MAINE
Portland Press Herald
BY ERIC RUSSELL STAFF WRITER
erussell@pressherald.com | @PPHEricRussell | 207-791-6344
For 40 years, Neal Gumpel kept the details locked away in a dark corner of his memory.
Details about the night he met the Rev. Roy Drake while visiting his brother at Maine Maritime Academy. The night Drake violently molested him. The night everything changed.
Though he kept it hidden, the encounter shaped his entire life. It led to alcohol and drug abuse, helped ruin his first marriage, kept him awake nights and even affected his health.
“It sounds dire, but I felt like I was at a point where I had to come forward or I was going to kill myself,” Gumpel said.
At the urging of his wife, Helen, who feared she was losing her husband, Gumpel contacted Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston lawyer who has represented hundreds of victims of sexual abuse by clergy and helped expose a massive cover-up of pedophile priests by the Catholic Church.
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