How Are Children Of Priests Clerical Abuse Survivors?
Premature imposition of responsibility upon a child, alongside coercive control, are the hallmarks of secrecy that surround children fathered by clergy. Family dynamics are often hostile grounds for such children, as said children are not allowed to express themselves freely and live according to a set of rules, rules that accommodate the needs of the adults concerned and/or the institution of the Catholic Church.
Protection of the Catholic Church as an institution is also a recognisable characteristic of clergy abuse, where children suffer long-term in confusing and hostile environments that do not accommodate their needs. Conversely, a need for transparency and being cared for are met with coercive, controlling ideals that make demands of the child beyond their capacity to understand, such as maintaining a secret and feeling tremendous amounts of shame and guilt, feelings of inadequacy and psychological impoverishment.
Where a child’s basic needs are met and rests upon the child’s ability to behave in a certain way, maintaining adults’ secrets about something as basic as the child’s very identity, over time, this negatively impacts the child’s organic proceses, denaturing them to the point of prolongued anxiety amid an array of other psychological difficulties that find their root in the hostile, domestic envrionment designed to support adults and not children.