DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press
January 11, 2006
By PATRICIA MONTEMURRI and DAVID CRUMM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton revealed
Wednesday that he had been sexually molested by a priest when he was a teenager attending Detroit Sacred Heart Seminary's onetime high school for boys.
With his revelation, Gumbleton, 75, became the first Catholic
bishop in the United States to acknowledge such abuse. He also broke
ranks with the nation's Catholic leadership by calling for new laws
that would allow victims' lawyers and investigators to dig into past
cases, now largely left off limits because too many years have passed.
Gumbleton said he was a high school freshman or sophomore at
Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary High School in the mid-1940s when a priest
took him and another teenager away to a cottage.