TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade
By ROBIN ERB
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Her childhood memories come in excruciating flashes.
In one, she is 6. It is noon recess. She wears pigtails, a school uniform, and the pain of the rape minutes earlier.
In another, she is 9. Her abuser — a priest, she said — hands her an oatmeal cookie. She is a “good girl” that day, he tells her.
Now, more than three decades later, Sister Ann-Marie Borgess is a longtime nun with the Sisters of Notre Dame in West Toledo. She was a teacher at Ladyfield Catholic School until it closed earlier this year.
So when she takes the microphone today at a news conference planned by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, she becomes an unlikely ally for victims of clergy abuse — a voice from within the church’s walls.