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October 11, 2018
Christina Gray
Rocio Rodriguez’s phone started ringing days after the Pennsylvania grand jury went public last month with a report on the seven-decade sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by over 300 Catholic priests. The report included shockingly descriptive narratives of the abuse some victims experienced.
“Something they read in the paper triggered it,” said Rodriguez, who works as victim assistance coordinator for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. She described one of the callers as a person who was 70 years old and had been abused by a priest as a child. “The brain can hibernate for a long while when it comes to a childhood trauma,” she said.
Catholic San Francisco talked with Rodriguez on Sept. 19 about her role in the Office of Child and Youth Protection days after her brief talk with chancery employees last month at an all-staff meeting.
The San Francisco-born licensed marriage and family therapist is on the front line for anyone calling into the archdiocese with an allegation of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest or any church employee, or the suspicion of such abuse.
Not all calls are allegations against clergy members. “I’ve also had calls about lay workers, liturgists, choir members and religious education directors,” Rodriguez said.
Her private and secure phone line is listed under “Support for Victims and Survivors” on the archdiocesan website and in small ads taken out in each issue of Catholic San Francisco.
The publicity surrounding the Pennsylvania report has doubled the number of new calls Rodriguez said she normally receives in a month and in some cases has reactivated the trauma for victims she is working with.
Rodriguez was preparing for a personal visit that day to a victim in Marin County, whom she said “needs a little extra support right now.”
Legal action is not always desired or possible. In some cases the victim’s abuser has been long dead. But the need for healing is not.
The part-time position was created in 2002 in response to the publication of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops child protection charter. The charter established norms for the church in dealing with allegations against priests and deacons. It also set guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability and the prevention of future acts of abuse.
The bishops issued the charter following a Boston Globe investigative series early that year that exposed the crimes of five priests in the archdiocese and the failure of church officials to protect children from them and others. The scandal resulted in an avalanche of new abuse case reports, lawsuits and criminal cases and the formation of victim assistance programs in dioceses across the country.
Rodriguez is the third victim assistance coordinator since 2002, following Dr. Rene Duffey and the late Barbara Elordi. She directs those who want to file a formal complaint with the archdiocese, and contacts Child Protective Services or the police, when appropriate. She also reports to the Independent Review Board, a group of professionals appointed by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone to advise the archdiocese on matters of clergy abuse.
Now in her third year in the role, she stressed that it is primarily a pastoral one.
“I understand what happens to a person who has been violated at a young age by someone they trust,” said Rodriguez, who worked for many years with families torn apart by incest. “I want them to know that they can start to heal if they choose to.”
According the National Center for Victims of Crime, the sexual abuse of a child can have devastating lifelong effects including anxiety, addictions, sleep disturbances, eating disorders, promiscuity, low self-esteem and dysfunctional adult relationships.
Recovering from childhood sexual abuse isn’t easy, she said, and “it doesn’t always work.”
In 2012, the archdiocese established a wellness program to aid in the healing process as part of an agreement with local survivors of clergy sex abuse. The wellness program offers a $2,100 stipend to survivors and their families to use for individual or other physical or emotional healing modalities such as massage therapy, meditation, nutritional counseling or spiritual retreats. Rodriguez said the Archdiocese of San Francisco is one of the few dioceses in the nation that she’s aware of with a program like it.
Some use the money as an opportunity to take college coursework or begin a new career.
“To me, I see that as healing,” said Rodriguez. “They had no say in what was taken from them so early and now they have a goal.”
Rodriguez said that not every victim wants to talk with her, at least not at first. For that reason and others, the archdiocese has a secure hotline monitored solely by recovering survivors of clergy sex abuse.
Archbishop Cordileone made sure to include a local survivor of clergy sexual abuse on the Independent Review Board panel, joined by a psychologist, a physician, an attorney and Catholic sister, a retired judge and a policeman. The vicar for clergy and the archbishop meet regularly with the board to review cases. Rodriguez said there have been four reported cases this audit year.
“I’ve learned to get comfortable with people’s anger,” said Rodriguez about the well-justified anger that is often projected onto her. Many resent that there is a system in place now for protecting children but not when they were abused.
She said victims can struggle with very complicated love-hate feelings for the church and even their abusers. Sometimes the abuser was close to the family, perhaps a father figure in the absence of one, who was otherwise kind and good.
“When anger manifests itself, in my mind and my experience of family therapy, it’s a healthy response to what was taken from them,” she said.
Rocio Rodriguez can be reached at (415) 614-5506. The survivor help line number is (415) 614-5503.