Irish Voice
June 1, 2004

When Anne Keane came from Ireland to Long Island in 1965 she was a little lost.

Feeling homesick and lonely, the former nun went to a party. It was an Irish party in Stony Brook for Irish immigrants. By all accounts, she had a nice time, but then it all turned to horror when she accepted a ride home.

She was raped, she said, by a man she had learned to trust in her work as third grade teacher in St. Anthony's Elementary School in East Northport. He was Irish just like her, and on the drive home, they talked about missing Ireland. Augustine Sheehan was a priest but that didn't stop him attacking and raping her, she says. Anne is now using her married name, Tucker and is 66. But, she never forgot that evening 40 years ago.

She told the audience at a recent news conference for Parents for Megan's Law, the Stony Brook based victim's rights group, that she believes that the alleged rape had caused her to have a stillbirth and ended her marriage to a New York City police officer. She told the conference, attended by media outlets, that she had kept her nightmare a secret until the Church crisis rocked America with allegations of rape and pedophilia surfacing in dioceses across the country.

The Diocese of Rockville center suspended Reverend Sheehan once the complaint came to their notice and says a spokesperson are still investigating, but locals in Rockville say he still provides mass cards and sacramental services to parishioners. Since 2002, Rockville parish as set up a special line for receiving complaints of sexual abuse by priests.

In an in-depth interview with the Long Island Press, Anne described being raped while she convulsed on the front seat of the priest's car. When it was over she was bleeding heavily and asked: "There's all this blood Where is this from?"

"Oh, you were a virgin. The hymen broke," she recalled him saying to her.

Then once he realized her bleeding, he shouted, "Clean yourself up. I have to say Mass tomorrow," she told the newspaper,

In response to the allegations Sheehan, 74, did not return messages left at his Ronkonkoma home by the Irish Voice.

According to media reports he has been asked not to talk to reporters. However in the hours after the allegations surfaced in the press conference, Sheehan who was ordained in Ireland in 1955 and traveled to America in 1964, told Long Island's Newsday that nothing happened on that ride.

But he said he knew Anne and had sex with her on the beach a week after driving her home from the Irish party.

When he was asked if having sex with a woman while being a priest, Sheehan told Newsday, "It is wrong, really, but it happens."