Clergy abuse survivor on National Review Board seeks ‘paradigm shift’ on healing

Scott Surette, a devout Catholic and longtime owner of a home inspection firm, is on a mission to help renew the church.

Yet for all his four decades of experience with construction and code compliance, he’s not looking to renovate buildings — instead, Surette is seeking to repair what Scripture calls the “living stones” that comprise the spiritual house of Jesus Christ.

And now, as one of several recent appointees to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board, a lay-led advisory group on child and youth protection, Surette is “under contract,” so to speak, to make that happen.

The board is mandated by the USCCB “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” established in 2002 amid a torrent of emerging clerical abuse scandals. Commonly called the Dallas Charter, the document lays out a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, and includes guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability and prevention of abuse.

The 55-year-old Surette — an Indiana native, husband and father of five — would be the first to admit that being part of a national corporate governance organization is a bit out of his comfort zone.

“I’m better off with a hammer than I am with a committee,” he told OSV News. “Give me something to do; that’s just kind of in my nature.”

But as a survivor of clerical sexual abuse, Surette has a powerful message to share.

“I want to bring a paradigm shift to the church, to the whole United States, to the world, if they’ll hear me — to bring a paradigm shift where we can get from a place of anger and vengeance to true healing,” he said.

Surette knows well the scope — and the cost — of that project. After being sexually abused at age 15 by a priest, he spent 40 years battling what he described as a “Jekyll and Hyde” inner dynamic that eventually caused him to lose his first marriage.

“I was a super nice guy, but then somebody would push a button, and I would get angry,” he said. “I would sabotage my relationships. If somebody was interested in me, if somebody liked me, a friend, a girlfriend — if somebody really thought that I was a great guy, they were a threat.”

The abuse he suffered took place during a weekend youth retreat, when a visiting priest “came after me twice,” said Surette, whose brother, also on the retreat, had witnessed the incidents.

Surette and his family reported the abuse immediately, with the school even bringing the visiting priest back to Indiana a week later for questioning.

“We sat in a room in the basement of my church, and he denied the whole thing to my face and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Scott. I was nice to you. I was kind to you. I was loving to you. I was admiring who you are as a youth.’ And he denied the whole thing,” Surette said.

“Back in 1979, nothing happened” at the diocesan level to address the abuse, Surette said, but in 2019, “we started a case and the diocese decided to pay for counseling.”

At that point, he said, “I began to really earnestly pray about (the abuse), and through the prayer process, Jesus just kind of gave me the grace to look at my abuser through his eyes — through the eyes of Christ.”

The result was “stunning,” said Surette.

“All that I had in my brain and my heart was anger and vengeance,” he said. “I was like, ‘You know what, dude? You messed me up for 40 years and I’m mad about it. … I mean, you screwed up my first marriage and how many relationships, and in ways I don’t know.”

And then, Surette told OSV News, “Jesus said, ‘Scott, would you like to see (this man) through my eyes?'”

“Jesus saw (him) as a hurt, wounded, lost soul who made choices to sin, and that made Jesus really sad,” said Surette. “And the biggest thing that came through in that grace (from prayer) was (the realization that) Jesus wasn’t full of anger and vengeance. Jesus didn’t want (him) to burn in hell forever. Scott wanted (him) to burn in hell forever, but Jesus didn’t.”

Surette said the experience enabled him to see his abuser in “a different light” — one that fully revealed the evil perpetrated by the priest, while illuminating hope for redemption and healing through Christ for both Surette and his abuser.

“(The abuser) chose out of his own free will to sin and to come after me and to pursue his own pleasures and passions,” said Surette. “Truly, he sinned. But he did that because he was hurt and wounded. And I could get my brain around that. I could get my heart around that and say, ‘If he’s wounded, I can forgive him.’ And if Jesus is sad and weeping that he is potentially not gonna be in heaven for eternity, then I’m sad that he’s potentially not going be in heaven for eternity. And that became a moment where everything changed.”

Referencing St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Surette said he felt “the peace that passes all understanding,” a sensation that was “flat-out overwhelming” and “permeated everything” in his life, including relationships and work.

Surette now prays regularly for the soul of his abuser, who was eventually removed from the clerical state and — as Surette’s wife was able to learn — died sometime around 2018.

He also met with Bishop Timothy L. Doherty of the Diocese of Lafayette, Ind. — who, said Surette, “sought me out” and gave him some two hours of undivided time, an encounter that “really solidified the healing.”

Referencing Christ’s parable of the lost sheep (Mt 18:10-14, Lk 15: 1-7), Surette said that Bishop Doherty, as a shepherd, “came after me because he knew that my soul mattered.”

Surette began serving on his diocesan review board, and at Bishop Doherty’s initiative, he is now taking a seat on the National Review Board, with a message for the U.S. Catholic bishops.

“We need to go after the one, the wounded,” said Surette.

Fresh from the 10th National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis — at which organizers urged participants to evangelize to their communities by committing to “walk with one” in spreading the Gospel — Surette is already putting that mission into practice by reaching out to family members who left the Catholic Church as a result of the abuse he endured and the church’s lack of response at the time.

“There are victims out there (beyond) the (direct) victims” of clerical abuse, said Surette. “Families have been ripped apart from the church, and they are wounded on the battlefield, and their souls are worth going after too. So this whole idea of ‘going after the one’ is a message that I’m going be proclaiming as loud and hard as I can for as long as I can.”

Surette said the paradigm shift he seeks regarding the clerical abuse crisis is ultimately rooted in Christ’s death and resurrection.

“I kind of see the church as the disciples in the upper room after the crucifixion. And they’re sitting around, looking at each other like, ‘What has just happened? We are destroyed. This is so horrific. How can we possibly move on? We have to make sure this Judas thing doesn’t happen again,'” said Surette.

Similarly, he said that “25 years of having the Dallas Charter has been like making sure the Judas thing doesn’t happen again — we have to prevent this, we have to fix this.”

To fully implement the charter and redress clerical abuse, the fullness of Christ’s salvation must proclaimed, said Surette.

“Satan failed at the crucifixion, and he has failed throughout the church’s history … (through) different battles and heresies, and in regards to the clergy sexual abuse, Satan has failed again,” said Surette, admitting that while “certainly it’s not perfect … the number of cases are a fraction of what they used to be.”

“Satan failed to take Christ down. Satan failed to take me down. And I believe Satan failed to take my abuser down,” said Surette. “When this is all said and done, when you look at it from the eternal perspective, Christ won at the crucifixion and resurrection. Christ won with the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Christ won in my personal story. Christ won in my abuser’s story. And that’s where we go out and proclaim.”

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