Allison DeGeorge
“It has taken me more than a decade to find the words that have become my abuse story and I feel very…afraid to share. The only reason I share it now is that I do not want anyone to have to endure the shame and isolation I felt as I searched…for an explanation of what happened to me.”
Awake: Allison, we’re honored to hear your story. As we begin, could you say a little about why you’ve decided to share with the Awake community?
Allison: This is the first time I have ventured to tell my abuse story. It has taken me more than a decade to find the words that have become my abuse story and I feel very reticent and afraid to share. The only reason I share it now is that I do not want anyone to have to endure the shame and isolation I felt as I searched with all my being for an explanation of what happened to me.
My life totally changed after my abuse. I lost my marriage of 40 years, I lost the home we built, I lost my Church. I lost my identity as a Christian, a Catholic, a wife. I almost took my life. I no longer knew who I was. I lost my sense of self.
But in all the loss I am discovering my true self. The self that has worth. The self that God created and loved into being. Not the person who had adapted and conformed herself to survive a chaotic childhood of neglect and sexual abuse or the person who abandoned her adult self in the need to gain acceptance, approval, and love.
Q. I’m so sorry about the extent of your losses, Allison. But it’s moving to hear that you’re finding yourself. How did you begin to make sense of what happened to you?
A. I was an adult with grandchildren! I should have understood something of clergy sexual abuse, but I did not. The only way I knew to describe what happened is that I had had an “affair” with a priest. My first inkling that it could be something else came when I Googled “affairs with priests” and read Diane Garland and David Pooler’s research from Baylor University, especially this line: “Given the power differential between a clergyman and adult congregant, particularly one who seeks counseling, a sexual relationship can’t be considered a consensual affair.” I began to understand that what I had experienced was abuse and it was criminal.
Q. This sounds like a painful realization. It’s a common misconception that a relationship between a priest and an adult in his parish is an affair. You must have been startled to read that research.
A. The pastor who abused me was highly esteemed in our parish and in his monastic community. He befriended our family, coming to our house regularly for meals, getting to know our children, celebrating holidays with us, and meeting our extended families. With him we engaged in great theological discourse around our dining table. We supported his ministries financially. We trusted this man, who took a special interest in us and spoke of us as an ideal and holy Catholic family.
Our lives revolved around our church. Church had always been my safe place. As a child from a broken, chaotic, and abusive home, I was able to glean from my friends and their families how a normal family looked and loved. I met my husband in grade school at the Catholic school we both attended. He came from a large and loving Catholic family. He attended a Catholic university. Our children also went to Catholic school and universities. One even went on to seminary.
When we first married, we helped in the nursery. As our children grew, we taught sacramental prep for confirmation and marriage. We taught RCIA and led retreats. We were ministers of the Word and Eucharist. We attended our parish men’s and women’s groups and I have been part of Bible studies my entire adult life. I was on our parish council, the funeral committee, and the liturgical design committee. We were daily communicants and we were before the Blessed Sacrament every morning in adoration. I desired to live a truly holy life and wanted that also for our children. I loved the Church, the liturgy, the community.
I was certainly not ignorant to the ways of the world. My husband and I had raised and launched four children successfully into the world. I was a respite caregiver through hospice and had worked as an interior designer. I owned my own wedding invitation and photography business and I had a blog! I felt that I should have known what was happening.
Our pastor was not only a priest but a monk with a Ph.D. and a counseling degree. I sought spiritual direction and counseling from him. I believed God had finally brought the person into my life that I could open myself up to and perhaps begin to address my childhood sexual abuse and trauma.
Q. I get the message that holiness and wholeness were important to you. And it sounds like you believed this priest might be the answer to a lifelong prayer.
A. Yes. But I’ve come to understand that he was grooming me. I used to think grooming was “stranger danger,” never taking candy from strangers, staying away from white vans. In reality, grooming is being manipulated after sharing your home, your family, and meals around your dining table. Grooming is being violated after sharing your deepest self in the confidence of a pastoral office. Grooming looks and feels very much like friendship, trust, and love.
The priest began to email, text, and phone me personally. He was also emailing my husband, planning retreats and a road trip with him and asking for help in managing parish finances. He began to show up at the hospital where I volunteered and wanted to pray holding hands in the chapel. Our discussions began to grow more intimate, about his personal struggles, and doubts of faith and spirituality.
