BRADENTON (FL)
News Manatee
BRADENTON, Florida [NMT] -- Joseph Gilpin was the Assistant Principal of Manatee County's Haile Middle School and a long-term school district employee. He resigned last year amid allegations of sexual abuse by the man whose story you are about to read and of students here in Manatee County. A complaint was filed with the Sheriff's Office at one point. The school district already knew of Gilpin's alleged past.
"In February 2002, then Superintendent Dan Nolan and school district attorney Rob Shapiro were informed of a civil suit filed in Massachusetts alleging the former Haile assistant principal molested a boy while he was a Catholic seminarian in the late 1960s," two staff writers for Bradenton's Herald Today wrote earlier this year. The paper was then called The Bradenton Herald.
But the Manatee County students who were allegedly molested and the man who filed the Massachusetts civil suit aren't the only ones to complain about Gilpin.
Around the year 1967-68, when Gilpin was still a seminarian, he was transferred from Boston to St. Mary's Parochial School in Biddeford, Maine. According to one person, now a man of 50 years, but then only 12, Gilpin was teaching students of the 5th grade at the school when he allegedly became "friendly" with the young boy whose younger brother was in Gilpin's 5th grade class.
Harvey Rene' Paul was young and pretty. And, he was an altar boy. He was a perfect victim for sexual abuse by a member of the clergy so inclined. This is Harvey Rene' Paul's story, in his own words, as told exclusively to NewsManatee. Unwilling to come forward before, he now tells all. Nothing has been edited out. Nothing has been added. It is long enough to tell in two parts. This is Part One. It is not salacious, but it is open and frank -- nothing was held back.
To read the full story, logon to NewsManatee.com