SIGNAL HILL (CA)
Orange County Register
By GREG HARDESTY
The Orange County Register
SIGNAL HILL – A black-and white baby picture of David Guerrero hangs in his bedroom.
The artist, now 36, has added the words "$1.49 per pound" next to his smiling face, to symbolize how a priest snatched his 8-year-old body and, for three years, used it like a piece of meat.
Now, as one of 87 victims of clergy sexual abuse set to receive large sums from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in a historic settlement, Guerrero's artistic statement also poses the question: How much money do the victims deserve?
"I'm grateful for (any money), but we're getting pennies for what happened to our lives," said Guerrero, stretched out on a brown armchair in the living room of his mother's two-bedroom condominium in Signal Hill.
Sad-eyed Minerva Guerrero, 61, watched her son, the third of four boys, from the couch as "Silent Night" played on the stereo. An artificial white Christmas tree blinked incessantly. David's father, Robert, a 61-year-old dry-wall installer, was at work.
Minerva Guerrero, a homemaker, was sitting in the same spot in November 2002 when her hysterical son, jacked up on speed, told her he had been molested by Father Sigfried Widera while attending catechism classes at St. Justin Martyr Roman Catholic Church inAnaheim.
Posted by kshaw at December 12, 2004 09:00 AM