LANSING (MI)
MLive
1/14/2006, 8:01 a.m. ET
By DAVID EGGERT
The Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Timothy Hassett says he was in fourth grade when his priest began taking him to the church rectory and molesting him.
The sexual abuse at St. Mary's of Redford in Detroit lasted two years, Hassett says, and the damage was permanent.
He was drinking by sixth grade. Drugs followed in ninth grade. By 10th grade, he was a dropout.
Hassett, 43, says he didn't tell anyone about the abuse until attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a few years ago.
"I have no religion left," he says. "It was hard to do AA because you've got to believe in a higher power. As far as I was concerned, my higher power screwed me."
Hassett, a supervisor at an aviation company in west Michigan, sued the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2004 because "money is the only way you're gonna make them change."