NORWICH (CT)
The Bulletin
June 22, 2019
By Anna Maria Della Costa
The anger has hardly subsided.
Nearly 10 years ago, a wooden board ticked off John “Timothy” McGuire – an object entirely too big to take the brunt of his resentment. He tried to throw it, and broke his back.
“The anger that we harbor,” said McGuire, looking out through his front window at St. Mary of the Sea Church in New London. “The level of anger …we get angry at things that aren’t big enough to get angry about.”
He’s learned to stymie the fits of resentment he’s nursed for 52 years – along with the fears of God hating him and feeling that he’s forever been banished to hell.
They’re the aftermath of four consecutive Sundays when he was an 8-year-old and called after Mass to meet with the late James Curry, of St. Joseph Church in Noank. He figured he was finally going to be told he was an altar boy. Instead, McGuire alleges Curry sexually assaulted him, asking him to strip naked and then fondling him that first Sunday. The alleged assaults escalated by the fourth Sunday to lewd acts.
“After the fourth one, I ran out of the church so fast,” McGuire said, pausing to let tears fall. “I hid behind the fire house. My brother came and brought me home. I still had to go to church after that. I had to look that priest in the eye. I wanted to melt every time.
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