GREENSBURG (PA)
Connellsville Daily Courier
By Chris Foreman
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, November 10, 2005
A former altar boy at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Greensburg has written a letter to about 2,000 parishioners outlining accusations that a priest repeatedly raped him in the 1970s and urging a change in the state's statute of limitations for sexual abuse of minors.
The letter was written by Brian G. Guarino, of Laurel, Md., who filed a civil lawsuit this year in Westmoreland County against the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg and retired Bishop Anthony G. Bosco.
In his lawsuit, the 42-year-old former Greensburg resident alleges the Rev. Roger J. Trott raped him while he was an altar boy at the North Main Street church from 1973-76. The case is pending.
"I was so ashamed and devastated, but moreso because I couldn't come forward since I thought God was doing this to me," Guarino wrote in the letter, which was mailed Tuesday to parishioners. "The experience so traumatized me I blocked the whole thing out of my mind for years."