Book Gives Voice to Delaware Child Victims of Priest Abuse

By Harry F. Themal
News Journal
October 8, 2012

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Pedophilia – the crime and illness of adults who prey on children – remains one of the most disturbing problems in our society. And it seems as if it has become an all-too-frequent story:

• Wilmington attorney Tom Neuberger has just released a jarring book about the more than 100 sexual abuse cases involving the priests of the Diocese of Delaware and Catholic orders.

• Last week the attorneys for the most sickening of Delaware’s pedophiles, pediatrician Earl Bradley, finally gave up their hopeless fight to overturn his 14-plus life sentences for raping his young patients.

• Also last week the Boy Scouts of America finally agreed to turn over to authorities the names of hundreds of adult leaders who molested Scouts since 1965.

• Pennsylvania State University still is wrestling with the aftermath of the predatory actions of its assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, who is due to be sentenced tomorrow.

• And how many other stories have we heard recently about teachers and coaches, male and female, having sexual relations with boys and girls for whom they were responsible.

Delawareans might well think an epidemic has swept our state, considering what trials have revealed about the crimes of some Catholic priests and the Sussex County sexual ogre who dared call himself a doctor.

Many readers probably will cringe when they read Neuberger’s “When Priests Become Predators: Profiles of Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors.” The actual testimony of 10 victims is so much more graphic, and therefore alarming, than the news accounts of trials that necessarily had to be toned down.

The book provides the vivid, stomach-turning testimony that demonstrates how the clergy who were trusted by these boys (and a girl) made these youngsters their playthings, how fellow priests and church hierarchy failed to act when they knew about the outrages. And, perhaps worst of all, how the victims’ polluted childhoods affected them in their adult lives.

When Delaware passed the Child Victim’s Act in 2007, upheld four years later by the state’s Supreme Court, it opened a two-year window for victims to sue their predators. Delaware criminal and bankruptcy courts gave these victims a forum to tell their stories.

The Boston Globe five years earlier had exposed similar crimes in Massachusetts. Soon Pennsylvania and almost every corner of the country (and abroad in Ireland, Belgium and elsewhere) learned of these child abuse cases. What was almost as disturbing as the victims’ stories was the evidence that fellow priests and officials of the church up to the ranks of bishops did next to nothing about this epidemic.

By reprinting much of the court records in this book, Neuberger says, the public can understand “the face of human suffering and the courage of these survivors of childhood sexual crimes who have come forward.” As a lead attorney for the victims, Neuberger minces no words in attacking “the opposition and dirty tricks which the Roman Catholic Church could muster.” The suits were against the church and the Catholic orders that ran Archmere Academy and Salesianum School. The victims won millions of dollars.

While reading this book can prove to be a harrowing experience we should remind ourselves that the criminal action of these clergymen should not result in a blanket denunciation of the entire church. Many priests were as outraged as we are.

We hope that books such as this, and trials such as are detailed here, will have brought about a realization all the way to Rome that such actions cannot be swept under the rug. Neuberger also hopes that this book’s testimony will “be invaluable for diagnostic and treatment purposes of adult victims of childhood sex crimes.”

It’s often harrowing to read “When Priests Become Pedophiles” but eyes will be opened and often filled with tears reading this testimony.

The book is on sale at the Ninth Street Book Shop, whose store at 8th and Market streets Neuberger will visit from 5 to 7 p. m. Oct. 18 to discuss and sign his self-published book, which sells for $30.