Support groups led by archdiocese help victim survivors

Paula Kaempffer

A victim survivor of clergy sexual abuse as a child and an adult described support groups offered via Zoom by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as “amazing” and in many ways, “lifesavers, literally.”

The woman, 57, who asked to be identified as “Catherine Ann from Arizona” to protect her privacy, has lived out of her car since November 2020. Awake Milwaukee, a nonprofit organization of Catholics responding to the Church’s abuse crisis, referred her to Paula Kaempffer, outreach coordinator for restorative justice and abuse prevention for the archdiocese.

“Within hours I was on the phone with Paula,” Catherine Ann said. “She has been an amazing support to me as I’ve been going through all of the hell from the past several years, but especially the past year.”

Kaempffer offers three monthly support groups and a fourth monthly session via Zoom. One invites people who were sexually abused by clergy as adults to share their stories and learn from each other along their healing journey. Family members of victim survivors make up a second, similar group, and a third offers peer-led discussion for those who were abused as children or adults. Guest speakers lead a fourth monthly session on topics pertinent to victim survivors. Some have covered shame, grooming, “when faith hurts” and “Why couldn’t I just walk away … and ‘get over it?’

Joe Whalen, abused by a priest as a preteen, started attending in-person meetings for victim survivors in 2019 before the COVID-10 pandemic hit in early 2020. Today he participates in the online groups and sometimes facilitates a topic for discussion.

Baptized a Catholic, he no longer attends Church. “That’s something God and I are wrestling through,” said Whalen, who lives in Burnsville.

Whalen, 54, said the group meetings are important because, while each person’s story is different and nuanced in some way, “we all have the same core trauma that we’re working through and a lot of those same feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, self-doubt — the same things that come along with clerical abuse and childhood sexual abuse.”

The groups’ value is in knowing other people in the same position and on the same journey, Whalen said. “I don’t know that there will ever be complete healing this side of heaven,” he said. “However, we’re taking the walk one step at a time and we’re learning from our mistakes and we encourage one another.” He said the groups are “incredibly helpful.”

One value of the groups is consistency, Whalen said, “knowing that on Monday evening, I have something where I can hang my hat on to be with a group of folks who … have that trauma bond.”

Another recent effort to connect victim survivors of clergy sexual abuse in the Church was a 90-minute listening session June 22 with Archbishop Bernard Hebda as part of the 2023 Vatican Synod, an effort that began in October to address “synodality” itself as a journey of encounter, listening and discernment. About 45 people from across the United States participated in the listening session, which Kaempffer moderated. The archbishop plans to present a written summary of participants’ comments, concerns and experiences concerning the Church to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Pope Francis as part of the international synod, which will culminate with a meeting at the Vatican of representatives from around the world in 2023.

Participation in the four monthly Zoom sessions, which began in March 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s shutdown of in-person activities, has grown to include people far beyond the archdiocese, including about eight “regulars” from Alaska and Hawaii, Kaempffer said. Each session has reached further geographically as word of them spreads, and people have tuned in from Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and other countries, she said.

In addition to the support groups, half of Kaempffer’s work involves individual telephone conversations with victim survivors. “They know I’m a victim survivor and I understand. I’ll get it, because many of them are not receiving support from their diocese.

“I am not a victim assistance coordinator,” Kaempffer said. “I work totally with victim survivors all the time. All day long.”

She has also participated in panel discussions via Zoom — including two recently at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., one of which addressed the importance of survivors telling their stories. Last May she spoke to a group of spiritual directors about spiritual care of victim survivors.

Last August, Kaempffer spoke to law students at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul in “a restorative justice intensive course.” For 90 minutes, Kaempffer told her story and “what it’s like for victim survivors, and how they’ve been treated by hierarchy and also by parishioners, sometimes,” she said.

Kaempffer considers the archdiocesan support groups a restorative practice. “I think it’s things that make people heal,” she said. “We’re cognizant of the harm that’s been caused and we realize it’s very real, and we try and help them heal. What’s happening is they’re healing each other in these groups. We’re not finding that the healing is coming from the hierarchy as a whole.”

Support groups offer anonymity via Zoom and, over time, participants “offer such love and affirmation to each other in the group,” Kaempffer said. “We don’t try and fix one another in the group, but we really affirm and support one another.”

For more information, including recordings of monthly presentations, visit safe-environment.archspm.org/healing. To learn more about the support groups, contact Kaempffer at [email protected].