Showing posts with label Philedelphia Grand Jury Report into Clerical Institutional Abuse of Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philedelphia Grand Jury Report into Clerical Institutional Abuse of Children. Show all posts

Can Christians safely counsel and advise Survivors of Clerical Abuse?

This is a crucially important question.

All over the world Christians, both clerical and lay, have been put in place by ill advised State Authorities and by the Church itself,  ostensibly to 'protect' children, to 'advise' and 'counsel' Survivors, in spite of their inherent conflict of interest. 

And in some cases these people have turned out to be abusers themselves. There are many such cases.

There are also a lot of documented cases of Survivors being further traumatised by calls to 'come closer to God', by Christianised advice and counselling that seeks to 'reconcile' the Survivor with the Church, where Survivors who are believers have gone in good faith, and finding no genuine honesty, have in desperation, taken their own lives or descended into long term depression and illness.

Not to mention outright adversarial approaches taken towards those who come forwards with allegations and or proof of abuse.

The Cloyne Report from Ireland exposes this in some detail.

Thus solving the 'problem' the Church has - a dead or 'reconciled' Survivor will not speak out against the Church. And a re-traumatised Survivor is less likely to mount a concerted campaign to expose what is happening, and may well give up, and may submit, under undue pressure, to 'confidentiality arrangements' linked to cash settlements.

This pattern is being observed and recorded in America, Canada, Australia, Ireland, across Europe, Asia and Africa.

It has to be exposed in full, for it constitutes yet another level of abuse, of trauma, of politicing with the lives of Survivors.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe




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David Cameron, the Rioters and the Blame Game : A question of societal dynamics and scapegoating.

If two people with the same fear based hang-up form a relationships that relationship will have that hang-up built into.

If te
n people with the same fear based hang-up create a societal structure that societal structure will have that hang-up built into.

If those people have children, then their children will grow up in an environment that writes that psychology into their brains and bodies, through experience.

This dynamic is also linked to traumatic events, be they natural disasters or the effects of war, mass starvation, invasion, colonisation or personal events within an individual life. Furthermore, it is important to understand the long term affects of such traumatic events on communities and whole societies.

"Historical trauma (HT) is cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences. The historical trauma response (HTR) is a constellation of features in reaction to this trauma.

The HTR may include substance abuse as a (normalised) vehicle for attempting to numb the pain associated with trauma. The HTR often includes other types of self-destructive behavior, suicidal thoughts and gestures, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, anger, and difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions. Associated with HTR is historical unresolved grief that accompanies the trauma.[1]"


Historical trauma is an similar in nature to intergenerational trauma, which is the phenomenon that where a trauma an individual experiences in an earlier generation can have effects that reach into the lives of future generations

Imagine then what happens when it is not ten, but hundred of thousands and millions of people who build or form part of a hang-up based societal structure. Imagine the adverse affects, for example of the Christian Faiths teaching on masturbation, which is a natural and healthy expression of sexuality, which is then turned into something shameful. Imagine the confusion, fear and shame that arises when that many people are taught that their natural bodily functions are something to be ashamed of.
Thus those people will see that hang-up (or any series of hang-ups or fears) as normal, and will codify their compensatory behaviours related to their insecurity as their Laws and Morals.

This is the also the psychological basis of the consumer culture, a secret very carefully screened from the consumer, a secret that was also the foundation of the work of Edward Bernays, the inventor of the 'art' of Public Relations, the science of creating and selling an image.

He knew that many people are insecure, and that they could be manipulated to seek relief from that insecurity through compensatory behaviours, and that as long as the insecurity remained, they would continue to buy what was being marketed - be it a product or an idea. This is the secret of what is called 'aspirational marketing. And of propaganda.

Such people, or groups of people, will also reject and oppress the natural child that says "NO!" and will demonise those adults within their structure who resist or expose the behaviours or psychology that is imposed by such societal structures or who point out the true nature of the fear or the adverse affects and costs of the societal structures that dominate their society.

Understanding how Post Trauma Behaviour evolves, especially when it is not resolved, is essential to de-coding the societal structures we are attempting to change. This also applies to dealing with our own personal stories.

A Trauma event usually causes pain and fear, and the need to get away, to be safe, to cope often over rides the ability to resolve that trauma. This is the fight or flight mode.

” THE ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.
         Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.
         The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. “

source : Judith Herman “Trauma and Recovery”

If the trauma is not resolved, then the person or community traumatised must cope with the situation and the feelings, and coping entails suppressing the feelings that might overwhelm, which leads to the need to control those people involved so that no-one brings those feelings up, thus maintain the status quo …..

As such people or communities continue to cope, they re-write their own neurology and behaviour to normalise to that coping strategy.

Justification and rationalisation of the need to control then becomes all the more likely, and in times these justifications and rationalisations become structured into how the affect people live their lives, and over time will become codified as the ‘norm’ for that group.

