Networks of complicity and complacence. How they relate to spiritual abuse and sexual harassment in Catholic organizations of religious life

ANA LOURDES SUAREZ

Riverside

Conferencia; Religion and Sexual Abuse Conference; 2022

Universidad de California Riverside

In order to better understand and prevent sexual abuse, research is paying increasing attention to how networks of complicity and complacence support abusers. Cunningham et all (2019) demonstrate that abusers do not act alone. They tend to have active enablers ? ?networks of complicity? who support the abuse in various ways. They also have passive enablers ? ?networks of complacency? who turn a blind eye to what is happening. This approach supports the necessity of going beyond the ?red apple? understanding of sexual abuse to one that addresses the basket that rot the apples.Our research, focused on sexual abuses in the Catholic Latin-American context , connects the networks approach with spiritual/conscious abuse. Abuse of conscience in the religious context has specific features that differentiate it from other forms of abuse since it involves the name and the will of God and, therefore, it hurts the person at a particularly deep level. In Catholic settings, as stated by Fernandez (2021) this abuse has some particular features that distinguish it from other religious and Christian contexts. Some of these distinctive features, such as hierarchical relations, religious life, priestly mediation, obedience, sacramental confession, examples of the saints and, others, can be used by the abuser as tools for controlling the victim?s conscience (Fernández 2021, p.558).The paper focuses on three Latin American Catholic religious organizations where sexual abuse behavior took place on a relatively regular basis. They are: Sodalitium Christianae Vitae from Peru, Regnum Christi -Legionarios-, founded in Mexico, and Institute Discípulos de Jesús de S. J. Bautista, from Argentina. Not only the founders of these communities, Luis F. Figari (a Peruvian catholic laic), Marcial Maciel, a Mexican priest (1920-2008), and Father Agustín Rosa Torino have been accused of several sexual abuses, but other members as well.