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
