By Boua Xiong
Northland's News Center
April 22, 2010
http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/news/local/91790554.html
[with video]
Tim Caroline has spent almost 40 years of his life replaying one night.
"We had an overnight retreat at the Dunrovin Retreat Center on the Marine in St. Croix and it was there that I met Brother Raimond Rose who would be the person who would be the perpetrator," recalled Caroline.
That over night retreat changed Caroline's life and his faith forever.
According to Caroline, Rose invited him and a few other boys back to the retreat center the following weekend. Rose provided the then junior high boys with alcohol and marijuana. It was during that evening Caroline said he was molested.
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Caroline had been brought up in a very traditional catholic home.
He went to a catholic school and his brother even became a priest.
But being molested by a clergyman left him confused and angry.
"As I started to go through my high school years I started to have a discomfort with the Catholic Church. The memories, just seeing the priest up on the alter it was just like, how could this have happened to me," he said.
Over the years more and more cases like Caroline's have surfaced.
Just recently the Catholic Diocese of Superior reported an investigation into possible sexual misconduct by a retired priest.
The diocese wouldn't comment on camera but did send us an email stating any clergy member found to have committed even one act of sexual abuse of a minor is removed from the ministry.
But others in the Catholic community said they feel the way the church has handled many of these abuse cases has been wrong.
"I think that there was always an impulse to protect the church but what is such a grave difficulty today is the idea of protecting the church at the expense of the victims. No one can defend that and we can't apologize for it enough," Father William Graham, director of the Braegelman Catholic studies at the College of Saint Scholasitca, said.
Many survivors like Caroline said it's not the church they're angry with anymore, it's the process.
"When I speak out against what the church has done, or the cover up. I'm not attacking the church I've been able to separate that through time. My problem right now is that I'm very angry at those that moved that person and others like him from place to place knowing that they were putting kids in harm's way," Caroline said.
Caroline has filed a lawsuit against the organization that helped move Brother Rose. But Caroline said the lawsuit is only the beginning of a very long road to recovering his faith.
"My faith has been tested and at this point in time I want to believe and yet I have a lot of confusion...I still believe that there is a God," he said.
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