Institutional abuse of children in the Austrian Catholic Church: types of abuse and impact on adult survivors' current mental health

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the nature and dimensions of institutional child abuse (IA) by the Austrian Catholic Church and to investigate the current mental health of adult survivors. Data were collected in two steps. First, documents of 448 adult survivors of IA (M=55.1 years, 75.7% men) who had disclosed their abuse history to a victim protection commission were collected. Different types of abuse, perpetrator characteristics, and family related risk factors were investigated. Second, a sample of 185 adult survivors completed the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist (PCL-C) and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Participants reported an enormous diversity of acts of violent physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that had occurred in their childhood. The majority of adult survivors (83.3%) experienced emotional abuse. Rates of sexual (68.8%) and physical abuse (68.3%) were almost equally high. The prevalence of PTSD was 48.6% and 84.9% showed clinically relevant symptoms in at least one 1 of 10 symptom dimensions (9 BSI subscales and PTSD). No specific pre-IA influence was found to influence the development of PTSD in later life (e.g. poverty, domestic violence). However, survivors with PTSD reported a significantly higher total number of family related risk factors (d=0.33). We conclude that childhood IA includes a wide spectrum of violent acts, and has a massive negative impact on the current mental health of adult survivors. We address the long-term effects of these traumatic experiences in addition to trauma re-activation in adulthood as both bear great challenges for professionals working with survivors.

Keywords: Childhood abuse; Clerical abuse; Institutional abuse; Mental health; PTSD.