Unchaste Celibates: Clergy Sexual Misconduct against Adults—Expressions, Definitions, and Harms

Abstract

There is an ignored, misunderstood, and complex reality within the broader clergy sexual abuse scandal within the Roman Catholic Church (RCC)—that of clergy sexual misconduct against adults (CSMAA). Estimates and calculations of numbers of victims/survivors over the last half-century reach into the early millions. Furthermore, evidence reveals that CSMAA does produce many serious personal, relational, and practical harms. This article presents and discusses the many expressions of such harms. However, even with the evidence of such harms CSMAA events are, for the most part, still generally perceived as consensual affairs. Such a perception is challenged when CSMAA is contextualised within a professional misconduct framework, and even more so, when survivors thereof participate in the research. Furthermore, CSMAA is clearly not just one type of event. Accordingly, this article also presents a continuum of expressions of CSMAA to assist with perceptual accuracy of this issue along with an unambiguous definition of CSMAA.

A concept analysis of misconduct: Application to nursing education

“…However, the consequences may be seen mainly in people confronting the clergy's misconduct in forms of betrayed trust and psychological and physical harm. [31][32][33][34] It can be concluded that the religious world shared common terms in describing misconduct; the common attributes were extortion, misuse of authority, abusive behaviors, and breaking the vows. The antecedents were a lack of attachment to religiosity and dysfunctional families, negligence, and misuse of authority and power.…”

“…Betrayed trust and psychological and physical harm were the expected consequences of misconduct. [30][31][32][33][34]…”