Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

The number three honcho at the Vatican, Cardinal Pell, has been convicted of abusing two choir boys. The trial took place under a very effective news blackout and was dubbed "the cathedral trial" in the press because of the location of the abuse. No sentencing info is available. Cardinal George Pell 's official assignment is Vatican Prefect for the Secretariat of the Economy. He is the most senior catholic cleric to face criminal trial for sexual crimes. In another trial due in 2019, Pell will also be tried in Australia on charges that he abused two other boys at a swimming pool, in what is known as "the swimming trial". Editorial note: Eventually, the church is going to have to pay attention to this.

Trigger warnings: rape, beatings, jail, prisoner, Catholic, priest, family. Scroll down for content.        Or Click here to go away . The adjective catholic (with a lower-case c ) means: universal, comprehensive, widely shared. Something that's catholic is bigger than you might think. I need to set down my own catholic experience. You might not know anybody affected by the Catholic systemic child-rape scandal . Maybe you do know a victim and you aren't aware of it yet. I'm one of them. I was raped by Fr. Arnaud in Brooklyn's St. Theresa of Liseaux, on Avenue D and Troy Avenue. I volunteered to became an altar boy because on school-day funerals, you got out of class and sometimes you got $5. It seemed like a good deal. My dad recommended it. The old GI rubric holds true: Never Volunteer. From September 1965 to June 1968 - Fourth through Sixth grades - I was repeatedly raped by a parish priest. It happened in the rectory on Monday afternoons, an...

Reading Healing Tasks: Psychotherapy and Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse by James I Kepner. Re therapy I'm often questioning whether what we're doing is what we're supposed to be doing, so I thought I'd do some learning about what the process is supposed to be. This is a good read. There are, admittedly, some pages I don't get - either they're too abstract, or I'm not catching the nuance/implications. It's not a self-help book, it's much more a book for practitioners. There's a lot of good lessons for me. One lesson is the notion that prior trauma causes you to over-react to challenges. I did just that in an interaction while I was reading it, and it informed me to ask: Am I over-reacting? Why? and there was value in that. Another two lessons that I'm still pondering are: Depression is the result of long-unprocessed, accumulated, compounding-interest grief that hasn't been mourned, which presents as a general sadness or malais...

NY Times : Brooklyn Diocese Identifies Eight More Abusing Priests. That's one of five dioceses. The story focuses on James Lara, who was a priest from 1973 to 1992, was de-priested, and then changed his name and pivoted to academia: Over the past 25 years, a university professor named Jaime Lara built an illustrious career in the academic world of sacred art history. He was a professor at Yale University for more than a decade, wrote five books and won more than a dozen prestigious awards and fellowships. Since 2013, he has been a professor of medieval and renaissance studies at Arizona State University. Mr. Lara did not respond to a request for comment. The other priests listed were Joseph P. Byrns, who served from 1969 to 2002; William E. Finger, who served from 1962 to 1980; Stephen Placa, who served from 1995 to 2002; Thomas O. Morrow, who served from 1971 until 1987; Romano J. Ferraro, who served from 1960 to 1988; Charles M. Mangini, who served from 1968 to 1993; and Chr...

Sometimes I remember things that I've forgotten or suppressed. Today I remembered: On the evening news (Channel 7, ABC) Roger Grimsby talked about how people can report child abuse by calling the operator. That was just a setup. I was in our house on East 48th, it was daytime, and I sneaked into my parent's bedroom to use their phone. I was young, and this may have been the first phone call I made. It was a rotary phone. I called the operator. I remember how long it took for the dial to rotate through all the digits. "Operator" . I told her, I wanted to report my father for child abuse . She asked a question and I said, he hits me a lot . Then I heard my father come on the line, using the kitchen phone. He was a shift-worker; my mother was out. He said, who's on this phone? I said, I am. That was an insufficient answer because he said, Who are you talking to? The operator identified herself. Over the phone line my father asked, what are you calling t...

These are some movies I've come across that were helpful to me regarding being beaten as a child. Affliction . This is an amazing movie about the end-state of a dysfunctional family, showing the varying effects of trauma on people in their 50's, and the slow departure from mainstream priorities. I'm amazed that it was made as a commercial movie. Good Will Hunting . Although I tend to avoid Affleck-Damon movies, this was very good. Deals with the 22-year old vintage of trauma results.