A friend of mine, who happens to be the Adjutant Judicial Vicar of his diocese, graciously allowed me to blog the following email which he sent over a canon law listserve. I have to say that my tribunal experience has not been much different than his own:
Our Judicial Vicar asked the tribunal
notaries to do a brief review of the 555 marriage cases between 1998
and mid-2003. The tribunal collected data regarding various types of
reported abuse (verbal and emotional, physical, drugs and alcohol,
and sexual), including who was the victim of the abuse, when the
abuse occurred (pre-marriage, marriage, or both), and who was the
perpetrator of the abuse. A brief summary and a 4-point summary
follows.
We are sure the results will come as no surprise to those of us who judge theses cases but thought that the results might be of interest
to the group.
BRIEF SUMMARY:
In 84% of our cases, some type of abuse occurred. In 91% of these cases, the person experienced abuse prior to the marriage, and in 58% of these cases, the person also married into an abusive relationship. In 86% of these cases, the person was abused in the
immediate or extended family, and in 52% of these cases, the person's spouse also experienced abuse prior to the marriage. Only 2.5% of the sexual abuse cases were reported, and of these, none of the abuse that had occurred in the immediate or extended family were reported to the proper authorities.
4-POINT SUMMARY:
1) In 84% of our annulment cases, some type of abuse occurred in the person's life - 465 cases involved some type of abuse (84% of the 555 cases).
2) In 91% of the abuse cases, at least one person had experienced abuse prior to the marriage, and in 58% of the abuse cases, at least one person in the marriage had experienced some type of abuse both prior to the marriage and in the marriage - 421 cases involved abuse prior to the marriage (91% of the 465 cases), 149 cases involved abuse prior to the marriage only (32% of the 465 cases), 43 cases involved abuse in the marriage only (9% of the 465 cases), 272 cases involved abuse both prior to and in the marriage (58% of the 465 cases).
3) In 86% of the cases where the person experienced abuse, the abuse occurred in the immediate or extended family, and in 52% of the cases where the person experienced abuse in the immediate family, he or she also married someone who had also experienced abuse prior to the marriage - 365 cases involved abuse in the immediate family (78% of the 465 cases), 36 cases involved abuse in the extended family (8% of the 465 cases), 401 cases involved abuse in the immediate or extended family (86% of the 465 cases), 189 cases involved abuse prior to the marriage by both parties (52% of the 365 cases).
4) In 19% of the cases where the person experienced some type of abuse prior to the marriage, the abuse was reported to be sexual abuse. Of these, only two of the eighty cases (2.5%) were reported to the authorities. No one reported the sexual abuse that had occurred in the immediate or extended family.
The following numbers represent that various types of abuse often accompanies other forms of abuse, e.g., alcohol abuse by a family member often accompanies verbal and/or physical abuse on others. Emotional/Verbal: 334 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse Alcohol/Drugs: 289 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse Physical: 168 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse Sexual: 80 cases of the 421 cases with pre-marriage abuse General figures indicate that one of three (33%) women and one of four (25%) to seven (14%) men have experienced sexual abuse. Thus, the reported figure of 19% appears to be conservative. At the same time, it is striking that this large a number is reporting the sexual
abuse in the tribunal process.
Fraternally,
Fr. X,
Diocese of Y
So, does the past or future alleged occurance of abuse make the sacrament not a real sacrament, and thus invalid?
It depends. Basically, the abuse itself is not the cause of invalidity, but depending upon the circumstances, it can create the conditions under which a marriage is entered into invalidly.
For example, suppose a sixteen year old girl suffers a single incident of sexual abuse. She tells her parents who then report it to the police, the bastard is arrested and convicted, and her parents get her proper counseling. She then goes on to college where she meets a nice young man and they decide to marry upon graduation. She will still carry the scars of the abusive incident, but she will be able to cope with it as she enters into marriage.
On the other hand, take a pre-pubescent girl who is repeatedly physically and sexually abused by her alcoholic father. (Pre-pubescent is important here because in addition to the trauma of sex in an abusive manner, there is the trauma of sex itself.) This abuse continues into her teens. She doesn't know what to do and she's been warned that if she tells anyone the consequences will be severe. She is likely so emotionally devestated that she has few friends to whom she can turn. When she turns sixteen, some older guy (probably early twenties) comes along and starts paying attention to her. They sleep together on the third date, after which he proposes they run off and get married.
In this case, marriage is basically an escape for the girl. Because of the abuse, her view of sexuality has been completely warped and she is unlikely to possess sufficient discretion of judgment to validly enter into marriage.
At the risk of nit-picking, while I agree with your assessment, wouldn't her case be a defect of form, anyway? Assuming she lives in the US, I'm under the impression that she cannot validly enter marriage before 18 without a dispensation. Is this correct?
Christina, at the risk of sounding sarcastic, please report to Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada to begin studies toward a licentiate in canon law! Seriously, the ability to pay attention to these types of small detail, when nobody else is really thinking along these lines, is one of the marks of a good canonist. That being said, I don't think it would be defect of form unless Rome approved the raising of the canonical in the United States to eighteen. While the bishops could (and in many cases have) done the same, this would be for liciety and not for validity. That being said, this is still a darn good call on your part. Therefore, if you have not done so already, you may want to give some serious thought to becoming a canonist.