CANADA
CBC News
By Simon Gardner, CBC News Posted: May 08, 2016
Mike Fitzgerald is a 60-year-old truck driver who grew up on a farm near Bancroft, Ont.
It’s with some trepidation that I ask him if we can meet at the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, a grand Catholic church located in Ottawa’s ByWard Market. He readily agrees, but when I meet him and his wife Marla on the steps of the cathedral he admits to feeling uncomfortable.
“The good father destroyed my faith in the Catholic Church forever,” he explains.
When I hear about what happened to Fitzgerald when he was a teenager in the early 1970s, his bitterness comes as no surprise.
Fitzgerald grew up in a devout Catholic family. There was even talk of him becoming a priest.
He was musical, and when he turned 17 he agreed to help the parish priest, Father Henry Maloney, form a choir.
Because his family’s farm was about 35 kilometres from Our Lady of Mercy Church in Bancroft, it was decided Fitzgerald would move into a room in the church rectory.
He says he and his family had no idea he was about to fall into the clutches of a child molester. …
Though unable to forgive, these days Fitzgerald seems more at peace.
He credits much of his recovery to an unlikely saviour: a grandmother of 11 who maintains a website from her home in Fitzroy Harbour, a community on the outskirts of Ottawa.
People who meet Sylvia MacEachern are typically struck by her intensity, her deep outrage at the plight of abuse victims — and her unshakable devotion to the Catholic faith..
For years MacEachern has been a familiar face at trials and investigations into church abuse scandals. As a result, she’s amassed a huge collection of files, transcripts and other documents.
Sylvia’s Site, as she calls it, is a WordPress-based blog and database launched in 2010.
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