Interview of Stéphane Joulain with Vatican News

There is often an ambiguity in the terms used, such as the word “paedophilia”, which is commonly used, but does not exactly cover all the issues related to sexual abuse of minors. How can these phenomena be better defined?

Paedophilia is a generic term that is used in many settings, which corresponds to what health professionals define as “an exclusive attraction towards pre-pubescent children”. Classically, that’s the definition.

But what is at stake is broader than that, since it is about “abusive and aggressive behaviour towards children”, and which is done by people who are not necessarily pedophiles in the clinical sense. There may be abuses committed against young people who are a little older, who have already gone through puberty, but not everyone who abuses pre-pubescent children is necessarily a pedophile in the strict sense of the word, that is, they are not attracted exclusively to children.

For example, in cases of incest, which is one of the major problems, it is usually people who are in a relationship, in a relationship with someone, but who will abuse a child. Generally, we say “they are paedophiles”, but no, they are people who engage in abusive behaviour towards children, who have committed an act of a paedophilic nature but they cannot be diagnosed as paedophiles because this diagnosis implies an exclusive criterion of attraction to pre-pubescent children.

But what is at stake in the Church and in many places is child sexual abuse, that is, abusive, aggressive behaviour on the child’s body, from 0 to 18 years of age.

We have been seized with vertigo for a few years now, faced with the multiplication of revelations of cases of abuse, sometimes evoking recent cases, sometimes older cases… At the same time, this liberation from the word is also part of what the Church must encourage. How can the Church accompany this liberation from the word, which seems to be an inexorable movement but which at the same time is sometimes done in a very violent and traumatic way?

The Church must develop an ability to empathize in a profound way, to grasp what it takes for a victim to dare to speak out. We have to understand these mechanisms, because I think that when we understand them, we can understand that it is not that easy to free speech. Understand the mechanisms of shame that have been imposed, the defilement that has been imposed on the body, the silence that has been imposed, the failure to listen to the word… Because sometimes, the victims have tried to speak. It is clear that children can test to see if they will be heard. And if, right away, we broke their word by saying “but no, you’re talking nonsense” or “don’t say things like that”, and so on, they’ll fall back into silence.

And the older they get, the more they have things to lose, in terms of image, respectability, self-construction, they build families, etc… And the more we have something to lose, the harder it becomes to talk. So we have to realize what it takes. I still remember this man in his fifties telling me, when the statute of limitation was reached, that he still did not know how he was going to talk to his parents about it. It is important to understand what it means for a victim to dare to speak out. All he/she has to say, all he/she has to lose. It is not just like saying “I was robbed of 50 euros”. It’s not that. It’s really: “I was defiled, my body was violated, I was not respected, I found myself in a situation of powerlessness, I was not recognized”…

And some may feel the guilt that their abuser has passed on to them. Because their attacker will tell them, for example, “What we did was wrong” or “it will remain our secret”.  So they include the victim in the aggressive behaviour, and some victims can carry guilt for a very long time which is not theirs! So that is why the Church must really take with patience a learning of listening, which manages to put itself in good balance with all the suffering of the other, and comes to see all that it requires of it as an effort to be able to dare to speak. Simply, when you are aware of this, you can sit patiently, and listen to the inaudible.

Jesus incarnated in the world first as a child, it is an extraordinary phenomenon in the anthropology of religions… Does Christianity therefore have a particular, prophetic mission, not simply at the level of the institution of the Church but at the level of the world, to encourage the word of the child and the sacredness of the child?

I believe Jesus has an extremely revolutionary message! When asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of God, he puts a child in the middle! We know that in Jewish society at the time, the child was not of great value. As long as he had not done his Bar Mitzvah, and then became a man in the community, the child was hardly recognized as a person. So Jesus takes the opposite of that and puts the child in the middle.

He says “this is the most important thing in the Kingdom of God”, and above all “misfortune for the one who will do him harm”. And it is one of the few terrible warnings of Jesus, who says “He who hurts one of these little ones, it is better that he goes with a millstone around his neck at the bottom of the sea…” These are rare words of Christ that are words that warn of the risk of burning in hell.

He is rather a person of mercy, of forgiveness, but there he shows us the whole sacredness of the human person, which is most clearly expressed in the child. The child who is dependent on anyone else, who cannot acquire everything he wants by himself, and Jesus says: this is what we must protect. It is this very value, human and fragile, that must be defended. And it is also the whole divine pedagogy which become incarnate, the Incarnation of God, of entering into this fragile flesh, of accepting to depend on parents, of depending on others, of receiving oneself from others. It is an extraordinary movement, the movement of the Incarnation assumed by an Almighty God. The Bible tells us: “He who had the divine condition destroyed himself to take the condition of a slave…” This fragility of the flesh, incarnated in the little child, reaffirms to us all the value of the child, and this treasure that is this life and this divinity that gives itself to us.

So here I think there is a real evangelical challenge, to ensure that the child is respected, supported, accompanied, protected against anything that could seek to destroy him or her, or to attack his or her integrity.

Is the denial around these questions linked precisely to a loss of the meaning of the incarnation?

