DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press
January 12, 2006
BY PATRICIA MONTEMURRI, JIM SCHAEFER and DAVID CRUMM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Detroit Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton rocked his church Wednesday, first by admitting that he, too, was a child victim of sexual abuse years ago and then by calling on lawmakers to change laws that bar victims from suing the church in older cases.
"I speak out of my own experience of being exploited as a teenager through inappropriate touching by a priest," the 75-year-old bishop said in a statement he passed out at a news conference on behalf of abuse victims in Ohio.
That made Gumbleton the first U.S. Catholic bishop to acknowledge having experienced such abuse.
"I understand why victims of sexual abuse need this new window of opportunity" to bring legal actions, he said at the demonstration. "I know how difficult it is for me to speak about what happened."
What happened, he said, dates to the 1940s in a cottage where a Detroit priest liked to take boys, wrestle with them and eventually put his hands down their pants. It was something that Gumbleton said confused him as a young teen and that he kept secret for decades but that he now realizes was "very inappropriate."