Ray Duckler: In God we trust? Priests in New Hampshire made that hard to do

By Ray Duckler
Concord Monitor
December 29, 2015

http://www.concordmonitor.com/photos/20216203-95/ray-duckler-in-god-we-trust-priests-in-new-hampshire-made-that-hard-to

David Ouellette, 53, had one correction to make.

Yes, Catholic priests were more than merely respected figures in his community when he was growing up in Rochester. They were placed on a pedestal, revered, almost God-like, right?

“You got most of that right,” Ouellette told me. “The only thing you have wrong is that they weren’t looked at as God-like. In my family, they were God.”

That’s why Ouellette’s parents believed their son was safe during those overnights at the church rectory, alone with a priest named Father Joseph Maguire.

Maguire died in prison 10 years ago, convicted of raping three altar boys in Dover through the 1970s. A few years later, he began molesting Ouellette, 15 at the time.