Being abused by Catholic priests makes Kaylin ‘terrified when my son says he wants to be an altar boy’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Kaylin grew up in a large family. Her parents originally came from Ireland and were devout Catholics.
She and other members of her family were sexually abused over decades by two priests.
Kaylin has pieced together the story of what happened to her family through the accounts of relatives and church records. She discovered that one of the abusers, Father Alwen, was sent from Ireland to England to a diocese that had a reputation for accepting priests who had ‘issues’.
Father Alwen’s connection with her family went back for many years.
She says ‘Mum hated Father Alwen and made her feelings very clear when speaking of him in her last few years’.
Kaylin was sexually abused by the priest, and she thinks three of her siblings were too. She describes being in his office when she was about five years old and him putting her on his knee and pretending to play ‘horses’. She recalls ‘It doesn't feel like a good game. I can feel the heat of the fire and I can smell the smoke and whiskey’.
She was penetrated in her anus; she is not sure what with but she remembers the pain. She also has recollections that Father Alwen and someone else ‘would rub their penis between my legs’. She remembers she was told to be still and not cry.
Kaylin says her father was sometimes present when the priest abused her. She adds ‘I also called to mind a phrase my father said, more than once, and I remember clearly, “Children don’t remember”’.
Kaylin was sexually abused by a second priest, Father Augustine, from the age of six to 11. He touched her on car journeys and she says she experienced sexual arousal sometimes because of what he did to her.
This abuse has caused painful psychological issues with her sexuality that has badly affected her marriage. She says ‘I suffered profound anxiety and guilt’ and describes how hard she tried to avoid hurting her husband’s feelings.
Kaylin has also suffered from anxiety, depression, flashbacks and nightmares. She has self-harmed and attempted suicide.
She gives a powerful description of other impacts her experiences have had on her in a journal she wrote previously: ‘Being a victim of sexual abuse by a priest means having a panic attack when I walk into a church … hearing a child scream in the middle of the night and waking up only to discover it was me … praying that there is no heaven when I die because if God forgives my abuser he might be there too’.