“I believe in the power of storytelling as a means for people to feel validated, to feel heard, and it’s been a big part of my own healing.”

Awake: Carl, I’m honored that you’re sharing your story with us. To start us off, what would you like to tell us about yourself?

Carl Huber: I’m 59, and a 41-year-survivor of clergy sexual abuse. I’m the father of two beautiful daughters who are 22 and 24. Both graduated from college and are very adventurous. One is in Morocco right now, and the other lives in Chicago.

I’ve been married to my beautiful wife, Catherine, for 26 years. We’ve lived in Duluth, Minnesota for 21 years. I currently work in higher education. I founded the veteran and nontraditional student center at one university and I now work in financial aid at another university.     

I grew up in a very devout Catholic family, the only boy in a family with four girls. My mom and dad are now 89 and 92, and two years ago they moved to Minnesota to be near us. They live somewhat independently in a facility run by the Benedictine sisters.

Catherine and I love the outdoors. We love to camp, and we have a little 1959 camper that we call Stella. Now that we’re empty nesters we hope to spend more time taking it to local campsites. My neighbor and I recently built a sauna and we’re going to be doing a lot of sauna and jumping in the snow this winter. When we moved up here to Minnesota, people told us that we couldn’t sit and wait for winter to be over. You have to find ways to enjoy it.

Q. A wise approach! I wish you a fun Minnesota winter, Carl! If I could change topics, what would you feel comfortable sharing about your experience of abuse?

A. When I was a teenager, I was introduced to my abuser by a religious sister who taught at my high school. I had asked her one day: “Why doesn’t the Church speak more about Mary, the mother of God?” She had this large picture of our Lady of Guadalupe in the back of her room, and it opened a door to our friendship. I shared with her that I had started talking with the diocese about entering the seminary. So she introduced me to an American Dominican priest stationed in Mexico City who was traveling through. He said I had a special vocation and invited me to go to Mexico City on a pilgrimage to see the shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe, the summer before I entered the seminary. I was groomed and sexually and spiritually abused in Mexico City. 

After that trip, I entered the seminary for my diocese. The abuser called me there and told me that he still wanted a relationship with me, and I told him that I had talked with my spiritual director about him. He hung up, and I never heard from him again. 

This was 1982 and the Church didn’t know how to deal with what I had revealed about the abusive priest. The seminary leaders were in complete confusion about how to process this. So I left after a year and went on to college. I graduated from Creighton University with my degree in psychology.  My first job out of college was on the East Coast at an all-girls high school working for the religious sister who had introduced me to my abuser. Within 10 days at that job, I fell apart. I stopped sleeping and started hallucinating. I was hospitalized for the first-time. I understand now that I was experiencing PTSD symptoms, but doctors then didn’t understand trauma the way they do now. They treated me for what they called “an isolated event of schizophreniform disorder.”

Not wanting to return to that job, I landed a position in alumni relations at Creighton University. A couple years later, I considered entering medical school, but I had this bug; I was drawn to the Church.  I went into parish fundraising and did a campaign for a parish. Around that time, I was abused by another priest who took advantage of me. 

I re-entered the seminary in New Orleans in 1990. Again, I shared that I had been abused and asked for help. I was sent to counseling with a renowned psychologist who had worked with other clergy abuse victims, and he was really good. After a year of study, I discerned the seminary was not for me and I left a second time. The diocese stopped paying for my therapy and never notified me. An attorney helped me, pro bono, to write letters to multiple people within the Church seeking financial help with the therapy bills. But they all said no. One of them went so far as to say that if I pursued this, they’d come after me for defamation of character. I was only 25, and I thought this was all my fault.   

Q. Carl, I’m so sorry about what happened. You endured a lot. It sounds like so many hard experiences piled on top of each other. 

A. It was really horrible, but I just kind of moved on and buried it.  Eventually I met Catherine, and we were married in 1997. Right before we got married I started having trouble with depression again and was hospitalized. I was holding a good job but periodically I would get triggered. An event would touch something deeper, like when the news came out about Boston and Cardinal Law. I went through periods of deep depression. In 2010 I got to a point that I couldn’t even get out of bed. I was being treated for bipolar disorder at the time. Eventually the psychiatrist I was seeing retired, and I went to a new psychiatrist. He looked at my case and spent an hour and a half with me, which I’d never had before. And he said, “I think you have chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.” It made sense to me. We decided to try different medications and it gave me a different understanding of what happened to me. It’s by the grace of God that I’m telling you my story today. 

