B.C. sexual abuse victim wants Catholic Church to ‘name names’
The recent revelations that the Catholic Church covered up the abuse of close to 1,000 children by 300 priests over several decades in Pennsylvania has shaken survivors of church abuse in B.C., victims’ advocate Leona Huggins of Coquitlam said Sunday.
“I got a call from a survivor this morning,” said Huggins, who was abused by a Vancouver priest when she was a child. Huggins now volunteers with SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Vancouver Roman Catholic Archbishop J. Michael Miller released a statement Sunday saying he is “devastated by these accounts of profound evil,” and that “what the victims of sexual abuse have endured has shaken me and broken my heart.”
The statement, which was posted on the Archdiocese website and read at Lower Mainland masses, acknowledged the sexual abuse, and the poor treatment many victims received by church authorities.
Miller said he is especially upset with bishops and priests “who failed to protect the most vulnerable among us,” in particular those who knew about the abuse but did nothing about it.
Miller is calling on anyone who knows about “any abuse happening now” to contact law enforcement and to alert the church through their webpage.
Huggins said Miller’s statement does not go far enough.
Huggins said it’s time for full transparency from the Catholic Church “about any credible complaints, current and historical, against priests in B.C.”
“I would like to see the church commit to a thorough examination of their records, including their secret files to determine any errors or omissions in reporting,” said Huggins.
Detailed records are kept on complaints against priests, said Huggins, but those records of sealed under cannon law. “We know the euphemisms. They have ‘proclivities,’ or they’re ‘unusual’ or they go off on leave,” she said.
Huggins said her abuser referred to it as his “weakness.”
Huggins was sexually abused by Rev. John Edward McCann starting in 1975 when she was just 13. McCann was in ministry at St. Augustine’s Church in Vancouver at the time he began the near-daily sexual abuse of Huggins.
It wasn’t until 1990, when Huggins discovered McCann was going to start a youth group on Salt Spring Island, she came forward to report him. “I had to protect the other children from going through what I went through,” she said.
In 1992 McCann pleaded guilty, and was jailed for 10 months. In 2010, Huggins was shocked to discover McCann had resurfaced and was serving in an Ottawa parish. “I was horrified,” said Huggins. “I didn’t think it was my job to monitor a priest who was a convicted sexual predator.” She reported him again, and he was quietly removed from his post. “I suspect he would still be in the ministry if I had not outed him in 2011.”
Huggins would also like the church to acknowledge survivors publicly, and do a thorough examination of its own records, set up a public database of church-mediated settlements, and lift all historic non-disclosure agreements that keep victims from speaking out. “I want them to name names.” The Archdiocese of Vancouver did not respond to a Postmedia interview request on Sunday.