Pain Of Confronting Abuse Can Lead To Healing, Say Priest, Minister

By GRETCHEN KEISER, Staff Writer

Published: November 13, 2003

ATLANTA— The theme of the service was weaving the threads of the past into the future. The gold cross with a red rose attached to the center given to each of eight women was a sign of both their pain and suffering and of their resurrection.

Eighteen months spent listening had laid the foundation for this service of hope and healing led Oct. 24 by a Marist priest, who is a provincial in the religious order, and a woman minister who 40 years ago was molested by a priest. Seven other grown women who had been victimized as schoolgirls and some of their family members also took part in the service.

“What we wanted was a celebration of hope and healing, celebrating the gift of forgiveness, being able to move on and have some closure,” Father Dennis Steik, SM, said.

Father Steik and Ellie Harold, a minister in the Unity Church, hope this can be a model during the church’s sexual abuse crisis that moves away from litigation and toward contrition, sorrow, forgiveness, healing and closure.

“What I’ve learned from this is the importance of putting the victims first,” said Father Steik. “I really believe that we cannot just listen to our lawyers.”

“It was a scary time for me. I had worries of the tremendous possibility of lawsuits. We’re not fully funded for retirement,” he said of his order.

However, he felt the Gospel called him to reach out to the affected women.

“It was important to really listen to these women and be there for them and express my sorrow and contrition to them,” he said.

“I just think the real turning point is not being afraid to sit down and listen in a personal, pastoral way and listen to the victims. They have so much to teach us. I really believe that. The church itself has to be willing to be vulnerable to begin the healing. We have to trust the Lord we’ll be provided for.”

As the Marist provincial in Atlanta, Father Steik received a letter from Harold in the spring of 2002 outlining what had happened to her and asking him to respond. Her story had first appeared without the priest identified by name in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as the clergy sexual abuse crisis unfolded around the country.

Harold said that she had been molested by Father Clarence Biggers when she was 10 and 11, while she was a student at St. Joseph School in Marietta and helping out after school in the parish office.

Father Biggers was a Marist and pastor of St. Joseph Church in the early 1960s. In 1969 he entered the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers where he has been a monk for over 30 years. He is now in his 80s and in frail health.

Although the events occurred decades ago, the Marist order did not dispute the allegations.

Father Steik said he found a 40-year-old letter in their files signed by “about five sets of parents,” including Harold’s mother, “attesting to the fact that their daughters had been inappropriately touched by Father Biggers.”

He said that Marist files also record that Father Biggers was asked to attend a Marist council meeting. As an outcome of the meeting he agreed he would not accept a second term as pastor of St. Joseph Church, Father Steik said.

“I felt I needed to pick up the phone and give Ellie a call and say from what I could tell I believed her. I wanted to apologize to her,” Father Steik said.

“It was Holy Thursday. Ellie picked up the phone. I said, ‘I really want to say I believe you. I want to apologize and say I am sorry.’ She said, ‘You know, I’ve waited 40 years to hear those words.’ I think we both teared up.”

A few weeks later, he and Dom Basil Pennington, OCSO, then abbot of the monastery, went to Harold’s home and met with her and her mother. He brought a copy of the parents’ 40-year-old letter and gave it to Mrs. Harold as a tangible sign of her efforts to protect her daughter. “I think it was a very healing moment for her Mom,” Father Steik said.

“We probably spent a good three hours with Ellie and listened to her story. Ellie told me there were other victims. I asked her to give them my phone number,” Father Steik said. “Three came to see me personally. I got to hear their whole story privately and individually.”

Father Steik said that he met with Father Biggers at the monastery in 2002 for one and a half hours. “He still has not really admitted any responsibility or guilt,” Father Steik said.

However, Father Steik said that he is convinced abuse occurred.

“I haven’t got the slightest doubt at all that something happened to these women,” he said.

David Brown, attorney for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, said that Archbishop John F. Donoghue offered in a letter written in 2002 to Ellie Harold whatever spiritual or pastoral assistance victims believed they needed and that his offer was declined. He said the archdiocese was not involved in the legal settlement between the Marists and the affected women.

