Ronald Paquin is dead. And yet, for many survivors, that doesn’t mean the story is over.
Paquin was a Catholic priest who sexually abused boys. He was removed from the priesthood and spent years in prison, where he died this month at age 83.
I knew him as a child. He baptized me. Years later, we learned what he had done. Eventually, he served time in the same jail as the priest who sexually abused me.
So what are survivors supposed to feel when someone like that dies?
Some may feel relief. Others may find old wounds suddenly reopened. Some may feel nothing at all. Others may experience grief—not necessarily for the person who hurt them, but for the apology that never came, the childhood that can never be returned, or the justice they wish had looked different.
If you’ve felt relief or anger about an abuser’s death, I understand. If part of you wanted him to suffer and that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, I understand that too.
Yet we’re called to something more difficult than getting even. We’re called to mercy. That can be incredibly hard to hear when you’ve been hurt by someone who showed you no mercy. But Christ asks something of us that goes beyond our natural human instincts. He asks us to forgive.
Forgiveness Does Not Erase Justice
Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or abandoning justice. It means surrendering our desire to personally carry out the final judgment. For a survivor, that can be hard. We want to know the person who hurt us faced consequences, that justice was served.
But we don’t get to decide anyone’s eternal fate. Only God can do that. He sees what we cannot, including every opportunity for repentance that was accepted or rejected. We can leave that judgment to Him.
Don’t Let the Abuser Take More from You
When someone like Paquin dies or is imprisoned, the physical threat is gone, but the survivor may still struggle, sometimes with addictions, sometimes just with getting through the day. A marriage may have been affected. The ability to trust may have been damaged. A relationship with God may be painful. A family may still be living with unanswered questions.
But are we willing to let what someone else did determine who we become? Affect our relationships, faith, family, and how we see ourselves and the world? Whether or not we can experience joy again?
An abuser doesn’t get to be the central character in your story or have the final say in your life. Christ calls us to freedom, and one of the most courageous things a survivor can do is walk into that freedom, refusing to look back.
Your abuser doesn’t get the final word on your life. You do.
