The following testimony comes from an anonymous young woman, identified only by the initials "ME." It was originally published in Spanish on the blog Crux Sancta back in March 2016. She writes of her experiences on the Way in the early 2000s. Given last week's post on the subject of abuse, we find the presentation of this testimony both timely and relevant.
I am a 33-year-old woman from a country in Latin America. My parents joined the Neocatechumenal Way when I was 10 years old. Being the youngest, I was the one who accompanied my parents the most from the beginning. When I turned 12, I entered my own community (after doing the respective catechesis). Of the young people who entered with me (around 15), there were only about 5 left in our first year.
I got to the "Traditio" stage (if that's how you write it, I don't remember anymore). I was 20 years old. In the convivence for this stage, they joined us to another community before ours. In this convivence, what happened would make my decision to eventually leave the Way.
On Saturday night after the Eucharist, four friends decided to make a toast to one of them, who was going to the seminary the following week (he is a Redemptoris Mater priest today). We were, at the time, the following: A (the future seminarian); E (A's brother); O (the brother of my best friend in the community); and me. These guys were the same age as me and had been in the Way since they were 10 years old, just like me, except for A, who was a year older than the rest.
For the toast, they brought a bottle of rum and E served each of them about 3mm in a shot glass (it was a toast, not a party). I also took that amount. I lost consciousness in less than a minute.
Talking about this causes me a different pain than it did two years ago. Thanks to God, my Father, the emotional and psychological wound is healed. However, a spiritual pain remains within me that is revived when I think of how many people suffer or have suffered what I did in the Way.
That night they drugged me.
The one who placed the drug (I will say later how I know) was E, and it was he who tried to abuse me first. The thing is, he miscalculated the timing of the effects and when he tried to abuse me, I woke up in a semi-conscious state and pushed him and insulted him with all the strength I had. I noticed about a meter from us was O, so I dragged myself to him and asked him to take care of me (I couldn't get up because my legs wouldn't respond) and, stammering, I told him to take care of me like his sister. He told me that he would.
My next awakening was my return to consciousness: at six in the morning, naked and raped.
I remember quickly understanding what had happened to me, and I remember that I did not understand how I did not remember it. Also, at that moment, I didn't remember what happened with E--I only remembered the mouthful of rum. Then I thought about the possibility of having gotten drunk and if what I had done was fornication. I got dressed and started to walk toward the hotel (they had taken me out of the hotel for the convivence). I got to my room (shared with another sister from the community) and took a bath. I began to doubt that I did it because I didn't remember the decision to do it. I didn't remember any previous moments of affection or romance, and I also had no experience in that regard. If I never did it with my boyfriend of three years (also from the Way and who I was no longer with at that time), how would I do it with someone like that, on those terms, without being my partner, at a convivence, being a lifelong friend? My God, we met when we were all ten years old!
When I left the room, O was in the doorway, waiting for me. I asked him what had happened, if we had had sex, and he said yes and added: "Forgive me, because I was conscious, and you weren't."
This sentence, at that time, I did not understand well. Looking back, I was 20 years old, with no sexual experience and a mind so innocent and guarded to the world. I just thought, "if he did this to me... is it because he wants to be with me?" I never saw the evil of him. Never. To me, he was someone as trustworthy as a brother.
Ten years later, when I received psychological therapy for this incident after presenting a severe case of post-traumatic depression, I discovered how that sentence had been the declaration of abuse.
At that moment, my rapist was telling me: I raped you.
In less than a week, E called me to say that he was angry with me and that I should apologize, that I had caused him suffering. I didn't understand what he was talking about, and he told me that I had insulted him that night. I still didn't understand. He then told me that he had some photos of me that I wouldn't want anyone to see, and it would be easy for him to give them to me. So, I told him to give them to me, but he made it a condition that I should ask for his forgiveness. Wanting to know what had happened that night, since no one gave me details and I didn't understand anything, we met before the Eucharist in a shopping center, and he gave me the photos (not without me first asking for his forgiveness).
Seeing the photos, I had to contain my desire to attack him. At that moment, I remembered what he had tried to do to me. The photos showed me lying on the floor, face down, unconscious, with my blouse half-raised, then crawling to O's feet. I didn't say anything to E. I felt a lot of terror and shame. I didn't feel safe, and I just left. At the Eucharist I went to with my parents, as usual, he treated me very normally and even joked with me, as usual.