In order to break the cycle, to resolve the trauma, empathy is essential, a large portion of which is self-empathy. Self empathy is the ability to accurately sense one’s feelings and the meaning of one’s experience. This is crucial to developing empathy for others. As I understand myself, so it becomes easier to understand others. And that understanding must come from within, from an honest and clear self reflection – it cannot be imposed, taught, medicated, analysed externally.

It can be facilitated, as Alice Millers describes it, when dealing with the adverse affects of child abuse, by an ‘enlightened witness’. Someone who truly understands because they themselves “know well of the painful stories of their own childhoods and can respectfully and effectively deal with the suffering of their patients. They will not preach them forgetting and forgiveness out of their own fear; they will know that ALL of their patients suffer from the effects of the denial of having been” traumatised.

Thus as David Cameron and other Authorities blame the  rioters for “a complete lack of responsibility, a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals” and wilfully ignores the prevailing conditions that give rise to so  much pain and trauma in our society that are directly linked to the intentional unequal distribution of resources,  to historical intergenerational abuse, he seeks to scapegoat  the weaker section of community,  the poor, the rioters, the parents, and he seeks to demonise them, thus bringing along all those whose hang-ups align neatly  with his and by this he protects the system of inequality which he represents.

He points one finger, with three pointing right back.

“a complete lack of responsibility," - he refuses to take responsibility for his part in a system that creates extreme wealth at one end and extreme poverty at the other.

"a lack of proper parenting" - he refuses to address the intense stress on parenting that arises from a system that REQUIRES both parents to work to serve the economy as consumers.

"a lack of proper upbringing" - same again

"a lack of proper ethics" - his selling weapons to the Egyptian Military during the uprising and afterwards his silence on the Military repression now underway is but one example of his disregard for ethics of any kind.
.
"a lack of proper morals” - the morality of the Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Israel, Libya is not in question fro David Cameron, revealing his utter lack of morality.

This is not to say that the rioters behaviour can be justified, rationalised or deemed acceptable – it is to say that to address it requires that it is understood in the context within which it occurred. ALL the elements of this dynamic must be equal before the Law, before the people and that is blatantly not the case. Honesty is the root of all positive change.

As long as leaders and Institutions protect the codified trauma based controls, in effect maintain the denial, the ‘coping strategy’ which is their fear, the conditioning processes that are an articulation of their fear and mistrust of the human being and of life itself, there will be people who accept that control, be it by sublimation of their own autonomy, acquiescence through resignation,  or naked self interest, and there will be people will resist or react in whatever manner they can – and yet the only possibility of liberation for all concerned is honesty. Ruthless self honesty.

To expect such leaders to do otherwise is to misunderstand who they are and what they represent.

Sadly, there are so many examples of this suppressive dynamic operating throughout the Dominant Culture  - Civilisation - that a listing of them would be one of the largest books ever written. These dynamics form the greater part of all Hierarchically Violent Societies.... be they the 'civilised' or the rare 'headhunter' hunter gatherers (who are used to stereotype ALL hunter Gatherers....).

Nonetheless it is vital that this dynamic be understood as a pattern, because then it can be observed and emphatically revealed wherever it occurs, be it on the personal level, within small communities, within Institutions or across entire societies. This means that the utterances of Power, of abusers, can be de-constructed and countered as and when they arise.









Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe








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Speech to Rally Trafalgar Square June 4th 2011

This is the text of a speech I was to deliver at the Rally Against Child Abuse, hosted by Truth and Hope, on June 4th, 2011 @ Trafalgar Square. 

I was also asked to deliver a message to the gathering from Kevin Annett, my friend whose pioneering research unveiled to the world the full horror and extent of the Canadian Indian Residential School System, and forced the Canadian Government and those Christian Churches involved in running that system to finally and grudgingly acknowledge what was done in the name of the Canadian tax-payer,  and of 'civilisation'. His work continues, as does mine, with regard to a full and open accounting for these crimes, and a demand that Society address it's profound lack of empathy and it's resultant adverse behaviour.

There was not time enough to do both. I read Kevin's message, and have published the text of the speech here.....

Child protection is many things.

One of the things it is not and never should be is a set of regulations to be followed willy nilly,  so often 'following orders' whilst ignoring the distress that the enforcement of ill-designed bureaucratic rules results in, because they reduce what ought to be a humane interaction to the ticking of boxes, the filling of forms, the application of formulae, the submission of the human being to an order that is un-natural, and ultimately the rejection of the meaning of the lived experience of children and their parents.

Child Protection must be something far deeper than the dry application of the Law, the provision of a Service, and above all it must be humane, empathic and acutely sensitive to the natural needs of the children, the natural needs of families, of parents and of their communities. 

It takes a village to raise a child. Parents MUST BE SUPPORTED in every way possible.

