Elizabeth McKenna: There is life after abuse

On Thursday, former Saultite Elizabeth McKenna was visiting with another survivor, a close friend, in Sault Ste. Marie and the subject of her abuser, Reverend Francis Reed, came up.

"For all we know he could be dead right now," McKenna said. "I have no idea what happened to him or where he went."

In the mid 60s to late 70s, Reed was, by many accounts, a popular priest at Blessed Sacrament, the historic Catholic Church on Cathcart Street in the Sault.

But he had a secret and very dark side.

For ten long years he used his authority as a priest to control and sexually abuse McKenna, a young, innocent and deeply religious girl in those days.

The day after her conversation with her friend in the Sault, McKenna learned that Reed had, in fact, passed away in England on January 31.

"I feel sad that the door is closed on any hope of an apology from him," she said today.

"I feel that it's like an ending. Closure," she said. "He will never do any harm to anyone again. I'm glad it's over."

McKenna said the ideal ending she hoped for was for him to take ownership of what he did to her, find peace with it and sincerely apologize to her.

Instead, sadly, he went to his grave without making that peace, she said. 

But the news also brought her back to the whole destructive experience she suffered because of Reed and the Catholic Church that protected him.

Especially the pain of the civil court hearing she endured in 2001.

"I was on trial, not him," she said. "Not the church who protected him. Me. The one who was destroyed again by the court system."

For her, the cherry on the cake, as she calls it, happened about two-thirds into that hellish cross examination.

"I got a fax from a friend in Webbwood," she said. "That's where they sent him after this came out. He was in charge of the congregations in Webbwood, Matheson and one other place. Anyway, my well-meaning friend informed me that he (Reed) had stopped mid-way through his sermon that day and told the congregation that he knew they were aware he was on trial and would voluntarily step down if they wanted him to."

"Someone stood and said they said they supported him," she said. "They gave him a standing ovation and everyone shook his hand on the way out of church that day."

McKenna said that just about did her in but it also had a transformative effect on her.

"He's a rapist and they gave him a standing ovation while I, his victim, was in court being revictimized by the church, by them and by the court."

What that did was set her will in steel.

"I was like a bulldog with my jaw clamped on Bishop Plouffe's leg," she said. "That gave me back my power. I wasn't afraid any more. I wasn't ashamed any more." 

After a grueling 20-day cross-examination by the church's defense team, it was clear that McKenna wasn't going to relent her testimony about the things Reed had done to her so the church offered a settlement which McKenna accepted.

The details of that settlement can't be made public but there is one thing she says she got out of it that could prove useful one day.

"Bishop Plouffe's weak excuse for an apology letter hangs in my bathroom," she says with a wry grin. "His words were, 'I'm sorry for the wrongs Father Reed may (emphasis on the may) have caused you,' and he went on to say something like he wants the perpetual light of the Lord to shine on me or something like that." 

Gazing into McKenna's expressive, intelligent eyes, framed by fashionable, striking red glasses, it's very difficult to reconcile this image of peace and positive energy with the image of a young woman locked in hell for ten years.

At one point she pushes up her sleeves to show the cut and burn scars from wounds she inflicted on herself some 40 years ago.

"I hated my body for making him do this, for making him sin," she said. "I was trying to punish it."

Her ordeal began at age 17, in 1965, when Rev. Francis Reed was posted to Blessed Sacrament Church.

As a devout Catholic growing up across the street from Blessed Sacrament, McKenna had already become a regular fixture there when Reed came to the church.

It was were she went to study, to sing, to play the organ almost every day and to talk about everything with the priest who Reed replaced.

At the time, McKenna had aspired to become a Sister of St. Joseph.

Instead, Reed - her priest, the person she confided in, trusted and went to in times of stress for guidance and comfort - objectified her, groomed her for his perverse purposes and submitted the innocent teen to his sexual needs.

"I basically sat there while he used me as his sexual scratching post," she said. "He used to come across the street to my parents' house for dinner and, after they were in bed, he would take me on the living room floor and make me do what he wanted. I was terrified to make a noise. Afraid that my papa would come downstairs and see the priest naked because of me. What would that do to my father? To my family?"

