PENNSYLVANIA
Washington Post
By Colby Itkowitz April 18
Mark Rozzi dropped out of college and was working at his family’s window and door installation company when a tragic life event inspired him to make a drastic career change. He went into politics.
He did it for one reason: justice.
Rozzi had vowed when he was 13 to never speak of what happened to him when he was a boy. He wouldn’t tell anyone that a priest at his parochial school in Berks County, Pa., had lured him with McDonald’s and beer and pornography for weeks before raping him in a rectory shower. He buried his secret, but the shame and the guilt were always there, haunting his dreams and fueling his depression.
But in March 2009, when a second childhood friend who also had been a victim of the priest’s abuse killed himself, Rozzi was inconsolable. He blamed himself for not telling someone. Maybe then he could have stopped it from happening to his friends and the dozens of others who later accused the Rev. Edward Graff of abusing them. He also worried that the darkness he carried inside him would one day kill him, too.
As he slowly picked himself back up from the throes of his deepest depression, he decided to end his silence. His friends’ memories deserved more.
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