“The Reckoning,” AP’s exploration of the crisis of abuse in the Catholic Church, takes an extraordinary turn in images, text and audio, to look at survivors’ lives in the aftermath of clergy abuse, focusing especially on their faith – and the Sundays after they were betrayed by their spiritual leaders.
“Both of you have been an instrumental part of the healing, taking something painful and turning it into something beautiful.”
— Dorothy Small, clergy abuse survivor
Maye-E Wong’s idea was to find a new way to tell the stories of those who suffered from clergy abuse – a way that emphasized that they were survivors, not victims.
Her plan: She would photograph them with a Polaroid camera, then soak the prints and release the thin fragile membranes that held the images. Those would then be pasted on watercolor paper. The images were imperfect – wrinkled and distressed – but they endure, a metaphor for the survivors they portrayed.
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, Dorothy Small poses at her home in Woodland, Calif., Sept. 24, 2019. For years, the parishioners of her Woodland, California, congregation were family, and she relied on the collective energy of the flock for spiritual fulfillment. But Small said after she reported her relationship with the priest and he was removed from his post, she was ostracized and stripped of her position as soloist in the choir. Her world collapsed.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Dorothy Small prays the rosary in her home in Woodland, Calif., Sept. 24, 2019. What began as bike rides on sunny afternoons turned into forced physical contact and stalking, she said. Still, he was funny and warm and made her feel loved, and so when he bullied his way into her bedroom she froze. “I saw him as a priest,” she said, “and I never stopped seeing him as a priest.”
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Dorothy Small, poses for a portrait in her hot tub in the backyard of her home in Woodland, Calif., Sept. 24, 2019. Small often slips into the warm water and prays, part of a ritual that has helped her embrace a private religious practice.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, John Vai, 67, a survivor of clergy abuse, poses for a photo on a golf course in The Villages, Fla., Nov. 22, 2019. He plays golf each day, part of a routine that helps keep dark memories at bay.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
John Vai hits the ball off the fairway of a golf course in The Villages, Fla., Nov. 21, 2019. Golf is part of his daily routine. Maintaining a schedule helps keep the dark memories at bay, he says.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
John Vai putts on a golf course in The Villages, Fla., Nov. 21, 2019. “I thought I could get rid of these demons. But when it's all over, you still got the demons,” Vai said. “I can't get my sanity back. I can't get my Christianity back. I can’t get my children’s lives back. I can't get all these years that I lost. It just doesn't work that way.”
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, Patrick Shepard, 48, poses for a portrait in Wylie, Texas, October 2019. For many years Shepard could not touch a ball: His abuser, a priest, was the one who taught him to play the game. But now, basketball helps Shepard heal from his wounds, and move forward.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Patrick Shepard and his partner Nikky Brooks play basketball at a gym in Wylie, Texas, Oct. 15, 2019.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
With his partner Nikky Brooks in the background, Patrick Shepard prepares breakfast in Wylie, Texas, on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019. Shepard worries Nikky will decide his darkness is too much to bear. “It’s dangerous to trust people,” he said, but he’s trying. Each morning after his walk, he cooks breakfast for Brooks and serves it to her in bed; each night, she fixes him dinner.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, Jacob Olivas poses for a photo in a secluded place he considers a sanctuary, September 2019. “I was very close to God from a young age,” Olivas said. “I was always in love with the idea that there was somebody out there who really hears me.”
