teens up with alcohol.
Perhaps when his judgement was clouded by alcohol, he didn't have much choice. Or rather, had gotten himself into a situation where he could have or should have known ahead of time that he would have to choose, and where he also should have known ahead of time that he would be in no condition to do so.
But he must have been sober some time, and in those times he continued to indulge himself in his problems by planning the next time he would "fail."
Nobody "forced" him to do that.
This is not idle speculation; my own mentor and spiritual director from teen years turned out to be a serial abuser. It was by the grace of the deity that I escaped becoming a primary victim myself. I knew this man over a period of years, and in retrospect could see the pattern.
He is a great, charming, spiritual guy when not in the grip of his problems.
Rather than taking himself out of the game, though, he would:
Engage in sublimination behaviors: food, alcohol, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, all to excess.
Throw himself into his work, to exhaustion
Spiritually "self medicate" at retreat centers, new-age psychology facilities (in the guise of learning more about spirituality and retreat work), etc.
Eventually simply indulge himself in the sexual companionship of young man who was supposed to be in his care
Go off to new "challenges" when something happened (e.g. acting out sexually with a minor or young adult) to make the current situation untenable
As the recent article by Nugent in Commonweal so aptly illustrates, there is ample temptation to view abusers who happen to do some good work along the way, in spite of their problems, as "wounded healers." It's all-too-easy to engage in a sort of hyper-Christianity and seek to see some sort of balance in their lives in order to rationalize offering them a sort of "forgiveness" (what abuse survivors call "the F-word.").
Too often, though, what it's really about is us.
Human beings have a great deal of difficulty with personal enigmas. "How can someone who did me so much good, made me feel so good about myself, do such rotten things over and over again? It can't be? Where they lying to me? Were they doing it to further their personal appetites?"
We like things simple. The very idea that a key player in our spiritual development was a serial rapist, and therefore a criminal, who chose to continue as a criminal, certainly complicates our internal lives.
It is likely, though, The that most of the good that McKeon did for you really came from you.
However, trying to balance "the good" that many of these sociopathic criminals did against their criminal activities is, in my opinion a fool's errand.
Either that, or the musings of someone who has a way to go in healing from their sense of deep betrayal. It's the "bargaining" stage; the next is "despair."
Jamie, you're clearly what I
Jamie, you're clearly what I call a 'tertiary' victim of McKeon.
His primary victims were the boys he abused.
His secondary victims were their families, friends, employers, and all the other people who were affected by the scars which McKeon left.
His tertiary victims were those whose faith in him he betrayed. For them, an inevitable part of processing the information about who their mentors really were calls into question everything that for which they seemed to stand.
These are often the people who start out by lashing out and railing against the accusers, saying that they're lying, are only in it for money, etc. You haven't done that.
However, your statement "And, in collusion with the church hierarchy, he was forced to stay silent, to be dishonest about his illnesses and pain" is false; it is self-delusional and says more about where you are in your grieving process than anything else.
For you are grieving: Your "loss" is your image of an individual who was kind to you and helped you.
That the assertion is false is clear. These people have, and always have had, a wealth of options avaliable to "take themselves out of the game." Many more, in fact, than the "average Joe" and just about all of them paid
for by the Church. And where psychological treatment was concerned, in many cases higher quality than most of us could find, short of being independently wealthy. McKeon could have done one or more of the following:
Instead he chose to continue to offend.
He continued, apparently, to hold 'boys only' weekends.
He continued, apparently, to soften teens up with alcohol.
Perhaps when his judgement was clouded by alcohol, he didn't have much choice. Or rather, had gotten himself into a situation where he could have or should have known ahead of time that he would have to choose, and where he also should have known ahead of time that he would be in no condition to do so.
But he must have been sober some time, and in those times he continued to indulge himself in his problems by planning the next time he would "fail."
Nobody "forced" him to do that.
This is not idle speculation; my own mentor and spiritual director from teen years turned out to be a serial abuser. It was by the grace of the deity that I escaped becoming a primary victim myself. I knew this man over a period of years, and in retrospect could see the pattern.
He is a great, charming, spiritual guy when not in the grip of his problems.
Rather than taking himself out of the game, though, he would:
As the recent article by Nugent in Commonweal so aptly illustrates, there is ample temptation to view abusers who happen to do some good work along the way, in spite of their problems, as "wounded healers." It's all-too-easy to engage in a sort of hyper-Christianity and seek to see some sort of balance in their lives in order to rationalize offering them a sort of "forgiveness" (what abuse survivors call "the F-word.").
Too often, though, what it's really about is us.
Human beings have a great deal of difficulty with personal enigmas. "How can someone who did me so much good, made me feel so good about myself, do such rotten things over and over again? It can't be? Where they lying to me? Were they doing it to further their personal appetites?"
We like things simple. The very idea that a key player in our spiritual development was a serial rapist, and therefore a criminal, who chose to continue as a criminal, certainly complicates our internal lives.
It is likely, though, The that most of the good that McKeon did for you really came from you.
However, trying to balance "the good" that many of these sociopathic criminals did against their criminal activities is, in my opinion a fool's errand.
Either that, or the musings of someone who has a way to go in healing from their sense of deep betrayal. It's the "bargaining" stage; the next is "despair."
I hope you find "acceptance" soon.