NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By Anonymous
I am the unnamed sex-abuse victim of Kevin Gugliotta, the poker-playing priest arrested on Oct. 29 on child pornography charges. mentioned in Mark Meuller’s story in The Star-Ledger on Dec. 6.
The article made it clear that the Newark Archdiocese’s statement was misleading if not an outright lie: “There are no allegations that he engaged in similar activities in New Jersey,”
In fact, before Gugliotta was ordained, he sexually assaulted and sexually harassed me when I was a teenager. In 2003 – nearly 15 years after I was abused – I came forward to the Archdiocesan Review Board. Archbishop John J. Myers relied on a technicality of canon law to excuse Gugliotta, since my allegations stemmed to years before he was ordained. Worse, the archbishop then assigned him to posts where he had supervision over children.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin is our own Pope Francis. He replaces Myers, whose neglect has left children exposed to sexual abuse.
The church, under Myers, sat on these very serious allegations, right up until they knew the newspaper would shed light on it.
Today, I want to add insight how perpetrators of child sexual abuse take time to build a network of trust and confidence by cultivating love and respect in families and communities, such that their acts, when they come to light, seem unbelievable.
I also want to speak to the culture within the Catholic church that denies and hides the behavior of perpetrators – a culture that fails to protect children and young adults, condemning them to a lifetime of shame and secrecy from which it is very difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to recover.
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