Child protection, if it is to have any meaning, has to recognise a number of key biological realities.

These realities are felt by most mothers, most fathers and not least, well understood by many Scientists researching the biologically mandated developmental realities concerning the consciousness of babies, in the womb, in infancy and throughout childhood development.

Science and Reality meet in best practice. 

Most parents are doing their best. Under the circumstances.

The Reality is this : The Human Child is expecting to emerge into an empathic and nurturing Society.  The Institutions of our Society are neither in great measure. These are the circumstances that mitigate against natural development.

Our Biology is clear: we observe the presence of mirror neurons, which fire the same neural networks that would be required to make the movements that have been observed, that have been seen, and this tells us yet again, that empathy is very much a multi-sensory ability that is innate, intrinsic and absolutely fundamental to the human being. That is to say, that what we experience is written into our physiology, our neurology. The environment in which we grow is of vital importance, and nature has much to offer in this regard. So much to offer.

Empathy is our most basic nature, not fear. We learn best through love. Self empathy is the basis for empathy with others.

The image of mankind as a potentially rampaging, self destructive mass is a fundamental error. Original Sin and The Fall are fables, malign metaphors, and  they do not describe the biological reality at all.

WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE!

We know that love starts with loving oneself, with self-empathy.

What we also know through experience and through developmental Science, that from within the womb, through birth, infancy and childhood, the development of empathy, as is the case for the development of any other aspect of the child, requires certain biologically mandated experiences that nurture that development.

Being treated with empathy nurtures empathy in the child.

There is a multi-sensory bonding, an experiential process of securing one’s sense of self and this is a learning process, one that is biologically mandated, a process which if disrupted leads to pathology. It cannot be stated any clearer than this:

If Society damages the natural empathic child, then Society will create empathically damaged people, who will potentially repeat the cycle. If those people build Institutions, make rules, effectively codifying their own neuroses into the common lore, they will repeat the cycles.

If ANY Society permits these bonding experientials to be disrupted, then that Society is creating the pathologies that ensue from that disruption.

Where is the empathy and nurturance in our Societal Institutions?

And, as we, the Survivors and the distressed, are all too familiar with, it is those people who are harmed and who suffer, who present the symptoms, which we know as symptoms of distress,  which in truth reveal the presence of Societal pathogens, yet which Society labels as disease, or worse, as dysfunctional behaviour to be judged, who are then scape-goated by this exclusive and judgemental diagnosis. 

If the Society itself is not also diagnosed as part of the problem, and then treated accordingly, and that means a change in the behaviour of Power, of Societal Institutions, then those who suffer the most, and reveal the trauma creation that Society is responsible for, are yet again betrayed.

This omission is the essence of institutional cruelty. Society blames the Survivor. It cannot stand. This is why we are here today.

Institutional Care Protocols, Policies and behaviours cause more harm than good. The proof of this is the re-currant intergenerational trauma patterns, transmitted through each successive generation. The wounds of the fathers and mothers are visited upon the children, because the fathers and mothers are not given the healing support they need and because the judgementalism of Social Services and Organised Religion and adversarial family courts prevails.

Thus the question arises.

Is what we, as a Society, are doing truly Nurturant?

Is what is being done to the Survivors, to parents under stress, by the Institutions of Society truly Nurturant?

How can it be considered Nurturant to NOT support parents whose lives may well be influenced by intergenerational trauma patterns, whose lives may well include incredibly difficult circumstances, such as poverty, sudden bereavement, perhaps even severe trauma, circumstances beyond their control and for whom the ensuing symptoms of these difficulties can make a prison even of what was formerly a home.

The evidence is clear: Institutional Care does not work in the best interests of the children when they remove children from their homes, and when they do not support and assist parents who are stressed and under pressure to the extent that is required and is relatively easy and inexpensive to implement?

The National Coalition for the Reform of Child Protection Services in the USA has helped three states avoid removals of children, by providing the kinds of support that works best for families, for children, their parents and ultimately, for Society. Their work shows some of the possibilities. They have saved State Government many millions of dollars, both on frontline care and in terms of outcomes requiring intervention in later life.

Why is the UK Child Protection System so judgemental, so secretive, so ill informed, so far behind the curve on what really works for children, for parents, for communities and ultimately for Society?

Why does UK official policy mis-interpret the truth that whilst neglect and abuse occur, that their presence has more to do with the kind of Society into which people are born and to which they are forced to conform to, than it does the kinds of people who  are born, who grow up in and become parents in a Society that does not support natural empathic parenting. That lack of adequate support fro nurturant parenting eats away at the very heart of what it is to be human, to be a child of life.

Economics, with which most officials are obsessed, is not the measure of a good life.

Why are those influences, that affect so many peoples lives so adversely, left out of the diagnoses of ‘at risk parents’ when it is OBVIOUS that these influences are very much part of the causality and indicate the societal pathology which these parents reveal as they present these symptoms?

Who benefits from this persistent refusal to admit a holistic diagnosis?

Is that refusal not irrational, or even insane, in and of itself?

Do we not meet this irrationality in our lives, every day?

Are we not the living witnesses to this cruelty, we who have suffered as children and continue to suffer as adults the adverse affects of this Institutionalised, legalised, codified lack of empathy, through no personal weakness within ourselves?

Are we not correct to demand that justice be fully served where real harm and loss has  occurred, and are we not also to make of our efforts a call, a cry from the heart, to place empathy at the very core of how our Society relates to all children?

Who will join this call?

We ask : Will you join this work?

My Single Issue Obsession - The Facts.

Here are the facts. It's NOT all doom and gloom. Some seriously good work is being done in understandtng the dynamics of abuse relationships, the intergenerational and cyclical effects of PTSD, with an eye to prevention, (founded upon proven practice, biology and science) as many are concerned that thus far, the vast maority of abuse remains, in relative terms, a largely misunderstood by the general populace, and is still very much a hidden, denied and masked reality.

However...... truth beckons.

One out of every four people in Ireland  will have experienced a serious sexual assault or serious abuse during their childhoods.

This pattern is replicated across the entire developed world. No Child Left Behind rings hollow and echoes down through History.

Informal networks of organised, self protecting abusers exist in EVERY area concerning children – sport, drama, education, scouting, state care, psychiatry, psychology, health, religion.

Governments and Churches have created, funded and operated  well documented systems, that purported to ’care’ for children, and other vulnerable people, yet have seriously abused the majority in their care. These are called Residential School Systems. Social Services Care Homes. Juvenile Offender Prisons. Schools. Care Homes for the Elderly. Psychiatric Units. Orphanages.

The history of childhood ‘rearing’ texts is littered proffering ‘good advice’ that is on the face of it abusive. This literature is known as Poisonous Pedagogy.

Rather than empathy, manipulative techniques of control are espoused as best practice for parents, teachers, and others responsible for the care of children. Behaviour Modification techniques. Ritalin. Seroxat. The DSM.

These same organisations, Religious and Secular, launch wars, trade in arms, people and in drugs, send mercenaries to do their bidding, employ manipulative strategies against all their perceived enemies, in particular the whistle blowers, and are corrupt to the hilt.

The adverse effects of Industry on the habitat are also part of this abuse picture. To deny the ‘external costs’ of Industry to both people and the habitat is abusive.

Green-washing is an example of the manipulative means by which those who abuse the environment portray themselves as saviours. The best paid lawyers in the world are those who defend the Corporations who pollute, who bribe officials whose role is defined by a duty of care to those they purport to serve.

Foot-washing in Churches follows this same pattern.

Meaningless gestures, empty words.

Any Survivor who dares to speak the truth is a whistle blower. Bradley Manning.  Colm O’Gorman. Paddy Doyle. Noam Chomsky. Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks. David Shayler. Julian Assange. Kevin Annett. Ward Churchill. Russel Means. Howard Zinn.

All Survivors are treated as potential enemies, as a potential threat to the status quo. Why is it thus?

Not only by those who abused them, but by others in positions of responsibility and power, who feel threatened by the disclosures.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury Report. The Ryan Report. The Ferns Report. The Murphy Report. The as yet unpublished Cloyne Report.  The Forde Inquiry.

The many documentaries on the Residential School systems designed by Governments and run by clergy for Indigenous or Aboriginal Children. The Forgotten Australians. Hidden From History.


The Murphy Inquiry into Irish Swimming and similar reports into UK Sports. 

I have omitted more than I have excluded here.

This list is only the tip of the iceberg. 4 Dioceses reports exist in Ireland’s investigations into criminal child abuses in 26 Dioceses.

There are reports due from Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the UK. Work has started on similar investigations in Africa, South America and Asia.

The Chilcott Inquiry. The 5 Inquiries into UK Government decision making regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. These all follow the same pattern of half truths, denials and white washing.

How many scandals in various arena’s have blown up in the past 40 years where people who were abused went public and those who had official responsibility, who were often colleagues in work of the accused, refused to accept the truth of these public statements, who hid the facts of specific accusations, allegations and actual reported crimes, investigations and trials from the people and constituencies they served?

How many more will it take before the pattern now absolutely clear to anyone who reviews the data is made clear to the general public, and is tackled by those good people within Governance, Policing, Health Care, Education and Religion in areas concerned with the well-fare and care of children, in meaningful and effective manner, leading not only to the prosecution of abusers and those who covered up, but also and importantly to educational campaigns, founded on solid scientific understanding and proven practice, to prevent more abuse, to break the intergenerational cycles of abuse?


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe










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