After these events, I spent three months seriously confused. Only one sister from my community came to know how things happened because I told her what I remembered. I remember that she told me that they had abused me and that I had to clarify it because they had been telling everyone that I had been the occasion of sin, that I had been the cause of fornication, and that now it was as if nothing had happened. This sister, really, was the only one who wanted to help me, protect me, and the one who never doubted me. The rest forgot that they had known me since I was a child, that they knew who I was. They all believed the lies mainly told by E and simply spread the gossip.
At some point in all this, my catechists found out. I had the bad luck that my head catechist is the most macho and even violent man that I have known closely, and that the single woman in the group of catechists was a very sparing and chauvinistic woman, as well. When they talked to me about it, I told them how I remembered it. I never said, "he raped me." I never said, "they drugged me," since I didn't remember anything or know about the drug, but based on my memory. This is why I tell you, like I told the sister who wanted to protect me: don't you think it was obvious that I wasn't there? That no one asked me? That neither my mind nor my heart nor my soul was there to decide?
However, they sent me to apologize to O (yes, to apologize to my rapist) for being an occasion of sin for him... and believe me, I'm not kidding.
That was our first meeting since the abuse. I apologized to him, and he never apologized. And even years later he hasn't: not to me, nor my parents, nor the community for letting them believe E's lies or for making them believe his lies.
I must point out something important: in my confusion, I suffered from Stockholm Syndrome (diagnosed years later). Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological reaction in which the victim of a kidnapping, rape, or retention against their will, develops a relationship of complicity and a strong emotional bond with their kidnapper. Mainly it is because they misunderstand the absence of violence against their person as an act of humanity on the part of the kidnapper. According to psychologist Nils Bejerot, Stockholm Syndrome is more common in people who have been victims of some type of abuse, such as: hostages, cult members, psychologically abused children, prisoners of war, prostitutes, concentration camp prisoners, victims of incest, and victims of domestic violence.
Since I had no memory of violence with O, but rather the memory of him apologizing to me, it was very easy for this syndrome to develop in my mind. In this way, I believed (or unconsciously chose to believe) that my rapist was in love with me and I with him, because how else would I have slept with him? That was my reasoning, or rather my defense mechanism. I didn't know at the time that I had been drugged. That I found out a year later.
This is how I spent those three months wanting to straighten out the crooked tree, communicating with O and imagining that he loved me and just didn't know how to say it. Everything stopped when I asked for his help with a university matter, and he told me no, to leave things, that he didn't love me or anything and to stop everything. So it was.
My need at that time was due to a car accident I had, and thanks to the shock of the accident (and what O told me when I asked for help), I came out of the emotional trance I was in. I remember crying in the arms of my university classmates, with them believing it was because of the accident. I was crying because I discovered that my life had changed; that my identity had been destroyed; that I was no longer the same person; that they had done things to me that I could not prevent, control, or know about; that in the end, I just had to pick up the pieces of me that were left with dignity and restart.
And I knew that the Way was no longer for me, that I couldn't be there. And I said to God: "God, if I stay there, I'll kill you, I'll hate you until I die, and I'll forget you." So, I left the Way. The accident was on a Saturday and that was the last Eucharist I attended.
I did not speak to O again. However, four years later I found out that E (who had married by then) was dating a former schoolmate of mine (yes, married and with a girlfriend). Knowing this, I told her who he was, and she left him. Soon after, I received threats via social media from E, telling me that I was crazy.
I never had contact with either of them again. In fact, just imagining seeing them made me panic, but God is good, and He didn't allow it until I was ready.
My parents continue to this day in the Way. The pain that all this caused them was very strong, but they decided to forgive. When they got the full truth from me, that's when I found out I had been drugged. t was like this: A brother from my parents' community needed E's computer services (since he provided these services). E went to the house of said brother, who had served himself a glass of water. He took a drink, with E already being in his house, and after a short time he did not remember anything else. When he woke up, some money he had been saving had disappeared and E had already left. The brother woke up in his bed, apparently told that he had taken a nap. But he curiously did not remember being sleepy and going to the bedroom. The last thing he remembered was taking a mouthful of water.
