SAULT STE. MARIE (CANADA)
Sault Star
Nov. 11, 2019
By Brian Kelly
The morning after Rev. William Hodgson Marshall molested Patrick McMahon, he celebrated mass in the same residence for priests where the assault happened.
McMahon served as an altar boy.
“It was like the darkness of the night just covered the whole memory too,” said McMahon. “It wasn’t like I got up in the morning and thought about what he did. I never thought about it, until I’d hear the door open the next night.”
McMahon estimates he was assaulted by Marshall, a close friend of his parents, over about a two-year span in the early 1980s. Some of those assaults happened during March breaks in 1982 and 1983 at Crawley Hall, the residence at St. Mary’s College in Sault Ste. Marie for members of the Basilian Fathers. Marshall was principal of the Catholic high school for boys. The McMahons travelled from Windsor to ski at hills including Searchmont Resort and Boyne Highlands in Michigan.
McMahon’s father and brothers were put up in the hall’s second floor. Marshall directed McMahon to “the bishop’s suite” on the floor below. He’d come in at night and abuse him.
“I don’t generally talk about it in great detail,” McMahon told The Sault Star in a telephone interview from his Windsor home. “For me, he always came in darkness.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.