Where are Women in the Story of Clergy Abuse?
2nd Annual Nancy Marzella Lecture on Women and American Catholicism
Susan Reynolds
Emory University
Date: Thursday, November 6, 2025
Time: 5:30 - 7pm
Location: Devlin Hall 101
Academic studies and journalistic investigations of Catholic clergy sexual abuse largely center the experiences of men and boys: bishops, priests, deacons, altar boys, schoolboys, and so on. Yet women and girls are part of the story, too — as survivors, whistleblowers, bystanders, and perpetrators. How does our historical understanding of clergy abuse deepen when we turn our focus to women and girls? How do these more hidden stories reveal a larger and more complex story about power in the Church? And what might we hope for the future?
Susan Reynolds is associate professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA. She is the author of People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (Fordham University Press, 2023). Her research on Catholic clergy sexual abuse in migrant contexts has received awards from the Catholic Theological Society of America and Fordham University's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Reynolds is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine and is currently a fellow at Emory's Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry.