I was ten years old when I heard the word "had sex" for the first time. My friend Manon said to me one day,
“Laurie, Pè RL fè bagay ak Gerard. Priest RL had sex with Gerard". Gerard was fourteen years old at the time.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Gerard told Christòf and I heard him."
Haitians associate the knowledge of sexual matters with promiscuity; talking of sex in Haiti is Taboo. Later that week my godmother told me only bad girls talk about sex. I did not want to be a bad girls so I never repeated what Manon told me.
Beside, something sensational happened to the village that summer. Priest RL gave Gerard a brand new Suzuki motor bike. Subsequently Gerard became the coolest kid in the village thus all talk of sex died out.
Beside, something sensational happened to the village that summer. Priest RL gave Gerard a brand new Suzuki motor bike. Subsequently Gerard became the coolest kid in the village thus all talk of sex died out.
I would understand what Gerard meant by saying that he had sex with priest RL ten years later while watching a documentary about people from Alaska that were abused as children by priests. I deducted that he too was abused by a priest, a trusted member of our community! After watching the documentary I facebooked Marnon; I wanted to know what have become of Gerard.
“Didn’t you hear? she said”
“Heard what?”
“Gerard is acting all crazy these days; he goes about on waving a gun at people in the village. He must be involved in politics, because he hates a certain political party created by a former priest. He said if he could he would wipe all of them priests out and that they are all bad people”
“H-o-m-y gosh really…? Manon what happened to priest RL he practically raised Gerard”.
He is around… well “pitit” now people are saying that he is gay. They said he did not voluntarily left Anse-d'Hainault around 1985, people there kicked him out of the “Pawas” parish. Get that they say it was because he sexually abused a young boy.
“…and nothing was never done about it; they just pass along the bad apple to three other villages, Anse-d'Hainault, Chanbellan, and now Jeremie...over 30 years of crime goes unmentioned and unpunished. ”
“You really believe he did... A priest would never hurt a child!”
Sweet Manon, my best friend still believes in fairy tales and in the goodness of clergymen. More pathetic, I believe that no one will ever talk,despite the fact the list of Priest RL victims is growing. In our village clergymen are Godlike.
