Advocate author visits BI book shop
Published 11:38 am Sunday, May 29, 2016
Author Mary Dispenza will visit Eagle Harbor Book Company at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 2 to talk about her book, “SPLIT: A Child, a Priest, and the Catholic Church.”
Dispenza is from Bellevue, and is an advocate for those abused by priests.
She is the regional district director for the national organization Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and is on the nonprofit’s board of directors. She is also a leader in Equal Rights Washington, which fights for the rights of LGBTQ citizens.
Her activism comes from a place of personal experience.
At age 7, Dispenza was raped by her parish priest. The event split the child’s sense of self, then vanished from her memory. Carrying an unaccountable feeling of shame, she clung to church liturgy and dogma for support and entered a convent, where for 15 years she lived as a nun, separate from the world.
Decades later, when a memory of the pedophile priest resurfaced, Dispenza’s will to survive and her quest to understand the unforgivable act, led the former nun to join 45 other men and women abused by priests in the largest-ever successful lawsuit against the Catholic Church.
As scandals involving sexual abuse continue to roil the Catholic Church, and the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight” brought even more attention to the tragedies some endured, survivors of abuse continue to fight to make the church atone for its sins.
This book is the story of the author’s journey to wholeness. It takes the reader from horrifying scenes of child abuse, inside the fascinating world of the novitiate, through the delicate and frightening process of accepting homosexuality and it culminates in an epic courtroom battle.
Dispenza is the recipient of the National Distinguished Principal Award for her work with schools, families and children.
A popular speaker, she has appeared on KUOW in the feature, “The Gift of Secrecy.” Dispenza is the author of “Out on the Streets” and “Our Families, Our Children.”
