Advocates are on healing quest for abuse survivors
Diocesan victim advocates say they’re on healing quest for abuse survivors
As a victim assistance coordinator for the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Donna Eurich said believes one of the best results of her position — which springs from the U.S. bishops’ “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” — is to help victims both find healing and not lose their faith.
Eurich, who was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 5-8 for the 16th Annual Child and Youth Protection Catholic Leadership Conference, where the 20 years since the so-called “Dallas Charter” was a looming topic of conversation, said in her diocese she is mostly engaging with “historic” claims of clergy abuse — meaning the perpetrator is deceased.
Sitting with victim survivors has required her to have a good listening disposition and to be able to handle hearing traumatic stories without being reactionary; to not herself become traumatized by what she is hearing and to be strong for the benefit of survivors.