543 Clothman Molested As Youth
Michael Moore recently wrote a terrific and sad Missoulian column in which Jim Jones and Don Havranek alleged that their priest, Father Bernard Harris, repeatedly molested them and several other boys some 50 years ago. I’m certain the story stirred up a blizzard of emotions for anyone who has been molested and abused …anyone, like me.
In the third grade I was a gregarious, fun-loving, confident little whippersnapper who was often chosen first for pick-up games and thought nothing of hanging out with my older sister and her sixth grade girlfriends. By the end of the fourth grade I was constantly involved in bloody fights, my grades were in the toilet and I had developed ulcers so bad I nearly had to be hospitalized.
In between was a year of sexual encounters with a man that turned out the lights of my self-confidence and peace for decades. In fact, it was a nearly 20 years after the molestation before I fully remembered what had happened to me.
I was a 30 year old seminary student attending a lecture called “Healing for Damaged Emotions” when I suddenly began crying uncontrollable tears the size of peanuts. I hadn’t cried in 18 years and was so embarrassed that I immediately jumped up and headed for the exit. Before I could get out the door a curtain was pulled back and vivid memories of a small boy being used for a perverted man’s pleasure flooded over me and I was instantly swept away in a current of guilt, shame and anger.
That was the best and worst day of my life. How could a man do such things to a powerless, innocent little life? Didn’t he care what he was doing to me? How could such horrible experiences be blocked from my memory for so long? Would I ever stop crying?
Yet, I felt an elated sense of relief. At last, the sudden and dramatic change in me all those years ago made sense. I could finally begin to understand why fear and shame had ordered my daily life like deranged prison guards for what was a very long sentence. Why I had no self-love or self-confidence. Why I spent many of my formative years in an anti-gay environment, thinking I must be gay. Why even as a married man, was still afraid of sex.
While some reading Michael Moore’s column might have wondered why Jim Jones and Don Havranek didn’t just “get over” what Bernard Harris had done to them, I didn’t. I knew perfectly well why Jim said it took decades and two marriages to realize the myriad ways Harris' abuse had undermined him. Why he said, "The two biggest things are the shame and the anger. I've been fighting those two things ever since I met that man."
Fortunately over time, I worked out my issues without any additional personal losses. But even though I got through it, I never got over it – as evidenced by the fact it took me over two hours to write the first sentence of this column.
I choose to join Jim Jones and Don Havranek in disclosing my abuse because of something the Bible says. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light… But everything exposed by the light becomes visible (Ephesians 5:8 and 13).
I lived in darkness far too long, stumbling my way through life. But when the light came on that day in seminary I could finally see what I was fighting and where I was going. My prayer and hope is that revealing what happened to me will turn on a light in someone else’s life as well.
And for any reader who has even thought about doing such evil to a child I say, stop it! For God’s sake, STOP IT! Come out of the darkness and into the light. Find healing, freedom and peace before you take them from someone else. You can do it. You must do it.
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