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Jacob Olivas sleeps on the couch with the television and lights left on in his mobile home in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., Sept. 28, 2019. Olivas is afraid of the dark, and of being alone. Each night he settles onto the couch and tries to fall asleep to the hum of the television. Sometimes it works, sometimes he’s startled awake by nightmares, likely from so many years of keeping what happened to himself.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Clouds drift through the pine trees at the top of Mount Baldy, a place Jacob Olivas considers a sanctuary, in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., Sept. 29, 2019.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, the Charbonneau sisters, from left, Francine Soli, 71; Barbara Dahlen, 67; Joann Braget, 78; and Louis Aamot, 69, pose in Walhalla, N.D., Oct. 8, 2019, in a quilt made by their mother. The Native American sisters say they were sexually abused at a Catholic school on a reservation.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Sisters Barbara Dahlen, Joann Braget and Francine Soli gather around the breakfast table at Soli’s home in Walhalla, N.D., Oct. 8, 2019. At first the pain and shock of the the sexual abuse they all experienced brought family members together, and over the years some have stayed close, even as their grueling crusade for acknowledgement and closure leaves them exhausted and demoralized. In other ways it broke them all and fractured the family.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Francine Soli holds back tears in Walhalla, N.D., Oct. 7, 2019, as she recounts the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of priests and nuns at a Catholic boarding school on a reservation in South Dakota.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, Salvador Bolivar, 48, prays in front of a fire before a sweat lodge ceremony in Bloomingburg, N.Y., Oct. 27, 2019. Bolivar, a survivor of clergy abuse says his spirituality, and his journey to help other survivors, helps him heal.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Salvador Bolivar prays to the spirit of his ancestors ahead of a sweat lodge ceremony in Bloomingburg, N.Y., Oct. 27, 2019. It was the awareness of these ancestors 11 years ago, in a sweat lodge in Colombia, that first compelled him to break his silence about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his Catholic high school dean.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Salvador Bolivar locks his apartment in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, Nov. 19, 2019, as he heads out to a nearby park to practice martial arts. In 2019, Bolivar filed a lawsuit against the church after the state of New York extended the statute of limitations for pursuing child sex abuse cases.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In a Polaroid photo emulsion transfer, Mark Belenchia, 64, poses for a portrait in his garden in Jackson, Miss., June 10, 2019. Belenchia, a clergy abuse survivor has found meaning in activism. Through this work he makes use of his own pain to help other survivors struggling to cope with theirs.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Mark Belenchia, 64, left, sits in a car during an interview with a clergy abuse survivor as part of his activist work, in Greenwood, Miss., June 8, 2019. He travels up and down the Mississippi Delta, offering support for those reluctant to speak, those trying to make their stories known and those just trying to stay afloat, helping them find therapy, file lawsuits, and feel seen.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Mark Belenchia, 64, poses with his wife Lisa in their garden in Jackson, Miss., June 10, 2019. Belenchia, a clergy abuse survivor, has found meaning in activism.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
With the support of a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund For Women Journalists, AP’s Wong, a New York-based global enterprise photographer, and Washington-based reporter Juliet Linderman traveled the country to interview and photograph survivors, spending days with them and listening to their stories. Digital storytelling producer Natalie Castaneda and global news and enterprise news editor Raghuram Vadarevu wove their work into a stunning web presentation: “Sundays After,” including Wong’s Polaroids, her no-less-compelling digital photos, Linderman’s immersive stories and audio clips in the survivors’ own words.
The story received 22,000 pageviews and 166 customer uses, including Yahoo, and in its first day and a half there were more than 20,500 views of the explainer video on the AP News Instagram IGTV feed – an AP record. Marjorie Miller, vice president for global news and enterprise wrote: “What a tremendous, exciting and deep piece of work.”
From left, AP global enterprise photographer Maye-E Wong shows a Polaroid portrait to subject Patrick Shepard in Wylie, Texas; Wong soaks a Polaroid print and separates the delicate emulsion layer; and reporter Juliet Linderman, at left in photo at right, speaks with abuse survivor Francine Soli in Walhalla, N.D.
AP Photos / Wong Maye-E and Juliet Linderman
Dorothy Small, one of those depicted, thanked Wong and Linderman for what she called an early Christmas present: “The both of you have been an instrumental part of the healing, taking something painful and turning it into something beautiful,” she wrote. “I truly hope it encourages other adults out there to find their voice and empowers them to step forward telling their stories.”
For an arresting package of inspired photography and sensitive, insightful reporting, Wong and Linderman receive this week’s Best of the States award.