美国国家公共电台 NPR After Years Of Abuse By Priests, #NunsToo Are Speaking Out(在线收听) |
After Years Of Abuse By Priests, #NunsToo Are Speaking Out STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: When Pope Francis convened a meeting on sexual abuse in the Catholic church last month, some of the most shocking stories came from nuns. The meeting gave many a chance to describe decades of abuse at the hands of priests. In the #MeToo era, some are calling this new movement #NunsToo. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports. SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: It's Sunday, and we're in St. Peter's Square. Mexican nun, Sister Silvia Lopez, is thrilled the pope has made public what among nuns has long been a painful secret. SILVIA LOPEZ: (Through interpreter) The pope spoke out about abuse of nuns and how the whole church must also denounce these terrible things. POGGLIOLI: An article in the February women's supplement of the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, first broke the wall of silence. It blamed abuse of women and minors on the clerical culture of the all-powerful priesthood. Written by the editor, Lucetta Scaraffia, it's based on hundreds of stories she's heard from nuns. It's very hard for a nun to report she's been raped by a priest, says Scaraffia, because of the mindset that, in sex, women can always say no. LUCETTA SCARAFFIA: (Through interpreter) If nuns believe they're the guilty ones for having seduced that holy man into committing sin because that's what they've always been taught. POGGLIOLI: Adding to the trauma, raped nuns who get pregnant become outcasts, says Scaraffia. SCARAFFIA: (Through interpreter) These poor women are forced to leave their order and live alone raising their child with no help. Sometimes they're forced to have abortions, paid by the priest because nuns have no money. POGGLIOLI: Sister Catherine Aubin, a French-Dominican nun who teaches theology at a pontifical university in Rome says the abuse is the result of male domination in church leadership. CATHERINE AUBIN: (Through interpreter) The Vatican is a world of men. Some truly are men of God. Others have been ruined by power. And the key to these secrets and silence is abuse of power. They climb up a career staircase toward evil. POGGLIOLI: Sister Catherine, who also works on the Vatican paper's women's supplement, describes women's treatment inside the male Vatican world. AUBIN: (Through interpreter) We are unobserved, invisible, ignored and not respected. POGGLIOLI: But outside the Vatican, the world is changing. Last fall, the International Union of Superiors General, the organization that represents the world's female Catholic religious orders, urged sisters to defy a culture of silence and secrecy and speak out. In India, a nun has reported to police a bishop for raping her more than a dozen times. He's out on bail awaiting trial. In Chile, the Vatican is investigating a small order of nuns after a local TV revealed some sisters had been kicked out after reporting sexual abuse by priests. KARLIJN DEMASURE: The movement of the #MeToo has absolutely an influence on the fact that the abuse of nuns comes into the press and on the public forum. POGGLIOLI: Karlijn Demasure, a Belgian expert on sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults, teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. There's no data on the issue, she says, but anecdotal evidence indicates rape of nuns happens not just in the developing world. As in the movies and in sports, says Demasure, media attention is helping shed light on a long-standing taboo. DEMASURE: It's the first time that it is accepted in the public forum that adult women can be victims of men, and this is very important because before you had the blaming the victim, the woman who was seducing. POGGLIOLI: Sister Bernardine Pemii is a Nigerian nun who works as a teacher in Ghana. She just completed a course at the Gregorian University on protection of children and vulnerable adults. On her return home, she says she'll focus on abuse of women. BERNARDINE PEMII: I am going to empower the nuns. I want to give them a forum to talk about it. If such a thing has happened to them, they should let us know. I will guarantee them that their voices will be heard. POGGLIOLI: At a recent press conference in Rome, one voice making itself heard belongs to Doris Wagner, a German former nun who has written about being raped by the male superior of her convent when she was 24. After that, another priest made sexual advances on her during confession. When abuse of minors scandals hit Germany, Wagner was inspired to report her abuses to her mother superior. DORIS WAGNER: She became furious. She was literally jumping on her feet. She was shouting at me. First question she was able to ask was, have you used contraceptives? And it was then that I understood that she just refused to understand. POGGLIOLI: After Wagner went public, her former confessor, Father Hermann Geissler, stepped down in January as chief of staff of the Vatican doctrinal office that handles sex abuse allegations. Wagner, now married and a mother, works as a headhunter for a German company and will never work again for the Catholic Church. WAGNER: I don't want to be in a vulnerable position. You know, I don't want to be dependent on church leaders again. POGGLIOLI: Wagner is calling for full investigation of all cases known to the Vatican, that it identify, convict and punish the perpetrators. She also wants compensation for victims, especially nuns who became pregnant. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome. (SOUNDBITE OF LUDOVICO EINAUDI'S "DROP") |
原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/npr2019/3/470215.html |