Harold eventually started a support group for the women who came forward and asked Father Steik to take part also. “I was delighted to be a part of that . . . Once Ellie came forward that encouraged the others to come out,” Father Steik said.

Another person who joined was Lynn Hughes, who was a sister teaching at St. Joseph School in the 1960s and who joined the support group to help her former students, Father Steik said.

He said Ellie Harold and Lynn Hughes made it possible for him to walk with the women as a group for the past 18 months.

“I never would have gotten through this without those two,” he said.

The service of hope and healing was held at Harold’s home in Norcross.

“It was very powerful,” said Harold. “It came about as a result of a long-developing relationship with Father Steik. It was quite powerful coming together as two different spiritual traditions . . . I believe that healing truly did occur there.”

As part of the service, each of the eight women came forward and offered Father Steik a signed document saying as one aspect of reconciliation and closure, they promised not to sue the Marist order or the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

The Marist order, in turn, gave each woman $25,000, which Father Steik said was a “token” but also a sacrificial gesture on the part of the order. He also gave each a cross with a rose on it. He planned to meet with two other women who could not attend the service on Nov. 11 and to travel out of state in the future to meet an eleventh woman at her home.

Brothers, sisters and parents also came to the service, which was planned by Harold and Father Steik for a long time.

The Marists at first offered to pay for three years of counseling, but some of the women had had years of therapy already, he said, and some did not want to accept money from the order through which harm had come to them.

Harold, who he said “has a beautiful gift of ministry,” proposed that money set aside for counseling be divided among the affected women. His Marist council of advisors supported him in offering this to each woman, he said. There is no confidentiality agreement assigned to it.

At the service he gave Harold a brightly painted cross from El Salvador with scenes of women in daily life and a woman, her arms raised in praise, at the center.

“That is what I feel Ellie has been for us in this long journey,” he said.

He gave Hughes a plaque of the prayer of St. Francis and told her she had been “the incarnation of this prayer.”

Harold said the service included prayers for those affected to let go of “negative attachments” and release five individuals and church communities, namely Father Biggers, the Society of Mary (Marists), the Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Trappists and the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, and St. Joseph Church and School.

It also included prayers for the women to be freed “from the negative effects of harm . . . done to others in consequence of the harm done to me” and for them to be freed from “the negative effects of victimization” to enjoy their “true nature.”

The service touched upon some of the complex consequences of abuse.

The meetings of the support group over the last 18 months brought many emotions to the surface, and it has been an ongoing journey.

“I think there are so many layers involved in abuse,” Father Steik said. “Anger is a part of it. It was expressed to me, but I knew it wasn’t expressed to me personally. I represent my brothers. I represent the Marists.”

Also, he said, after he had met with the group a couple of times, one woman said, “What is this doing to you? How do you feel?”

“They have done much more for me than I have done for them,” Father Steik said. “It has been a long, hard road for all of these women. It is just sad. I know the level of betrayal they feel.”

At the same time, he said, “we’ve challenged each other” and acknowledged that healing will only come through “an act of real genuine forgiveness and letting go.”

Harold said, “The process of gathering has enabled a number of women to tell their mothers for the first time, or their children or their spouses.”

“It has been an excellent experience,” Harold said of her interaction with the Marist order and particularly Father Steik.

“The Marists really reached out. Father Steik called me up and said, ‘I believe you.’ From the very beginning he was more than willing to reach out. From the very beginning we both had in mind to find a way to heal this. I have nothing but praise for Father Steik and the Marists.”

Asked if this ceremony represents closure for herself and the other women, she said, “It is closure. In going through this ceremony together and professing our intention to release these negative attachments, something has been settled. ”

She said the informal gathering of women likely will continue as a way of helping themselves and others heal. For example, three women who came to the service were coming forward for the first time.

“There is a recovery process” that takes time, Harold said. “I think we’re all committed to supporting one another” in that process.

“Father Steik is an incredible man who allowed himself and the Marists to be vulnerable and open to this. It opened a path for dialogue,” Harold said.

“I think this is good news,” she added.

She said she went to Mass the following Sunday “for the first time with an open heart.”

“I went to Mass at Our Lady of the Assumption. It was nice to have my heart be open. I felt this sense of forgiveness.”