My former co-author, Barbara Coloroso, who is a former nun, pushed back several years ago when l used the Catholic Church as an example of a toxic culture in the book we were writing together.
In her role of teaching, writing and speaking on the bullying of children, she had a responsibility to weigh in on this serial criminal saga, and she still has. It is now becoming more and more apparent that the reason she reneged on her agreement with me was her discomfort with our reporting on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
Prior to our writing the book, and subsequent to our falling out, I cannot find any evidence of her writing anything at all about the child abuse scandal, which is perplexing given she presumably had some inside knowledge during her tenure as a nun. When queried by the social media director for the Faas Foundation about what Ms. Coloroso had written about abuse in the Catholic Church, we received no response.
Representing herself as an advocate for bullied children, this begs the question of why. Could it be blind faith; could it be blind loyalty; could it be complicity; could it be that she herself was an abuser?
One of the reasons this kind of horrible behaviour goes on for so long is that experts in the area don’t come forward. The message is, particularly given the current social/political climate, people who are thought leaders and experts need to take a stand.
Given Ms. Coloroso’s prominence and profile, her weighing in on the scandal when it was starting to gain some media attention could have prevented the warranted attention it is getting today. I also believe it could have saved a number of lives.