UNITED STATES
The Christian Century
Jun 22, 2012 by David Gibson
(RNS) A popular online advice columnist has said that the late Rev. Robert Drinan, a famed Jesuit priest and onetime Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, tried to kiss and fondle her in the 1970s when she was 18 or 19 years old.
Emily Yoffe, who writes Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column, said she was prompted to write her first-person account after reading coverage of the trial of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach who is charged with raping and molesting 10 boys.
In the column, published Thursday (June 21), Yoffe said she was sexually assaulted three times before she turned 20.
The first episode took place was when she was 9 years old and a 15-year-old cousin tried to fondle her; the second was at age 15 when the father of a school friend drove her home and tried to kiss and grope her before she fled the car.
The third attack, she said, allegedly occurred when Drinan, who died in 2007, drove her home after a fundraiser for his reelection campaign; Drinan was first elected to Congress in 1970 on an anti-war platform and served five terms until then-Pope John Paul II said priests could not run for elected office.
Yoffe, whose family supported Drinan, wrote that as the priest was dropping her off in his car, he “began jabbering incoherently about men and women” and then tried to kiss her and ran his hands over her breasts. She said she shoved him away and scrambled out of the car, leaving a smear of pink lipstick on his clerical collar.
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