Confess Your Sins
In 17th-century Tuscany and Malta some women were able to hold their abusers, members of the clergy, to account.
In a confessional box in Tuscany in 1639, a priest named Francesco Mei took a confetto and put in his mouth. He then told 17-year-old Brigida Gorini to take it in her own mouth and suck it, before forcing her hand on his penis. Gorini reported his abuse anywhere between ten and 12 times during the sacrament of the confession. The same man was reported to have abused 12-year-old Elisabetta Rossi, kissing and touching her throat during her confession. In Malta in 1653 Maria Taboni reported that, the previous Christmas, she had gone to the house of her confessor, Don Giorgio Gauci, looking for his sister Grazia whose help she needed to mend some clothes. She instead found Gauci, who let her in, shut the door and assaulted her. ‘He raped me and then said I should have married his nephew Lorenzo to cover this up.’
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