That’s right. That’s right. When I work with abusers, I notice that they have had to anaesthetize this part in themselves, which would otherwise allow them to see in the child this incarnation. And it is by restoring the person in front of him as a sacred person, as an incarnation of Christ, that we can manage to make a journey, to the author of an aggression who is Christian, and make him say to himself: “But what have I done?

If in the Church, we succeed in rediscovering this sense of the sacred of the human person, we will have taken a great step to restore all their place to those who have suffered so much from this, who have been considered as nothing, as an object, and no longer as a person. And all the work to do with victims is to help them become people again, to move them from being victims to being survivors, to being victims of assault.

To recover this sacredness of the human person, I think it is fundamental. It is fundamental at the heart of Francis’ pontificate, it is fundamental at the heart of the Church’s life. This is where the challenge lies in relation to the problem of abuse. We really need to rediscover this sense of the sacredness of the human person.

You have accompanied dozens of victims in your activity as a psychotherapist. You have also accompanied many abusers. Very little is said about this issue of the social reintegration of abusers, possibly after release from prison, and even less about the reintegration of abusers into the church community… How can we respond to this challenge, which arouses the hostility of many people? How can we have a Christian view of these people too?

Depending on what was the cause of the aggressive or paedocriminal behaviour in the individual, people will not present the same risk situations. There are people who have strong paedophilic impulses, and who need very strict supervision, really with security plans, where we control entry, exit, proximity, etc., and then there are people who have abused once but who have never reoffended afterwards and who will not represent the same risk as others. So the ability to reintegrate into society is much stronger in these cases than for someone who is really rooted in a very strong paedophilic drive.

So what we really need to determine, when we want to assess the conditions for reintegrating or rehabilitating a sex offender, is what is his level of risk, first. Once you know that, you have to evaluate which living conditions will be most suitable for him. It has been found in clinical work with people that the more satisfactory their living conditions are, the less likely they are to reoffend.

But what is very difficult to see is that when you are stigmatized or have a label “sexual aggressor” or “pedophile” on your back, it cleans up the social network. Sometimes in the immediate family, in religious communities, there are people who no longer want to hear from these people. So it is quite a challenge to wonder, behind this monstrous behaviour, what are we going to do with this human person?

We cannot, in the Church, simply say: “This is no longer our problem. We discharge him from the clerical state and throw him out, and then it’s over. “No, it’ s not! We do no service to anyone, neither to the Church nor to society. We wash our hands, like Pontius Pilate, but that’s all, things are not done properly.

So how can we be creative and seek to support these men? It is first and foremost to protect children that we must be able to offer these people living conditions in which they will not abuse, they will not reoffend, they will not start again. So this is really a prevention issue, that they have conditions that do not lead them to reoffend.

And then it is also an issue for them, as human beings, who have a right to care, who have the right to get out of their problems, who have the right to be supported. Here we find the message of the Gospel, for example with the healing of the paralytic, in the Gospel of Saint John, chapter 5: “Go, and sin no more, for it could happen to you even worse after…” But Jesus looks after him, heals him, he is there, he offers him to a community, he says to it: “go and show yourself to others, stay”.

So are there places, communities that are ready to welcome these men to give them living environments? Are there any tasks that can be assigned to them, in which they will not be in contact with children? Can they still provide services to the Church, depending on their age? We must be creative, we must find solutions, but we must never compromise on the safety of children.

One of the themes of the bishops’ meeting in Rome will be the notion of bishops’ responsibility. The Anglo-Saxon language speaks of accountability. It is a very difficult term to translate for the French-speaking world. Can you explain to us how this conception of the role of vigilance of the bishops can be better taken into account in episcopal government?

For me, the expression that best reflects this notion is “accountability” (SIC… excuse the possible confusion… the original is in French). In other words, we must be able to be accountable to the People of God. And so, episcopal responsibility is first and foremost a responsibility to accompany situations, to accompany people, to accompany victims, and I think that bishops are increasingly coming to understand that they are not only the bishops of the priest who abused but that they are also the bishops of those who have been abused. So I think that there is a displacement that has taken place and is taking place on a global scale in the episcopates, they are beginning to understand that the victims are no longer enemies who face the Church, but really members of the Church who are suffering. So that’s important.

But the notion of “accountability” in English is a difficulty because culturally, bishops do not report, except in Rome possibly when there are major problems of faith and morals, but otherwise they do not report. They are the bosses in their own (diocese). So it is a change of culture that we are asking them to do. We tell them: “No, on these issues, we will hold you to account. Tell us (how you deal with those situations). We no longer accept that you simply say to us: “We are working on these issues”. What does that mean in practice? How many meetings have you had? Who was present? What topics have you been working on?”

For the People of God to ask their pastors for accounts, I think it’s rather healthy! They are not sheep who let themselves be led blissfully and without reacting. They are ready to follow a pastor, but their pastor must give them the signs that it is worth following them. I think that’s fundamental. And for that to happen, they must show that their actions are where their words are. Because this is really a challenge of internal coherence and integrity. And it is only at this price, I think, that trust will be restored.