Lent 2026
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Fr. Roderick O’Brien, a retired priest in the Archdiocese of Adelaide, Australia, believes the life of a victim of sexual abuse in the 1940s needs to be known. He hopes one day she will be declared a saint.
He was speaking about Jan Ruff-O'Herne, a Catholic woman who was sexually abused during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies in the 1940s.
Fr. O'Brien told the Catholic Weekly, "Jan is a model for all kinds of people; people who have suffered rape and other forms of abuse, civilian victims of war, refugees, migrants, teachers, carers, spouses, advocates, artists, women, and Franciscans."
Instead of wishing the deaths of those who abused her, Jan forgave them.
Living horror
Jan gave a brief description of the horror she lived through when testifying at the Hearing on Protecting the Human Rights of “Comfort Women” on February 15, 2007, before the U.S. House of Representatives.
When I was 19 years old in 1942, Japanese troops invaded Java. Together with thousands of women and children, I was interned in a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years ... one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women,” the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide "sexual services" for the Japanese Imperial Army.
She explained, "They selected 10 pretty girls. I was one of 10 ... A Japanese military told us that we were here for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese. The house was a brothel. We protested loudly. We said we were forced to come here, against our will. That they had no right to do this to us, and that it was against the Geneva Convention. But they just laughed at us and said that they could do with us as they liked. We were given Japanese names and these were put on our bedroom doors."
Jan always put up a fight, and so she was abused nearly ever day of her imprisonment. After World War II she was released and reunited with her family.
She remained silent for many years, not telling anyone about what happened. Then in 1994 she published a memoir, Fifty Years of Silence, which detailed the horrors of what happened to her and many other "comfort women."
Pope Francis meets with survivors abused as "comfort women"
On the plane on the return to Rome, he spoke of the meeting:
Today, there were these elderly woman present at Mass. To think that in that invasion they were carried off as young girls into barracks to be used… And they did not lose their dignity. Today they were there, as elderly woman, the last ones remaining… [Koreans] are a people secure in their dignity.
But turning to these instances of martyrdom and suffering, and these woman: These are the fruits of war!
Today we are in a world at war everywhere! Someone told me, “You know, Father, we are in the Third World War, but it is being fought “piecemeal”.
Do you understand? It is a world at war, where these acts of cruelty take place.
See more here.
Remarkably, Jan found peace through the strength of forgiveness, as she details a powerful moment in her book, quoted by the Catholic Weekly. It came about years later, when she encountered one of the men who had abused these women.
These soldiers were given sex slaves in the same way as they were given a packet of cigarettes. It was quite chilling to be sitting next to this man who had raped innocent young girls. We looked each other in the eye and I told him that I had forgiven him. This may seem strange, but we embraced. I, as a victim, had made the first move, and he was able to respond. It was healing for both of us.
In addition to forgiving her attackers, she also spent the rest of her life advocating for recognition and healing for the women abused as "comfort women" around the globe.
Jan died in 2019 at the age of 96. During her life, she had embraced the Franciscan spirituality and became a Secular Franciscan, truly taking to heart Jesus' words and finding in him the strength to forgive.
