If you get damaged as a child, don’t ever expect the government to help. The history of government’s helping those in the most need, particularly if they are poor and vulnerable is abysmal.
If it costs any money, governments are ‘out of there’. It’s almost as if a “it didn’t happen to me, so I have no feelings for the victims” mentality operates.
I’ve been pondering this for a long time. Ever since I began working with sexually and abused runaways from institutions, both religious and state in 1970, I’ve been confronted by forces who want to keep it ‘under the carpet’ to protect the so called good name of their institutions or churches.
Over time I have had my confrontations with those who knew what was going on and pushed to shut me up. One leader said to me many years ago “Bill, I know what you are saying is true, I just wish you wouldn’t keep saying it!”
I always dreamed that one day the kids I worked with would get justice.
Now, I’m painfully beginning to realise that they won’t. By not looking after those most vulnerable in its bailiwick, the government is allowing those churches and institutions to get away with scrambling out of a ‘prickly situation’ by offering minimum payouts and spreading maximum spin.
What doubly hurts is that churches and religious institutions are complicit in this and this makes me, as a minister of a church, very, very ashamed, indeed.
Comments
Related Posts
