Marilyn: I believe you are totally right on target when you assert that victims of clergy/sex abuse will suffer all their lives. As someone who was molested by a Catholic priest some fifty five years ago[I am currently sixty seven], I honestly believe that the effects will be with me until the day I die. That does not mean that I have not made plenty of progress over the years. After I was abused , I  attempted to take my own life. I have lived with the thoughts of suicide most of my adult life. For the most part, those thoughts are no longer with me. But I also know that they could return. There are so many effects of what childhood sexual abuse does to a child and then to the adult that child becomes. The way we coped as children become blockades as we grow into adulthood. I withdrew socially as a child and have never been able to make up for that loss .I drank alcoholically for some 17 years.I am convinced that if I had not stopped drinking, I would be dead by now. Therapy helps.