I experience it every day, both at work and in my personal life: sexual abuse remains a taboo subject today, as it was yesterday. If we add to this aspects such as feminism, masculinity, childhood or the fact that a religious body may be involved, it is even much worse.

Women, being the statistically most attacked group, continue to be re-victimized, because if the skirt was not short enough, our advances were too long. Men, if they were manly enough, would not have fallen into the role of victims. And not a word about the children, because if they do not conform to our image of innocent little angels, then they are clearly guilty of whatever it may be, and even more so if a religious institution is involved.

People reject the mental representation of any sexual aggression, perhaps because it is such an absurdly visceral, cruel and unnecessary act that our brain is not capable of processing such a quantity of disgust. When it comes to murder, there is usually a motive, and no matter how much rejection we may feel when faced with a crime of such magnitude, we cling to this absurd reasoning to explain the inexplicable, because it gives us a certain security as individuals. In the case of sexual abuse, there is no other motive than the pure mental perversion of the aggressor and having been nearby as an affected person, in passing, or simply defenseless. But if this is really the case, anyone could become a victim of such a heinous act. Hard to process, right?

Before he died, my father, speaking about the abuse I suffered as a child, told me that back then I should have given them more details about what was happening to me when I was ten, eleven, twelve years old. Today I still ask myself what kind of details a little girl is capable of giving about the sexual perversion of an adult. Despite his great love for me, my father was not able to recognize the courage it takes for a girl to tell this story and that adults are her only chance to not ignore it. For school, back then, I became the problem and not the pervert, my teacher and tutor. The attacker already had a long list of victims by then, and this was not unknown to the religious institution to which he belonged.

That is why the work of organizations like Betania is so important. In Europe, concentration camps have been reconstructed into museum-cities to combat oblivion. They have done so and continue to do so, not because they want to reopen the old wounds of the few survivors of the Holocaust or because they want to remind families of the horror of how their loved ones were deported, dehumanized and, in most cases, brutally murdered, but because they are aware of the value that memory has for the present. Without current, large-scale awareness, the chances of barbarism being repeated are enormous. And this is palpable in European national and international policies, among others. The voice of a few at the service of collective reflection, the humanization of the individual by and for the advancement of society, in the right direction.

In the summer of 2018 I had just finished an Erasmus and was in the south of France on holiday. On the way my TomTom broke down and I was delayed several hours. I was listening to the radio and, thanks to the malfunction of my navigator, I was able to tune in to a broadcast from the Pompidou Centre in Paris in time. A man, like me, in his thirties, spoke of the repeated rapes he suffered as a child by a priest, and how this transformed his life into a continuous struggle. After admitting to myself that her story and her struggles had overwhelming parallels to my own, I went to my psychologist, to the school where it all happened to me, and they put me in touch with Betania. I entered into the process.

I no longer consider myself Catholic, and yet I can only be grateful for the work of these people who give everything, and more, for what they consider a belief worth fighting for. After the process with Betania, I have regained hope in good people and in the values ​​of the beliefs that were instilled in me as a child. To my father, may he rest in peace, I can only thank him for having listened to me and, above all, believed me without any kind of questioning. His questions, after all, were not recriminatory, but his only «hold» against his own helplessness as a parent. Because if I have learned anything as an adult, it is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to combat these types of aberrations alone at a psychological, institutional and legal level. The burden of abuse is so great that it destroys lives without mercy. In fact, it almost erased mine when I was young. Thanks to Betania’s intervention, I was able to put an end to my psychological battles and the religious institution admitted its responsibility for what had happened, giving me the opportunity to establish my life on a path in which I, too, want to do something for and with others.

To prevent our children, siblings, wives, husbands, fathers and mothers from suffering any kind of aberration, now or in the future, it is our responsibility to speak, listen and reflect. This brave French man, who freely gave his voice and experience to radio listeners, literally saved my life. But without Betania the process would not have been possible. Although talking about horror, listening and admitting it may be extremely difficult at first, it is the only path that guarantees us all a free, complete and happy life. For a free society without horrors, thank you stranger for your voice, thank you so much Betania for your indescribable work.

María