NEW BEDFORD (MA)
Boston Globe
By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff | July 16, 2005
NEW BEDFORD -- No matter how much Catherine Murphy tried to blot him out, she said, he was there in every attempt she made at intimacy. Her first date, her college beaux, her husband on her wedding night -- all their faces blurred, and the only person she could see was the man she called ''the monster priest."
The Rev. Donald Bowen's sexual abuse of her, which began when she was 9 years old, affected Murphy throughout her life, she said. She was treated for anorexia in college. She contemplated suicide as a young mother. She eventually divorced her husband after years of sabotaging their relationship because she felt so worthless.
''I can trace all of the problems in my adult life to this man," Murphy, now 50, said at a sentencing hearing for Bowen yesterday in New Bedford Superior Court. ''I used to pray for someone to come and deliver me from this nightmare. But then I would think, who would believe me?"
Bowen, 67, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of indecent assault and battery on a person under 14 and performing lewd and lascivious acts on a person under 16.