Confronting an Abusive Catholic Priest - Oscar Bamwebaze

 

                                                                                             The Healing Power Of Self Love (P.135)

 

A few days ago I got an e mail from an Italian who has spent many years working on a documentary of Fr Damien Grimes. This Italian was shocked to learn from my blog that Fr. Grimes had sexually and physically abused millions of Ugandan children in his lifetime. All the people he had interviewed about Fr. Grimes had spoken very highly about him, and none had even hinted about his abusive tendencies.

 I wasn’t surprised to learn of this denial among the Ugandan population because, having been a victim of Fr. Grimes barbarism, I had tried in vain, through out my ten year career as a journalist, to expose him in the press. Many editors and journalists would not publish anything about this abusive priest because they too were victims of child abuse at the hands of their parents and they had been conditioned to deny that they were victims of child abuse.

Many of Fr. Grimes former victims speak very highly of him and defend him, because they too were victims of child abuse and they were conditioned to look at their abusive parents with reverence.

But it is this kind of denial that prevents such victims from healing. When, as victims of child abuse, we fail to acknowledge what happened to us as children, we continue to repress our traumatic childhood experiences and this traumata becomes the root of our self destruction. We become mentally or emotionally ill, and fail to respond to any of the available treatments for our disorders.

Many of my former school mates, who were victims of Fr. Grimes, have been drug addicts and alcoholics since the age of 13. In Namasagali College (a school founded and headed by Fr. Grimes), drug abuse and alcoholism were the norm rather than the exception. Many other schoolmates of mine have difficulties with intimate relationships. On the average, many of them never get married, and among those who do, their marriages end up in divorce within less than two years. There is no doubt that they are the victims of their own silence.

Child abuse is very widespread in Uganda. Children in primary schools like Kingsway primary school are beaten with electric cables, the headmaster of a secondary school like Irma Pfeiffer is known to storm into the girls showers when they are naked, and many Ugandans will still defend such abusers.

It is because of this that Uganda has the highest rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression in the world. It also had the highest alcohol per capita consumption in the world in 2005.

I have spoken out against Fr. Grimes and many other abusers. I continue to fight against abuse wherever I find it, and because of this, I am mentally and physically healthier than many other people who choose to look the other way. When we acknowledge the truth, we may initially suffer because of the pain involved in so doing, but ultimately, we find happiness. We cease to abuse others or ourselves. There can be no happiness without the truth.