How do I tell who is safe in the Church?
About half a year ago, I (20F) got out of a very abusive relationship with another Catholic (21M). We'd started dating when I was 19 and he was 20.
We met at the Newman Center of our college (he was new, a transfer student) and he was a mutual friend of a lot of people I was close with since they all went to high school together. Everyone loved him and he became friendly with everyone in the community very quickly. We took a liking to each other pretty soon and started dating not long after.
I won’t go into too much detail about the abuse but it was verbal, emotional/mental, sexual, and there were a few physical instances too. Like most abuse, it started off slow at the beginning so I couldn’t really tell what was going on.
What I came here to talk about was how I couldn’t have really expected it. The guy attended daily Mass, prayed the liturgy of the hours, attended spiritual direction monthly, had been in seminary (turns out he was kicked out for lying to his spiritual director about something pretty serious lolol but I didn’t learn that until later), and had a history of being very involved with the church and altar serving. He apparently would even use his free time in high school to help out (he went to Catholic school). He was very educated in the faith and I really thought that he would’ve been a great guy.
The other thing that threw me off was how many people involved in the Church absolutely loved him. I’d been his plus-one to a wedding and I met a priest he’d known in high school. The priest raved on and on about what a good person this guy was, and I was in love at the time so I believed it. Literally everyone vouched for him and told me I was a lucky girl to have him.
After I’d finally broken up with him, I came forward to my parish pastor about the abuse and he told me not to go to the police (I’d been strangled and sexually assaulted), because that would ruin the guy’s “healing process”. I went to the campus minister and he told me to be careful who I told because I shouldn’t be “sowing discord among the community”. Half of the people I was close to at that parish either took the guy’s side or “tried to play the middle ground” (and were more uncomfortable with me talking about the abuse than they were at the abuse itself).
It’s also very frustrating because I’d never experienced this type of betrayal or isolation with my secular friends. I’d love to be deeply involved in my church community but I feel more unsafe there than anywhere else.
Things have calmed down now, praise God. I reported the guy to the University and he left town like a week after he was notified of the report. But I feel abandoned by my community. Besides the people who went out of their way to stick by me, I don’t know who to trust. I feel like I can’t trust men to not be abusive, I feel like I can’t go to my authority figures in my church if I need help, and I feel like any of my friends could abandon me when I need them the most. I’m not sure what to do besides pray about it.