Member-only story
Uncomfortable
A response to Daria Malinova’s: ‘Is religion hurting us?’
Raised Catholic, schooled in 4 Catholic schools, mass every Sunday.
I loved it all, especially singing the hymns.
My first holy communion was the happiest day of my life at age 8.
But, I remember with a stomach pain that won’t shift shooing tiny, young, puny, skinny Year 7 boys away from our Senior girl’s high school gardens. Telling them to get lost from the places they were hiding.
No little joy of hidey-go-seek.
These poor, new, high school kids were hiding from a predator brother that continued to rape them in the private first-storey rooms on their all-boys high school library.
The senior boys all knew.
Somehow, the me raised and spoiled with love every day of my then 17 years couldn’t comprehend such atrocities could or would happen.
Of those vulnerable 12-year-olds, I wonder how many committed suicide.
How many are living now?
How many recovered to have secure relationships?
How many put that horrendous past behind them?
And how petty was I to hunt those poor buggered boys out of the refuge of plants in a garden where they would be safe, at least for as long as lunchtime lasted?
