TEEN YEARS ADD-ON

Teenage years add-on

Posted on survivors' message board:

Re: abuse in confession
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yes, sacrament abuse on top of the sexualization... I was in another state 2000 miles away a age 8, moved from small town Illinois to big city Los Angeles and went to confession with a new priest. When I talked to him the way Father Horne had taught me to fantasize and talk in confession the new priest ran out of the confessional with his eyes bugging out of his head and pointed at me going, "Gah, gah, gah," and I didn't know I'd done anything wrong...

It is going to make a good scene in my movie.

kay in l.a.
There was one other incident from teen years in the early 1960s that should be in this story. Because I did act out after being raped by the priest -- green lipstick, overdosing on vitamins, anorexia before anyone even knew there was anorexia -- even though by teen years I didn't even know any more what I was acting out about.

But one day in a period when my parents were once again trying to be Catholics, I was about 13-14, and I was playing outside on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Slowly up the suburban side street pulls my mom, trolling the yards, where is Kathy. She’s going to make me stop playing and go to church. I huff and pout but have to ride in the hot sun in her slow moving car across Temple City where we now lived. (Hmm, we weren’t as rich any more, maybe that's why we started getting religious again.)

So I arrived at the church all covered with sweat and dirt, and mom pulled away, she’d done her duty and gone to Mass in the morning. Instead of going into the church I went around the back where I knew there was a girls’ bathroom near the schoolyard.

And I trashed the place like I was possessed by a demon. Angry 13 year old full of ingrained burning anger and confusion at the church --

It started with lipstick I took out of my pocket. I scrawled “Hypocrites” on the mirror, but that wasn’t enough. So I scrawled “Hypocrites, Catholics are hypocrites,” all over the walls until the lipstick got crushed to nothing. Then I went into the stalls and pulled out all the toilet paper and threw it all over the little concrete girls’ room, but that wasn’t enough.

So then I took the long cloth hand-drying thing like they used to have in rest rooms and pulled on it and pulled on it so the many-feet long towel was twisted and spread out all over the room with the toilet paper. Besides the noise of things being torn apart I had started with a simper but it soon built up into a scream and holler -- I was down there on the floor tearing at the TP and the cloth towel and moisture.

Then the room darkened. In the doorway stood a nun in full habit and since the sun was behind her she was a silhouette like the virgin herself (or a Shi’ite woman) anyway she was this silhouette with the sun beaming behind her.

And I stopped. Relaxed, stopped screaming, stopped tearing things apart. That was the end of the incident. I don't even remember what happened, I don't think I got into trouble. I do know I never was forced to go to church again after that.

To be continued