For my parents to know this was in some way the answer to what happened to me that day, because I didn't remember anything. And so, we realized that E was not only an abuser, liar, and extortionist, but also a thief... and that he was still loved by the brothers, while I had been disowned. No one, no one from my community (except for the sister I mentioned and my responsible's wife) saw me with love or tried to help me. No one.
Years passed and today E is separated from his wife, has one child, and is still in the Way, while O is married with two children, and is still in the Way with his wife.
A year ago, we learned that one day O went out to a brothel with a friend from the Way who was also married. The friend was drugged (as far as we know, the same drug as me, but a higher dose). They robbed him and he was in a coma for weeks on the verge of death. O was more scared, not only because he didn't have the same drink but because when he went to get money from his car to pay (I don't know if it was alcohol or something else), he fell asleep in the car. When he woke up, he went to his parents' house to bathe and change clothes, and thus arrive home like nothing had happened. His wife was pregnant with a girl, their second child.
This has been my story of abuse in the Neocatechumenal Way. What I can tell you about myself after that are only good things - gifts from God that I have had, and still have to this day.
The year after living all this, I fell in love with a worldly boy (ironically, he claimed to be an atheist at the time) and, from the beginning, I told him everything. God knows that if I saw His love in my life again, it was thanks to the arrival of this person.
I remember one night crying with happiness and saying to God, "if I die today, thank you for showing me happiness and love." That night, my mother hugged me so tightly and we cried so much together. This boy did nothing spectacular, nothing visibly magical or mystical; he was simply always honest, straight, well-intentioned. He was simply the good person that God put in my life so that I could be happy again and feel alive.
He was himself, as God had made him. That is why God gives each person what he needs, and not the same to all - not what the Way believes it should be, nor what the catechists say, but what He sees fit for you.
And so it was that later we got married. We have now been married for seven years, and I continue to thank God for him. (By the way, he's no longer an atheist. Today he prays with me every night.)
With this story, I wanted to publicly tell my experience so that those who live or have lived with something similar can come out; that they can know that happiness exists and comes from God. As a priest (not from the Way) once told me: "God wants us to be happy."
That those "tests" that God gives us are not the ones imposed by the catechists; that they don't lose their free will; that they don't kill their reason. I, by killing reason, caused more harm than the rape itself, since the hardest thing to overcome within my therapy (yes, God uses psychologists to help us, like a doctor or a psychiatrist or a masseuse. Do not demonize these professions.) was the pain of betrayal, complicity, and humiliation.
But I understood that O never had me in the end; that my soul, while all this was happening, was in the arms of God; that God saw the injustice and He Himself preserved me, because after all that He did not allow me to harm my life or anyone else's - on the contrary, He gave me a good life partner and has always put in my path friends and people to help me.
So get out of your head that there is nothing outside.
Do you know what you can find outside the Way? Honesty. Love. Respect. Equality. Certainty. Strength. Friendship. Compassion. And even more faith in God.
And to make you even more amazed: my therapist was the one through whom I recovered the most intimate communion with the Church. Thanks to her, I returned to the sacraments, not only because of the therapy itself, but because God - I repeat - God put her in my life, a woman who took care of me without charge and who, in my freedom and only when I asked her, gave me spiritual advice. And that was this: If you want, go to church and ask God what He wants for you.
I love the simplicity of that advice. I love it because it never annuls consciousness or the free and intimate relationship that must be nurtured between human beings and God. I love it because she showed me a real door; nothing mystical, nothing pompous or difficult. She didn't open it or push me to go through it. She just told me there was one, if I wanted...
She knew that God would take care of the rest.
Those are the ones that really announce God.
A year ago, after I was discharged from therapy (yes, God does things in His own time), a few minutes after literally saying to God, "Thank you for everything, God. I'm ready for whatever comes," I came face to face with O at a labor convention.
I saw his discomfort in his gaze, which he couldn't hold. I saw him and felt absolutely nothing. It was like seeing the friend of the cousin of the brother-in-law of the stranger's neighbor.
I walked out of that convention and thanked God for his answer: Yes, I was ready. I was healed.
If this testimony saves one person who identifies with my story, that's enough.
Thanks for reading.
