The priest was a family friend. “We did something and then went to celebrate the mass”

So he attracted you to yourself as a “friend” first, and then it started?

Yes. He took me to the pool or to the sauna. There he began to touch me.

I froze, I didn't know what to do and how to react. He considered this as permission. In my head I only had to remain silent, because he gave me so much, helped me and supported me.

I was mentally dependent on him, I trusted him and I did not want to let himself think that he could hurt me. There was a huge chaos in your head.

How did his parents see him?

They respected him and considered him a friend. He was funny, wise and respected. I think that's why I was afraid to tell them about it. For fear of what would cause.

Were you not afraid that they wouldn't believe you?

No, I wasn't afraid. I didn't want them to lose a “good” friend. The child's mind sees it all completely differently.

Have your parents once talked to you about what using it?

My mother once told my brothers and that she is happy that we are boys, because nothing like this can happen to us. In addition, parents did not talk to us about use because there was no reason. In those days, such matters were generally not talked about. And yet parents always talked to us, treated us as equal partners. But they really didn't expect that danger could come from a clergyman.

Was this the reason why they allowed you to go to the presbytery yourself?

It was completely normal that as a boy I went to the presbytery completely alone. Many priests came to our house. It was very important for parents. They wanted us to have good patterns and that someone would lead us in the right direction.

The priest regularly used you virtually all over adolescence. Why didn't you report it once?

My rational site told me that if I could stand it, I would protect other boys. I will attract all his attention and I will be enough for him. Only when I was older did I find out that he had more victims. Then I realized that he was manipulated to make me take it to bed.

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When did you told yourself that you were definitively ending with him?

When I was 16 years old. I started to believe in myself a bit and oppose, but it wasn't that simple. We still met, though less often. Parents helped renovate the neighboring parish, so on Sunday I was an altar boy, and on Saturday evening I was in his presbytery.

Did you help you physically move away from him?

I haven't seen him for half a year, for example, after graduating from high school. Then I went to the army and accidentally served in the place where it was moved. So I was in the same situation again. He kept telling me that I should become a priest, his successor, so I went to theology.

There you saw how real priests should behave?

I understood what a really good priest should be. Unlike him, I treated my commitment seriously and ended the case. I told him that we could remain friends, but there will be nothing physical between us.

How did he react?

He was very bad.

Ultimately, you didn't become a priest. Why?

Within 10 months in the seminary, I realized that I don't know if this is my dear. In the summer I fell in love with my future wife. I decided not to continue my studies in the seminar and follow the voice of my heart.

In the evening before the wedding you confessed to my mother, which you experienced all these years.

We talked in the evening before the wedding and somehow summed up everything. I felt it was the right time to talk about it.

I suppose it was very hard to listen to her.

I did not expect it to be such a burden for her. This caused a lot of bad things and difficult years have come. I regret that I did not give my dad to go to solve it with the priest. It tormented him for a long time. He wanted to put him, but I asked him not to do it because I had done everything. When I look at it today, my father would be easier, and I think so.

Jiri KylarPrivate Archive of the Interviewees / Aktuality.sk

Do you want to tell about these difficult years?

I saw one evil can entail another evil and how it multiplies. It was one of the reasons why after years I decided that I wanted to talk about it loudly.

Who did you talk to for use for the first time?

I told a friend who is a psychologist. She had no doubt about that. She said it was amazing that I managed to get out of it. It helped me overcome the fear that they would not believe me.

When did you admit that you really was a victim?

My friend was a victim of domestic violence and she confided in me. I started to realize that I was experiencing something similar. It took me two years before I could admit everything to me. I made a timeline that happened to me and when it happened. I tried to reprogram in myself that it wasn't my fault.

When you were 24, you went to the priest to confront yourself. What did it look like?

We shouted at ourselves for two hours. I told him how he hurt me, which he deprived me and that he did not hurt me only, but he also did it to other boys. Finally, I saw a soberly contradiction between what the priest said and what he did. He laughed at me saying that I had “hairy hands”.

Were you afraid to go to the police?

