A Norwegian friend, Leif Hovelsen, was tortured as a teenager by the Gestapo. He is deaf from the beatings he received. After liberation the tables were turned and he found himself guarding his guards. He began to mete out to them some of the same punishment he had received and was startled, he says, to discover that the same root of evil he despised in the Nazis was also within his own nature.
This article first appeared on the website: www.spiritrestoration.org in March 2004
A Norwegian friend, Leif Hovelsen, was tortured as a teenager by the Gestapo. He is deaf from the beatings he received. After liberation the tables were turned and he found himself guarding his guards. He began to mete out to them some of the same punishment he had received and was startled, he says, to discover that the same root of evil he despised in the Nazis was also within his own nature. He confronted the man who tortured him. ‘I thought for a long time and at last reached the conclusion that I had to forgive him,’ says Leif. He even refused to press criminal charges against his persecutor. This sadistic man was, however, later executed because of evidence presented by others. After the execution a priest told Leif that he had asked to take communion. Leif says, surprisingly, ‘If God opened himself to this man, that means that before God, he and I are equal. And I have no right to condemn or accuse someone else.’
The Nazi rightly suffered the consequences of his acts. Leif, who had been betrayed and condemned to death, got on with life - a life that has been particularly fruitful, first in building bridges between Norway and Germany and later in helping Russians--Soviet dissidents and members of the Nomenklatura--to move to the future together.
Looking back over sixty years, he believes time has proved God’s way was the providential one: ‘It was the salvation for the Gestapo man who was executed because of his crimes but who found peace with his maker and victory over death. It has also become a door-opening experience to so many other people--Germans, Poles, Russians in their struggle to find inner freedom and deliverance from the evil of hate.’
His experience suggests that even when the most heinous crimes have been committed there is a way forward for all. Is there something here for victims of sexual abuse by priests, an abuse that was not only widespread but for years covered up or played down?
At the end of February the National Review Board set up by Roman Catholic bishops reported that since 1950 3,492 priests, about four percent of the priesthood, have been accused of abusing 10,667 children. There have been 10,667 individuals making accusations and the known cost to dioceses and religious orders is more than 600 million dollars.
The cost in human terms is appalling. Not only in the lives of those who were betrayed, with childhood and even adulthood soured, but also the immeasurable cost to unknown numbers of their faith in God and to the moral authority of the church, measured in a small way by less giving to the church and a decline in priestly vocations. Every priest must at some time be aware that he is suspiciously looked at by some because of his position, with parents less open, reluctant to trust their children to them.
Jesus reserved special condemnation for those who destroy the faith of children. Better that they had never been born, millstones should be hung around their necks and they be cast into the sea. Yet he still urges us to show love and forgiveness, with joy in heaven for every sinner who repents. That is a matter between each guilty priest and his maker.
The church is trying to make amends, asking for forgiveness, setting up structures which will help prevent further abuse. It is moving to read the humble words of many of the prelates.
A Catholic friend who has some experience in counselling young victims, tells me, ‘Having prayed with young men who were victim of such abuse, I can say that the sharing of the trauma left by such abuse, the fact of asking God to clean the memory, and the knowledge that they are not guilty themselves but only victims is a great step toward cure. I hope that a good part of these victims have found in their family, or with other educators people who have come to their rescue. Some among the priests have overcome it in a sound way by an inner impulse which is the grace of the Lord. But the society that surrounds these children must ask itself: have we not be guilty of lack of alertness, and lack of transparency on sexual matters, as a father or a mother will ask themselves the same questions when they discover their child has been abused. The dimension of the abuse questions the entire society: What has gone wrong with us?’
An organization, Linkup, has recently been formed to provide advocacy and support to clergy abuse survivors from all denominations. ‘Our goal is to foster healing from the unique spiritual wounds, and to end abuse in religious institutions, ‘says Sue Archibald, its president. Linkup has about 3000 members internationally and is headquartered in Kentucky, USA . Its website is at www.thelinkup.org. They don’t use the word ‘forgiveness’ much, ‘because we've found it to be triggering to many survivors’. Their preferred process is to ‘release resentments.’ That is a wise approach.
I don’t prescribe forgiveness to the abused. That may be the job of a counsellor but not mine. To suggest to a Jewish holocaust survivor, or to a tortured African prisoner, or to the victim of a paedophile that they ought to forgive is, for one who has never suffered such abuse, an insensitive, even impertinent act. But I am in touch with a Jewish woman, who survived experiments by Dr Mengele, an English woman who was raped in Chechnya, a Belgian teacher whose daughter was murdered and others like Leif Hovelsen, who have indeed forgiven the perpetrators. They do not feel that in doing so they have condoned these despicable acts or let the perpetrators off the hook. But they all report, like Leif Hovelsen, the healing that has come to their own lives. So I offer forgiveness humbly as an option.
A victim of sexual abuse writes in the current issue of the Jesuit magazine The Way that some have likened their abuse to that of crucifixion and goes on: ‘Jesus’ crucifixion was followed by resurrection, and this continues to be a beacon of hope for survivors of sexual abuse.’
One can only pray that many in this Easter season will follow that beacon.