Recent Clergy Arrest Triggers Trauma in Victim
By Marianne Love
The San Fernando Valley Sun
August 2, 2007
http://sanfernandosun.com/sanfernsun/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1515&Itemid=2
Kevin McParland faces an unwelcome anniversary next week. It's been over 20 years but the trauma of being sexually abused by a Catholic priest is still present. It's unsettling for the valley resident to hear about the recent arrest of former priest George Miller of Guardian Angel Parish in Pacoima, and the record-setting, $660-million civil settlement between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and 500 others last month.
These recent incidents involving other sexual abuse victims and Catholic priests are all triggers that can set him off into the dark world of despair that took over his life in Greenville, Pennsylvania and continued when he was a college student at Penn State.
Admittedly a naïve, 20-year-old devout Catholic, McParland, now 47, had just lost his father to a heart attack. He was upset and acted out by displaying rude behavior to the neighborhood priest. Disturbed by his own behavior, McParland called the priest and told him he wanted to apologize.
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| Abuse victim Kevin McParland at the age of 20. McParland requested his current photo not be published. |
"He said, 'You're a good looking kid, we should talk sometime,'" McParland said. "So, I invited him to our house."
McParland had been drinking and his good judgment was off. The priest asked him if he wanted a massage and then began touching him. McParland bravely shared the details of the abuse, but they are too graphic to print.
"I disassociated. It was like I was watching it happen to someone else,"McParland said. It's was a lot of trauma. I didn't know what it was. This priest touched me, and I was going to hell. I let him do what he did just to get him out of there the fastest way possible."
McParland grew up in a town of 800 people where the maturity level of a 20-year-old mirrored a 14- or 15-year-old else-where in the county.
Confused about what happened, McParland said he called the priest, who then asked him if he wanted to talk about it.
"I said yes and he came over and I told him I needed to know if I was going to hell. He said, 'the only thing you need to know is that you need to have hands not afraid to explore and a great tongue. Then, he abused me a second time," McParland said.
McParland said those two incidents sent him into a depression. He turned to alcohol and drugs to relief his pain. He blamed every unfortunate circumstance that happened to him on. "God's way of punishing him."
Today, he still has that need to know whether he will go to Heaven or Hell and feels deprived of losing his deep spiritually. His mother and two sisters remain devout Catholics.
Many victims of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest turn away from the church. And McParland is one of them. He says when he sees a Catholic Church he feels like vomiting.
He said after the abuse he went to a priest near his college to cleanse his soul by confessing his sins. He hadn't been sleeping and he was failing his classes.
As it turned out that priest - 200 miles from the other - began to ask McParland irrelevant questions in the confessional box.
"I thought he was just trying to learn the facts, but then he began to breath heavy and asked inappropriate questions, such as did I reach an organism, how big was his penis." McParland said.
After that, the alleged priest abuser, who was never charged with a crime because of the statues of limitation under Pennsylvania law, sent McParland a Christmas card, and he plunged into a deep fear that both priests would came after him.
"It silenced me," said McParland, now a real estate appraiser.
Once a levelheaded guy, he became compulsive and erratic in his behavior.
He moved to Los Angeles to get as far away as he could from the tiny town where he grew up, but continued to indulge in alcohol and drugs. He sabotaged his career and didn't earn a MBA or attend law school like he had planned. McParland said he started to meet people who pretended to be a friend, but turned out to be perpetrators in various ways, including sexually and business wise.
"But then I had a drug overdose, a near death experience in 1986 and stopped drinking and doing drugs and started to climb back out of it," he said.
He's been in and out of counseling for years, but continues to feel ashamed and guilty over what happened.
"I told my therapist (Monday) that the worst part is the spiritual devastation. I feel punished by God, that God doesn't love me. No matter what I do, I can't right myself with God, which is the core issue, but it is getting better," McParland said.
McParland said he wants to marry and have a family one day and to heal and get back to following some of his dreams with the time he has left in life.
"I don't want to just be in a state of survival, like I am now," he said.
His justice will come, he says, when the alleged priest abuser is removed from the ministry and some sort of financial restitution made to his family.
"My hope for the whole mess is that priests be removed and as many as possible put in jail and the victims receive restitution and get the psychological (counseling) they need to heal and move on with their lives," McParland said.
Staff Reporter Marianne Love can be reached at (818) 365- 3111, Ext. 152. Or, by e-mailing mlove@sanfernandosun.com
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