Even so, survivors like Brigid Crotty are hopeful the end is in sight. She shared her haunting story publicly for the first time Monday about being sexually abused by a San Francisco priest when she was a child.

Crotty said she worked in a San Francisco Catholic school but never told her colleagues about what happened to her.

“I’ve carried this for 55 years,” Crotty said. “It has been a solitary confinement so to speak, in silence and darkness.”