Famed Jesuit Abused Boy 1,000 Times around World

By Michael Rezendes
Associated Press
December 30, 2019

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CHICAGO (AP) — A globe-trotting Jesuit priest with ties to Mother Teresa sexually abused an American boy “more than 1,000 times, in multiple states and countries,” a lawsuit filed Monday in California state court in San Francisco alleges.

In the lawsuit and in interviews with The Associated Press, Robert J. Goldberg, now 61, describes years of psychological control and sexual abuse he suffered from age 11 into adulthood while working as a valet for the late Rev. Donald J. McGuire.

McGuire died in federal prison in 2017 while serving a 25-year sentence for molesting other boys who came under his sway.

Goldberg says he remained in the Jesuit’s thrall for nearly 40 years, even volunteering to testify in McGuire’s defense during criminal trials in Wisconsin and Illinois.

The lawsuit filed Monday doesn’t currently name the defendants, but Goldberg’s attorneys say the defendants will include the Jesuit order in the U.S. and the order's top leader at the Vatican. At the time of the abuse against Goldberg, the suit alleges, Catholic officials knew that McGuire had been repeatedly accused of sexually abusing boys and went to great lengths to cover up his crimes.

In the nearly two decades since the U.S. Catholic abuse scandal erupted, thousands of survivors have stepped forward to tell painful stories. Hundreds more revealed their abuse in lawsuits earlier this year, when the state of New York opened a one-year window that allows survivors to file child sex abuse lawsuits without regard to the statute of limitations. And hundreds more, like Goldberg, are expected to take advantage of a similar window that opens Jan. 1 in California.

But many victims still suffer in silence, often taking decades to step forward, if they ever do. Advocates say that abusive priests, as representatives of God, exert powerful control over the children they target, especially when they are helping the children and their families overcome poverty or other obstacles.

Goldberg was 11 when he met McGuire in 1970, one day when he and his sister were sitting on a curb outside a Chicago tavern, waiting for their mother to come out.