I told him that I would go to the police if he touched someone again. I was serious, but I wouldn't have the strength to go there. There were 90s and victims like me were rather intimidated. I just wanted to live my life and raise this topic with the Archbishop of Miloslave Vlk. I didn't know what would cause.

When did you realize that you would not see an apology?

I realized that it was pointless when I repeated it for the third time and he laughed at me. But for me it was important that I did not stand in front of him like a little boy, but like an adult who can call things by his name. When I left, I told him that I was forgiving him. I don't want to be guilty in my life. It helped me a lot, although the forgiveness process finally lasted 20 years.

He wasn't aware of what he was doing to you, did he not want to admit it before?

I think he didn't realize it at all and never admitted it. In the times of communism, we lived with parallel lives. One thing was said at home, and something else in school. We secretly went to Catholic camps, and what was happening there, we didn't talk at home.

One of the churches in the Czech city of DobrisPetr Kinst / Wikimedia Commons

I thought a lot about him and I realized that even this priest had to live in parallel worlds. We did something together many times, and then he normally went to celebrate the mass. He could easily switch between his lives and nobody noticed anything.

You also switched between two worlds.

I was so afraid. I thought someone would notice what was going on. I didn't understand how it was possible that nobody could see it. I felt naked in front of the altar. However, he told me that everything was fine.

Even before our conversation, you told me that you managed to work it. Today you are interested in the topic of forgiveness.

That's true. I fascinate me that he has several stages. At some point you realize what happened to you. It shakes you and either you agree with it and you can talk about it, or you try to silence it somehow, displace it.

What did you call what happened to you?

I stood in front of the mirror and repeated the sentences that the priest told me. I tried to oppose him. I tried to empathize with the situation when I was silent. I said loudly what I should tell him when it happened. I wanted to reprogram my freezing.

Only then could forgiveness come?

Yes, because I realized that I do not want to be guilty all my life. Also, the fact that I told my parents and then the media was a way to forgive.

The priest died a few years ago. Were you at the funeral?

It will be six years. I wasn't at the funeral. However, my father went there. The bishop did not say a single bad word about the priest. He spoke about him as a faithful servant of the Church. But my dad heard from people that I was “an asshole because I killed a priest.” It is very difficult to live with it.

How did you feel when you found out about his death?

I regretted that I did not manage to say goodbye to him. A friend called me that the priest was dying and whether I would not want to visit him. I wanted to go to him in the morning, but he died. I felt a desire to tell him that he could leave in peace.

You said that the whole forgiveness process lasted 20 years. When did you feel that you really closed this chapter?

In the Czech Republic we have such a male initiative and we were in the woods. During one of the meditation I realized how much I would like this priest to be with God. I understood that he never experienced divine love like me. I immersed myself in the river and pulled out a heart -shaped stone from there. The next Saturday I went on foot 30 km through the forests to the village, where he is buried. When I stood in front of his grave, I called my dad, I needed to hear him. I took the stone out of my backpack and put it on the grave. And for me the matter was closed.

Forgiveness is Christian. He probably also taught you this in the church.

In the church, it is often said that you have to forgive. I didn't have to, I wanted to forgive him and it liberated me.

Throughout our conversation, I wonder why you were so nice to a priest after all. After all you have gone through, you have the right to be angry.

This is the problem of our Christian families. You can't live in anger, it's a weakness, uncontrollable emotion, you have to forgive. In my family, for example, the biggest rude was the saying “no” and refusal. Many victims tell me that when the priest touched them, they could not say “no” and defend themselves. It was the same in my case.

Very little attention is paid to that children have well -set boundaries in the intimate sphere. Nobody has the right to touch the child if he doesn't want it. Even parents, grandparents or distant uncles and aunts. I talk about it during all lectures and debates.

Many victims have an ambivalent attitude towards the perpetrator. On the one hand, they hate him, but at the same time they like him.

This was also the case in my case. I did not agree with what he did to me and many other people, I did not meet him because I did not want to see him, but in some way I liked him. He treated me literally as a tool to meet his needs.