WISCONSIN
Janesville Gazette Extra
(Published Sunday, March 6, 2005 11:51:54 PM CST)
By Sid Schwartz/Gazette Staff
Christopher Leonard said he dreamed of joining the clergy even after a Janesville priest molested him in 1975.
"My emotional growth was stunted," Leonard said. "I turned for validation to other things to validate who I was. Seminary was a way to escape."
But he said he couldn't run away from the pain and depression.
"I completely changed. I became more withdrawn, more angry. I wanted to run away from home so bad I could taste it," he said.
In 1975, Leonard was 13.
That summer, the Rev. Kenneth Klubertanz, then a priest at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Janesville, took him camping in northern Wisconsin. While they bathed naked in a lake, Leonard said, Klubertanz sexually assaulted him.
Posted by kshaw at March 6, 2005 07:46 AM