Wbz
April 18, 2010
http://wbztv.com/local/eric.MacLeish.priest.2.1640329.html
The lawyer whose pursuit of the Archdiocese of Boston helped lead to an $85 million settlement and Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation says he was abused as a youngster.
Eric MacLeish says he suffered post-traumatic stress brought on by years of dealing with the stories of others who were sexually abused.
MacLeish, 57, was among the lawyers in 2003 presenting hundreds of cases to arbitrators who determined how much compensation each victim should receive. He was haunted by the first case of a client who was raped as a 9-year-old boy.
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| Eric MacLeish |
"I began to become unglued," he said.
For the past six years, MacLeish said he's battled post-traumatic stress disorder that led him to give up his law practice, divorce his wife, leave Boston and move to New Hampshire.
"I was always nauseous," he said in an interview with the Boston Globe. "I couldn't do any work."
MacLeish has been teaching at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, N.H., since 2006. During the time since he was a litigator, he suffered flashbacks, nausea, insomnia and lost 40 pounds.
Doctors told him the debilitating systems of stress were because he absorbed the pain of his clients.
At age 8, MacLeish was sent to boarding school in England, where his father had been transferred. Life was a "horrible, horrible nightmare" for nearly five years at the school where he said he was caned by the headmaster. Decades later, scars on his back are still visible.
His father was transferred back to Washington, D.C., when MacLeish was 13. In September 2004 he found letters his mother had saved, including some he wrote from boarding school. A letter from the headmaster's wife in 1964 provided a veiled reference to a sexually abusive scoutmaster in charge of a school-sponsored troop.
"I never forgot what happened to me as a younger child, but I didn't place any significance on it, which was totally irrational," MacLeish said. "I thought what happened to me is nothing compared to what happened in the priest cases. I was doing OK. I was a good lawyer. I had no drug or alcohol problem. I had a wife and kids."
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