Q. If you had to pinpoint the most challenging thing about your experience, what would you highlight? 

A. There are many challenges to parenting children and being in a marriage while carrying these traumatic wounds. The ripple effect was huge. I raised my children through the eyes of depression. I’m very blessed that my wife stayed with me because depression made me angry, and I didn’t always recognize that. You tend to lash out at those closest to you. I’m not proud of it and I try to work on that all the time. It was also difficult to be misdiagnosed. I wasn’t believed or understood for what happened in my life. Nothing against Catholicism, but one of my psychiatrists was Catholic, and I believe he did not have an understanding of clergy trauma and dismissed the abuse that was part of my story. 

The other thing that’s important to understand is that I told the bishop and my superiors about the abuse, not for any personal gain, but so that it would stop. It haunted me that I never got any guarantees that this man was disciplined or dealt with. I sent a letter to the Master of the Order in Rome and got an apology from him and eventually an apology from the Prior Provincial in Mexico. But they were just empty words. Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor and advocate recently said something that I think is important: no one in the Church should ever have to beg for justice. I think survivors have had to beg and plead for a Christ-like response. 

Q. Carl, I’m so sorry that you’ve faced this lack of justice and accountability. How would you describe your current relationship with the Catholic Church?

A. I found healing in parts of the Catholic Church, but I’m not a regular practicing Catholic. I married a Lutheran. We needed a spiritual home that felt safe, which I often refer to as the “tent outside the temple.”

I’ve always loved the New Testament verse about the cornerstone: the stone that the builder rejected became the cornerstone. That became my mantra around my abuse: I was rejected, but you’re not going to throw me out. I’m a child of God. And I often recited to my girls Psalm 23: goodness and kindness will follow us all the days of our lives, and we will live together in the House of the Lord someday.

It has taken me decades of therapy to understand it was not my fault. I believe this diabolical blight has forever stained the Church. The hypocrisy of the Church protecting itself instead of those baptized into Christ makes me think of the Bible verse “Jesus wept.” How painful this must be to God.

Q. Indeed. Thank you so much for sharing your story with the Awake community and helping us understand your experience. As we close, Carl, can you say a little about what has been important in helping you heal?

A. I did a type of counseling called sand tray therapy about 15 years ago. It involves creating scenes with sand and figurines. It was very helpful. The therapist took photos of each tray I created, and when I looked at the photos about five years later, I understood the trauma of my misdiagnosis and abuse in an entirely different way. My gut screamed: Oh my God, I was sexually abused. That therapist also sent me for EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy] to address PTSD.

In May 2023 I completed my master’s degree in professional studies, built around storytelling. It led me to create a digital project about my life. I started by telling my whole story but then I went back and I took the sexual abuse part out. My professor asked me why I removed it. It was complex; there’s the shame and I always tried to protect others from what happened to me. But the professor’s question changed my whole course of study. I started interviewing experts in restorative justice, and I also did some training in spiritual direction. Both of those things are about listening, and really being heard. I believe in the power of storytelling as a means for people to feel validated, to feel heard, and it’s been a big part of my own healing.

—Interview by Erin O’Donnell

Note from Awake: We extend heartfelt thanks to Carl Huber for sharing his story. We also want to acknowledge that every survivor’s path is different. We honor the journeys of all survivors and are committed to bringing you their stories. In addition to Carl’s story, we encourage you to read our previous Survivor Stories, including our last story, from John Heffernan.

If you have experienced sexual abuse, you can receive support through the National Sexual Abuse Hotline, 800-656-4673, which operates 24 hours a day. In Milwaukee, you can contact one of the Aurora Healing Centers at 414-219-5555. If you seek support from the Catholic Church, you can find the contact information for your diocesan victim assistance coordinator here. Also, Awake is always open to listening to and learning from survivors. If you would like to connect with us, we invite you to email Sara at saralarson@awakemilwaukee.org.