BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald
By Marie Szaniszlo
Friday, December 2, 2005 - Updated: 12:32 AM EST
Women who had been abused by priests as children demonstrated outside the Archdiocese of Boston’s headquarters yesterday, saying the Vatican’s new policy barring gay men from the seminary will do nothing to prevent the kind of abuse they endured.
“Perhaps the public . . . would like to think that priests abused altar boys and somehow their daughters were safe,” said Ann Hagan Webb, a psychologist who was abused by a priest from the time she was in kindergarten through seventh grade. “We were not safe. And the sexual orientation of our abusers had nothing to do with it.”
Webb was referring to a document the Vatican released earlier this week saying men “who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ ” cannot be admitted to seminaries. The policy had been in the works for years, but came to light in 2002 at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal.
Kathleen M. Dwyer, who was abused by a priest from the ages of 5 to 8, accused church leaders of scapegoating gays to avoid taking responsibility for the scandal and to further the church’s agenda of banning same-sex marriages. Dwyer was among more than a dozen women at the demonstration.