“Not Good Enough for Anything”; Understanding the Effects of Clergy Sexual Abuse on the Self-Identity of Survivors

Background/purpose: Child sexual abuse perpetrated by a member of the clergy can dramatically undermine the health of a survivor across the lifespan.  Exploratory studies with small and/or clinical samples have found that clergy abuse is associated with outcomes such as anger, rage, depression, spiritual confusion, and an often unmet desire for justice.  Few studies, however, have explored how clergy sexual abuse can thwart processes involved in identity development for survivors, a necessary part of health and well-being.  Based on theories of identity formation and the life course perspective, the current study addressed the following research question: What are the perceived negative effects of clergy sexual abuse on the self-identity of adult survivors? 

Methods: This analysis was based on qualitative data collected during the 2010 Health and Well-being Survey, an anonymous, online survey of men who reported being sexually abused during childhood.  Three national survivor organizations (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, MaleSurvivor, 1in6.org) assisted with recruitment.  Participants provided narrative, open-ended responses describing how the sexual abuse impacted their self-identity.  The final sample consisted of 187 men with histories of clergy sexual abuse.  Participants had a mean age of 50.9 (range = 23 – 84 years) and were predominately White (90.5%), cohabitating with a spouse/partner (69.6%), and members of a survivor organization (89.5%).  Conventional content analysis was used to analyze the open-ended data in three inductive phases over a one year period.  After analysis was completed, a test of inter-coder agreement—whereby an independent rater coded 10% of the data using the final code list--established high interpretative convergence (84.4%).     

Results: The effects of clergy sexual abuse were wide-ranging.  Our analyses indicated that clergy sexual abuse negatively impacted five major domains of the participants’ self-identity: psychological self, gendered self, social self, spiritual self, and total or overall self.  All domains (except spirituality) contained multiple subthemes.  For example, the psychological self included impaired mental health, self-harming behaviors, and low self-esteem.  In addition to poorer mental health, the compromised self-identity resulted in lack of success in education and employment careers, unsatisfactory and abusive relationships, loss of future hopes and dreams, and spiritual crises.  Nearly half of the participants (48.9%) reported that clergy sexual abuse negatively impacted more than one domain, indicating multiple threats to healthy development. 

Conclusion and Implications: In one of the largest qualitative studies to date, the current study found that clergy sexual abuse can have a stunting or disintegrating effect on identity formation and also threaten or distort individual components of survivor identities.  Clinicians working with survivors should assess and treat multiple effects of clergy sexual abuse (e.g., impaired spirituality, compromised masculine identity, disconnection to others).  Because identity development is fluid and malleable, future research using longitudinal designs could explore identity development across life stages (e.g., adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood).  Research is also needed on female survivors of clergy sexual abuse, a neglected and often overlooked population.