MAINE
Portland Press Herald
By JOHN RICHARDSON, Portland Press Herald Writer
In 1960, Ann Siteman was a 13-year-old growing up on Portland's Munjoy Hill and part of a family with a strong Catholic faith.
She and a friend heard the weekly religious education classes at St. Peter's Catholic Church were more interesting than the ones in the neighboring parish, and they decided to go there. The Rev. Lawrence Sabatino was a teacher and a kids' favorite, she said.
"Everybody liked him," Siteman recalled. "I really liked him, so we would go see him after class."
She remembers two times when Sabatino touched her, describing it only as inappropriate. "He touched both of us. After one of these times, she said, 'He shouldn't be doing that,' and we never went back there."
Siteman thought that was the end of it, and the two girls never talked about it. But the incidents remained buried in her mind, and they clearly affected her, Siteman said. She grew angry and broke away from the church in college.
"I think it really shattered something in me," she said. "I was a pretty devout Catholic."