For Immediate Release —
The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) a group that stands in solidarity with victims of sexual abuse, released the following letter sent today to the Leadership Conference of Religious Women meeting in General Assembly in New Orleans this week.
In releasing the text, NSAC said the courage of survivors of sexual abuse by nuns and family members of at least one victim who committed suicide, must be honored.
In an urgent call to the religious sisters NSAC asked the nuns meeting in a General Assembly in New Orleans to listen to the testimonies of survivors and family members.
Complete Text:
Sister J. Lora Dambroksi, OSF
President, Leadership Conference
of Women Religious
8808 Cameron Street
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Dear Sister Dambroski and all LCWR members meeting in General Assembly:
Our request is simple.
You have seen the response of the Bishops to the sexual abuse crisis. We ask you not to imitate it but to think anew and lead. While you are together at this conference, please don’t dodge, deflect, or deny the issue of sexual abuse of children and minors by nuns. You know survivors have been standing outside of our conference leadership building and conference leadership meetings for years. This year, please invite them in, truly in. Not just inside your conference building or your leadership building but also in where it counts: into your hearts and spirits. Then we ask you to act with hearts and spirits that cultivate justice. We are asking that you listen attentively to the survivors and family members of at least one victim who committed suicide who have found the courage to come forward.
If this conference time doesn’t work for the fullness of listening to them, please make the plans at this conference to mutually schedule the time to do it. We will be happy to assist you in any way that moves the listening and the inviting forward.
Sincerely,
National Survivor Advocates Coalition
Contact Information: Kristine Ward, 937-272-0308
Thank you so much for this plea. As a survivor of sexual abuse by a sister – something that has impacted my life irreparably – I have stood outside the meeting place of the LCWR for many years begging to speak before the general assembly of the religious sisters. Year after year they have refused us, telling us that the general assembly is not the proper venue. We have very simple requests: to speak to the general assembly, to have the individual congregations offer websites to the members of their congregations for reporting this horror and for getting support for themselves. Year after year they turn away from us and ignore our prayer vigils outside the hotels in which they stay. Thank yu for your support in this effort. Sexual abuse by religious sisters is as rampant as that by priests, but it is more difficult for people to believe. We need to get our stories out there and let people know what is going on. The sisters speak out against the war in Iraq, the trafficking of women, etc. These are all worthy causes, but they need to remove the beam in their own eyes before going after the splinter in others’.
What is particularly difficult to swallow is that some of those objecting to the
Vatican’s investigtion of women’s religious orders in America point to the abuse scandal as reason why “men” do not have the moral authority to institute those investigations.
Leaving aside the merits of the “visitation” there is irony when an LCWR member tries to leverage the plight of the abuse survivors to whom the LCWR will not give a platform or a hearing.
And so the LCWR probably shouldn’t look to the survivors and advocates upon whom they’ve turned their collective backs for much support in their own time of difficulty.