Sexual abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic priests and religious

Derek Patrick Farrell

39 citations0/0 files storedMental Health Religion & Culture

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology Child Abuse and Trauma Military, Security, and Education Studies

Abstract

This paper is based upon an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which investigated the experiences of twelve people who had been sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests or religious. The premise of the research was based upon a perceived assumption that distinct forms of sexual traumatology generate unique trauma characteristics not accounted for within the existing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) conceptual frameworks (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems ((DSM-IVTR 2000;) ICD-10 R, 2007). Recent developments in psychodiagnostics to support the relevance of religious concerns where incorporated into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV edition (1994) which allowed a range of “religious” and “spiritual” problems to be explicitly identified as a focus for specific clinical attention. However, these appear quite vague in accounting for the range of trauma experiences experienced by this participant group. Evidence arose which indicated the majority of the research participants considered “God” to have been integral within the abuse, manipulated by design or default by the cleric or religious perpetrator. These idiosyncratic trauma characteristic created significant anxiety and distress in areas such as theological belief, crisis of faith, and fears surrounding the participant's own mortality. The IPA research identified six distinct, themed differences of which four will be discussed in more detail for the purpose of this paper. It will consider the attributes of these themes in relation to Roman Catholicism, celibacy and Canon law, and further question the sufficiency of the DSM-IV “V” Codes in accounting for the myriad of symptoms survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic Priests and Religious actually describe.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 39 citations exist upstream.

References

2013Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1969Attachment and Loss 2020Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis 1992Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma 1995Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures 2007Psychological treatments for chronic post-traumatic stress disorder 1990The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse 1995Imagery Rescripting: A New Treatment for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Suffering From Posttraumatic Stress

Cited by

2017The impacts of institutional child sexual abuse: A rapid review of the evidence 2019The Effect of Trauma on Religious Beliefs: A Structured Literature Review and Meta-Analysis 2015How Religious Beliefs and Practices Influence the Psychological Health of Catholic Priests 2014I have cried to Him a thousand times, but it makes no difference: sexual abuse, faith, and images of God 2021Spiritual trauma as a manifestation of religious and spiritual struggles in female victims of sexual abuse in adolescence or young adulthood in the Catholic Church in Poland

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.