NEW YORK (NY)
Al Jazeera
Oct. 23, 2019
By Paul Abowd
Gabriel* was a young Catholic student when Father John Paddack arrived at his school in 1984. The priest taught at Incarnation School, said mass at its parish and was involved with the altar boy programme. Before long, Gabriel says Paddack began calling him into a secluded place in the church, where the boy was instructed to confess his sins.
That is where Gabriel said Paddack molested him – about twice a week for two years, starting when he was between the ages of 11 and 12 years old.
Gabriel was familiar with the Catholic ritual of confession, but he said Paddack did things differently: There was no barrier separating them. In fact, he said, Paddack sat close to him, placing one hand behind his neck and the other on his inner thigh.
“How do you get alone with someone?” he said. “Confession. You don’t have a crowd. It’s a one on one thing.”
Gabriel kept the trauma of this abuse mostly to himself for decades. He was angry and ashamed. When Al Jazeera’s current affairs programme Fault Lines interviewed him in June, he asked to use a pseudonym, fearing retribution from the Catholic Church hierarchy.
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