- A lot of the abuse took place inside the church,
inside the house of God.
Saying no to him would almost be saying, like, no to god,
and when have you ever said no to God?
(down tempo music)
I was sexually abused by a Catholic priest
from the age of eleven to the age of sixteen.
- When I was between the ages of 15 and 17 years old,
I was sexually abused by a teacher
at a private Catholic high school in Southern California.
(down tempo music)
- With me it started with long conversations about my mom
and how I was alone.
Then he started telling me secrets and he wanted me
to share those secrets with nobody else.
Then it moved into the kissing and the touching,
and within a few months, I was being,
it was full blown sexual abuse.
And it was so bad, by the time that the abuse ended
I was 17 and I was pregnant and I had
a sexually transmitted disease.
- I remember one time I was in class.
It must have been in the sixth grade,
or something like that.
One of the nuns came into the classroom and said,
Father Fidensia wants to see you.
I get to the sacristy, I go upstairs,
and so he tells me that he's drawing a picture
of a rising Christ for Easter.
He asks me if I wanna model for him.
And at that point he says,
well, you gotta take off all your clothes.
And so he makes me take off my underwear.
And then he has me lay down on the ground
and he starts putting me out in different poses.
You know, you're a crucified Jesus.
So I put my arms out, I put my head to one side,
put my head to the other side.
He starts manipulating my legs, my arms, my torso.
He reaches down and starts playing with my penis.
So then he tells me, well now you need to start beating off.
You gotta masturbate.
I ended up ejaculating and he takes pictures of me.
And at that point he just gives me my clothes,
get dressed and go back to school.
(down tempo music)
- In 2001, and this is before the Boston Globe
covered the crisis in Boston,
which is chronicled in the Spotlight film.
We had a scandal here in California.
And a boy who had been sexually abused
by my high school principal came forward
and filed a lawsuit.
He ended up getting documents that showed
that the diocese knew that my high school principal
had been abusing boys for years.
And they had even sent him to a
church run treatment facility
where they send priest who sexually molest kids.
- As the go through the seminary students,
they're very controlled.
Everything is documented, in fact the priest who abused me
has documentation that goes all the way back
to the seminary that he was out there
exhibiting unusual behavior by drawing
men's penises and all kinds of other things.
And walking around naked.
- I contacted the diosese where I lived,
and I said, hey this happened to me.
And I wanna be a part of the solution.
And they told me, well why don't you
sit on our lay review board.
Where you can review cases where adults have come forward
and said that they were sexually abused as children
by priests and employees and volunteers.
And I sat on that committee for about six months,
and we didn't review a single case.
And I began to realize that I was being played again,
like I had been played in high school.
They were buying my silence by putting me on this board.
(down tempo music)
In the end, my lawsuit settled and I got more than
200 pages of documents, secret documents,
spotlight documents, in my case.
And they included the signed confession
from the man who sexually abused me.
He confessed to abusing me,
and he confessed to abusing my friends.
I got secret documents from school administrators
who said, oh yeah, we knew that this was going on.
We knew that Joelle was being sexually abused.
And we decided to keep it quite,
because it was better that way.
(down tempo music)
The Catholic church is very good at keeping records.
In fact, they have a rule book,
it's called The Code of Cannon Law.
Those are the rules and regulations
that bishops, and priests, and employees
and Catholics have to follow.
And a lot of those rules have to do with
documenting sin and documenting child sexual abuse.
For victims it's been a lifesaver
because it's been the proof that we have needed all along
to say, hey this really happened.
(down tempo music)
- I am still a Catholic.
I was born a Catholic, I'll die a Catholic.
I certainly believe that in order to take care of
this Catholic problem it has to be done by a Catholic.
The moment that I step outside the church,
I'm considered an outsider and I no longer have a voice.
- Faith is a one on one relationship you have
with a supreme being.
And I don't need a guy in a Roman collar
to tell me what my relationship with God has to be.
(uptempo music)