McKenna is often asked why she didn't just report him.

"I was horrified at what could happen if I reported him. We had always been taught to protect the priests, to do what they tell us. That they were the ultimate authority next to God," she said.

She thought reporting him would lead to his defrocking, to the shaming of her family and to her community's loss of their beloved priest.

Most of all, she had an unconscious fear that exposing the priest would lead to her beloved family and community's loss of faith and plunge them into the same spiritless hell she was consigned to.

McKenna also carried with her a belief that her body was to blame for his predilections, a belief deeply ingrained in her by the religious education system she was raised in. 

So she internalized her feelings, innately believing she was becoming a martyr for her church community and hoping God would fix her so the priest would leave her alone.

"I fell into a terrible depression suffering frequent anxiety attacks and living in continuous fear," McKenna said. "I suffered 10 dead, lost years. It was incessant."

Eventually she started hoping God would take her life so she would be free of her tormenter and the untenable position he put her in.

The once confident and outgoing teen McKenna's family knew and dearly loved seemed to disappear over night to be replaced by this morose and withdrawn stranger hiding in their home.  

They were powerless to help her and had no idea of why this was happening to her. 

Eventually McKenna left the Sault to escape her tormenter and seek treatment for the mental illnesses she had been diagnosed with.

"They didn't know anything about it in those days," she said. "What I actually had was post-traumatic stress disorder but they didn't even have the words for it."

Based primarily on her self-destructive behaviours and complete, sudden social withdrawal, McKenna was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Her doctors also said she was psychotic and suffered hallucinations.

She underwent multiple electroshock therapy treatments, years of anti-psychotic medications and was in and out of clinical programs and gained almost 200 pounds as she tried to find comfort in food - the only thing left to her.

Her near 35-year road to recovery has taken her through some horrific places and some wonderfully empowering places.

And her recovery is not, in any way, complete.

"We're all still works in progress," she said.

McKenna describes herself as mostly happy most of the time.

"I refuse to sit and be consumed by thoughts of what I've lost," McKenna says.

But she is candid and concise in her list and she says the blame lays equally on the shoulder of her tormentor and on the church hierarchy and even on the criminal court system that protected him and shunned her when she looked to it for help in the late 80s, about 10 years after she fled the Sault and her tormenter.

She had explicit letters written by him to her, describing the things he would have her do but that wasn't enough to prosecute him, the Crown said.

"They said I was psychotic, that my testimony wouldn't be believed," she said. "It was him who made me that way. His abuse."

"They took away my faith, my spirituality and my community," she said. "I am unable to have sex, unable to have a normal marital relationship and the support of a spouse. They took away my future children, grandchildren," she said. "They have no compassion for the long-term effects of something like this."

For McKenna, peace was a long time coming and she has had to find it herself.

She calls herself a retired general.

"I went through my anger phase," she said. "I paid my dues, I did my organizing and supporting, but then I got to a point where I didn't need that any more."

McKenna says that many survivors are not going to like her for saying this but she found that she had to forgive Reed and let go of her anger to find peace.

"I wanted to be free of Father Reed," she said. "I decided I had to forgive him - that doesn't mean exonerate him - it takes away his continuing control of my life, his power over me."

She said she realized she couldn't keep hanging on to her anger and blaming if she was to be able let go of her unhealthy coping mechanisms and move on with her life.

"Letting go of that freed up a lot of energy," she said.

Now, four months from her 65th birthday, McKenna is training for a new career as a medical transcriptionist.

Angry dreams of revenge have been replaced with pleasant dreams of hours spent working at home, bank accounts growing fat and time spent doing what ever makes her happy.

"I like to square dance," she said. 

She likes to live.

To really live.

"The best revenge is a life well lived," said McKenna. "My general state of being these days is one of happiness."

Of course not all the time but she finds her reactions to life and her feelings are much more proportionate to actual events these days - much more normal.

"I'm sometimes sad that a lot of survivors are still stuck in it," she said. "I want survivors to heal, to know that they can let it go, that there is life after abuse."

The following notice appears on the website for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie.