Olev says ‘the Church should always put victims and survivors before its reputation’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Olev’s religious parents saw no reason for a vicar not to take their young son away with him.
Olev grew up in a church-going household ‘that ran by rules and routine … there was no intimacy’.
Looking back, he says ‘I was in every sense vulnerable’.
Olev’s family life revolved around the church, and he often attended two or three services on Sundays.
His father never showed any emotion, and Olev thinks that today he would be diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. He adds that his mother was anxious and highly-strung.
A vicar, John, at the church became friendly with Olev and his family. When Olev was about nine years old, John began inviting him to his flat.
One day when he visited John, the vicar showed Olev pornographic pictures. The abuse escalated, with John masturbating Olev and making the boy do the same to him.
Olev remembers that he would ‘switch off’ during the abuse, to try and protect himself from what was happening.Over the following eight years, John regularly sexually abused Olev.
Olev says that John ingratiated himself with his family so successfully that when he offered to take Olev abroad with him for a number of weeks, they readily agreed. By this time, Olev was 15.
On this trip, Olev says ‘I began vocalising my opposition ... and minimising the opportunities’ for the vicar to abuse him.
The abuse ended the following year when the vicar moved to a parish in a different part of the country.
After this, Olev says, ‘life moved on’ for him. He left school and forged a successful career. However, he adds, he never felt like a success.
Olev explains that he was in his 40s when he first realised he had been sexually abused as a child. Supported by the church, he had some counselling which he found helpful.
Recently, Olev attended a safeguarding meeting with the Church of England. He says ‘it was appalling … there was no focus on the victims … it was all about protecting the church’.
Following this, he reported the abuse to the police, and says they were ‘efficient and professional in the extreme’. They investigated Olev’s allegations and discovered that the vicar was by this time in poor health. While his case was being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service, Olev decided to withdraw his complaint.
He felt that the vicar’s innocent family would be adversely affected by a court case and for that reason he did not see ‘any useful purpose’ in proceeding with it.
Olev says that the abuse that he suffered as a boy has made it difficult for him to connect emotionally with sex, even when he has been in a loving relationship. He finds it a struggle not to look at pornography. He feels angry that his religious faith and spiritual life was damaged for several years.
He suggests that safeguarding in churches of all denominations should be carried out by an independent body. He adds that the focus should be on victims and survivors of abuse rather than protecting the institutions.