He caused me to question my relationship with my husband. He told me he believed he was the only one who could ever love me as God intended me to be loved. He told me I was his angel and that God had brought me into his life to show him that he was loved. He told me that during Mass he always broke part of the host he consumed at the altar to give to me during communion.
He gave me the purificator from his ordination. This is traditionally given to a priest’s mother after he takes Holy Orders. His own mother had taken her life and he told me I was now his spiritual mother. He began to visit our home when he knew no one else but me would be home. He said that he was in love with me and took a year of discernment away from active ministry to pursue converting to another denomination so he could remain a priest and be married. He told me he had bought a gun and threatened to kill himself if he couldn’t be with me.
I believed that all of this was my fault, that I was responsible for leading an innocent and naïve man of God into the place of sin we found ourselves in. I was afraid, confused, and ashamed.
I thought I was in love. I left my husband. I almost took my life. I have never heard from the priest again. He remains a priest.
Q. Oh, Allison. I’m so sorry about all that you’ve suffered. When you look back over all of this, who has been important in helping you heal?
Art has been important in Allison’s healing. She enjoys expressing herself through painting.
A. I cannot undo any part of what has happened in my life. And at this point in my healing, now that I can breathe again, I don’t think I would change anything I’ve been through. I love life and myself in a way I didn’t before or during the abuse, thanks to a wonderful trauma-informed Franciscan nun who was brought by God into my life exactly when I needed her. Through her I received wise counsel over the years and have come to understand the part my parents’ unhealed trauma played in my childhood abuse, and how my trauma, and the priest’s childhood abuse and addictions all played a role in the clerical abuse.
Q. She sounds like a tremendous gift. How do you describe your current relationship with God and the Catholic Church?
A. It is amazing to me, but as I have moved through this process, my faith in God has not diminished, but grown. I have only been able to enter a Catholic Church for the occasional marriage or funeral of a loved one, or to witness the celebration of sacraments of initiation, but I know God’s ever-abiding presence in my life. I miss the order and tradition that living as a Catholic all my life gave me and my family. Our entire family’s relationship to the Catholic Church has changed dramatically as we have grappled with our own personal pain and the universal pain that the Church continues to inflict. I miss Mass, the liturgy, and the Eucharist, but I have not yet found my way back.
I know many people have had experiences of satisfaction after reporting their abuse to the Church. I know others who have faced only further harm. I went to two dioceses and a monastery and did not find the help I needed from the Church.
But I do find God, every day. He reveals himself to me in the beauty of being alive in his creation. He gives us breath every day. And he gives us each the responsibility and possibility of becoming whole and holy with the help of his Holy Spirit who lives and breathes within us.
Q. Allison, thank you so very much for giving us the chance to hear your story. I wish you continued healing. Is there anything else that you would like to add in closing?
A. Yes. Through Awake I have found not only the words I needed to give voice to what happened to me, but also the strength of a community of love and validation that sees and acknowledges one another’s worth and wounds. A community that is mindful of each other’s pain, shame, and confusion, and hope and growth toward wholeness.
For me, today, at age 66, that journey toward wholeness looks like coffee on the front porch of my home before work, and a little painting now and again as I aspire to be an artist. It is being a mother to our grown children and those they love, and a nonni to the grandchildren they have brought into this world. It is knowing that those precious little ones love me just as I am. And if that purest of loves is the only true love I ever know, it is enough.
—Interview by Erin O’Donnell
Note from Awake: We extend heartfelt thanks to Allison for sharing her story. We also want to acknowledge that every survivor’s path is different. We honor the journeys of all who have experienced sexual abuse by Catholic leaders and are committed to bringing you their stories. In addition to Allison’s story, we encourage you to read our previous Survivor Stories here.
If you have experienced sexual abuse, you can receive support through the National Sexual Abuse Hotline, 800-656-4673, which operates 24 hours a day. If you seek support from the Catholic Church, you can find the contact information for your diocesan victim assistance coordinator here. Also, Awake is always open to listening to and learning from survivors. If you would like to connect with us, we invite you to email Survivor Care Coordinator Esther Harber at estherharber@awakecommunity.org.
