E. Hall challenges letter-writer

Former Woodstock resident Esther Hall Gordon has offered this rebuttal to the author of a Letter to the Editor of The Woodstock Independent that was published on February 24:

"To the reader who questioned the accuracy of my perceptions regarding specific incidents of exploitative and improper care by nonprofessional staff employed by the now defunct Woodstock Children's Home, as alluded to in my "Private Experiences" Letter to the Editor of 02.24.10, and who, purportedly "felt an enormous sense of compassion for a woman [me] who was clearly in pain recounting her childhood experiences:"

"I take great exception to these patronizing and insulting comments - obviously made out of ignorance rather than compassion - and intended to minimize my crystal-clear recollections of the mistreatment and exploitation inflicted on me, as well as other previous children's home residents during our residency. My request for personal privacy, made on behalf of several other former child residents whose images appeared in the 02.07.10 "Picture This" Feature of the Woodstock Children's Home Choir of 1963 was - and remains - an entirely appropriate one, particularly since two of these individuals are deceased.

"Whenever genuine empathy is demonstrated, individuals are invited to share their painful memories, as a means by which anger and shame may be properly vented, and subsequent healing found, followed by an invitation to "move on" beyond the pain. Unless they choose to remain there, most people would not define themselves totally by their past.

"The reader might wish to explore her own limitations with regard to accepting the harsh realities of life, one of which has to do with "no safe place." Recently, countless incidences of wrongful treatment on the part of those who hide behind a cloak of “reli-gianity” or under the umbrella of "the church" have come to public’s attention. A prime example of this is the longstanding and sordid sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests on parish boys, many of whom are now adults and have decided to tell their stories. Unfortunately, for many of these victims, much of the outrage over what happened to them as children has been further heightened by the preference of church officials to smooth everything over, withhold the issuance of any appropriate reprimand from the offending priests who repeatedly committed a “spiritual rape.”

"Over the past thirteen years, I have become acquainted with two pastors who - in order to find healing and forgiveness toward those who wronged them - have spoken out about their own similar experiences. One of the pastors was sexually molested in his father's church by his own Sunday school teacher, while, the other minister became aware of and reported a separate incident of sexual abuse involving a child and an adult from his own congregation to his denomination headquarters, only to be admonished to "keep it quiet." He reported the abuse anyway and left the denomination.

"Similarly, not too many years ago in 2005, the Woodstock Christian Life Services enterprise settled their own sexual abuse case involving a sixteen-year-old employee of the Belvidere Branch of the Early Learning Center and a little girl entrusted to their care.

"The reader's cognitive dissonance regarding the "accuracy" of my "perceptions" is a very good example of why all of us should quit pretending that bad things never happen to good people, accept the universal truth that evil co-exists with good in this world, but that, above all, we must always embrace the victim, while hating the evil they may have experienced.

"In remembrance of The Passover (freedom from the bondage of self) and in celebration of the spirit of Easter (victory over spiritual and physical death)."

Esther Hall Gordon, Battle Creek, Mich.