MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette
Dianne Williamson
Posted Nov. 1, 2015
Today, it’s hard to remember a time when innocent victims of clergy sexual abuse were derided and scorned, when damaged families were hushed by a hierarchy, when the Catholic Church used its considerable power to protect and cover for the criminals within its ranks.
That culture of denial was upended in 2002, when The Boston Globe published an investigative series showing how the church enabled scores of pedophile priests by transferring them from parish to parish, while settling secretly with families who complained.
I don’t catch many movies in the theaters these days, but one I plan to see is the well-received “Spotlight,” which opens this month and recounts how the Globe’s Spotlight team broke the scandal wide open. Its stories led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law and a seismic shift in the public’s acceptance of the realities of clergy sex abuse. …
On a professional level, I’m well aware of the deep pain caused by the scandal within the diocese of Worcester. More than five years before the Globe’s investigative team tackled the topic, this newspaper was writing strikingly similar stories about priestly abuse. Years before the Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting, brave victims were telling us their stories.
One of them, now a middle-aged man who lives in a nearby town, was sexually abused by a priest when he was an altar boy. Years later, still traumatized, he sought counseling from another priest who also sexually abused him. I’ve written about this man many times and used his name, but last week he said he’s trying to put the past behind him.
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