VICTIMS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE BY PRIESTS
been charged . The results illustrated that while trustin the priesthood and church declined across thethree groups, trust in God remained consistent . The
study also illustrated that parishioners were more
likely to distrust the Church's handling of sexual
misconduct and less likely to accept Church doctrine on sexuality and morals. Rossetti concluded
that North American Catholics viewed new priests
in the parish with suspicion, were less willing toallow offending priests back into the parish and areless likely to believe that the modern Church is better than the Church in the past. In evaluating theeffects of the sexual abuse cases in Newfoundland,
Nason-Clark (1998), interviewed 24 Roman
Catholic women to assess their reaction to the scandal . Each woman in the sample could remember
where she was when she first heard about the story,
and all recall having initially reacted to the news
with disbelief and, later, with anger (19 out of the24 participants) . The anger was targeted at theoffending priests, bishop, other Catholic priests,
and the Church hierarchy while some were angry
with the Catholics who lived in the parish where thepriests were charged . They also experienced a senseof betrayal and guilt that caused them to alter theirrelationship with the Church . Four years after the
initial interview, the author conducted a follow-up
study and found that some women had made their
way back to the Church while others had decided tostay away. Participants believed that the Church in
Newfoundland had not recovered from the scandal,
and that they will never regard priests in the samemanner again.

hen an individual is victimized by apriest, they are not only harmed physically and emotionally, but spiritually aswell . Bland (2002) illustrated that when an individual was sexually abused by a priest they displayed
greater symptoms of grief, anger, a sense of meaninglessness, feelings that God had treated them
unfairly, dissociation, depression, sexual problems,sleep disturbances, higher scores on the sexual
abuse trauma index and higher . scores on thetrauma symptom checklist . Fater and Mullaney(2000) conducted a phenomenological study ofseven adult male survivors of clergy abuse . The survivors experienced a bifurcated rage (self directed
and outwardly directed) and spiritual distress thatpervaded every aspect of their life . McLaughlin(1994) found that those abused by clergy distanced
themselves from the church in order to avoid re-victimization . While it was clearly illustrated that clerical sexual abuse affected church attendance andparticipation, the results are inconclusive pertaining
to the affect on the victim's relationship with God .
These findings are also consistent with those of
Rossetti (1995), who further found that female victims of sexual abuse displayed a decline in theirtrust of God, but the male victims did not .

WThe parish also experiences the ramifications of theabuse . Rossetti (1997) divided his sample into threegroups : those who had no awareness of charges ofsexual abuse within their parish, those who were
aware that a priest in their diocese had beenaccused and those whose own parish priest had190