Biography
Charles V. Sords served a variety of problem-solving or management roles in non-profit, for-profit, academic, and federal executive or judicial branch organizations and conducted training in the US, Canada, and Europe for forty years. He is now a board-certified polarity practitioner in Washington, DC using healing touch, mindfulness, and other Western and Eastern medicine modalities to unblock and balance the energy flow for clients he sees in private practice or pro bono. For ten years he was a member of a religious community of men. He holds a Master's degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame with a dual focus on the early church and pastoral counseling. He feels great disappointment—and worse—when in a Roman Catholic edifice, ceremony, or the company of those who support the church's status quo. His greatest joy rests in family and personal relationships and helping other victims become survivors.
Abstract
From the fourth to the sixth grades, Charles V. Sords suffered traumatic sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. He suppressed these memories, yet the pain of what happened impacted every aspect of his life. As an adult, several strong, sensory experiences brought the truth of his childhood into focus. He confronted the Church—and the system that protected clerical criminals. This memoir is an account of childhood sexual abuse, the particularly shameful nature of being raped by priests, and how the Catholic Church’s method of handling this and similarly horrifying revelations has re-traumatized survivors.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Sords, Charles V. (2019) "When A Stone Is Not A Stone: Memories of Clerical Abuse," Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 4: Iss. 2, Article 6. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2019.04.02.06
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