How Can I Help?

You may think there is nothing you can do to help, but here are a few suggestions:

Write to your politicians

Ask for mandatory reporting laws for religions, teachers, doctors, counsellors and everyone who has contact with children

Ask for removal of any statute of limitations for child sexual abuse offences

Ask for a review of all laws and procedures relating to child sexual abuse to make the police and court experience less abusive to victims and more likely to result in conviction of guilty offenders

Write to your local Bishop

Ask for an independent victims compensation fund to be set up, which does not require victims to deal with the Catholic Church

Ask that no questions asked free counselling be provided for victims

Ask that stringent child protection policies be developed and implemented

Ask that all files on sexual abuses by clergy be handed over to the police

Ask that the Church co-operate fully and freely with police investigations and criminal prosecutions

Ask that child sexual abusers who are not imprisioned be kept permanently barred from any access to children, and communities informed of their criminal history and whereabouts at all times

Donate

Victims support groups run on volunteer work by victims themselves and have little funding.  Many victims are impoverished as a result of their abuse and unable to provide financial support.  Please help financially if you can.

Listen

If you meet anyone who has been sexually abused as a child, listen to what they want to tell you, express sympathy, and try not to ask insensitive questions that do not help them and only satisfy your curiosity.

By all means ask questions, but think about why you are asking them, and what effect it may have on someone who has been put in a position of complete powerlessness and may not have yet recovered from the experience.