Former Altar Boy Assaulted by Priest Demands Archdiocese Open Its Records

By Michele Mandel
Toroto Sun
March 21, 2019

https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/mandel-former-altar-boy-assaulted-by-parish-priest-demands-toronto-archdiocese-open-its-historical-records

When Bob McCabe filed his lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Toronto in 2014, he says church leaders told him how sorry they were that he’d been sexually assaulted as an altar boy by one of their priests more than 50 years before.

And yet not only did they still refuse to settle, forcing the case to go to a gruelling trial, but when the jury awarded him $550,000 they took the Guelph man back to court to appeal the amount.

“Father (Brian) Clough said we’re really sorry, it should never have happened, but then they appeal it? I was absolutely disgusted. And all because they didn’t like the number, they appealed it and put a victim through another two years of trauma. It’s unconscionable,” says McCabe, 67.

“It all comes down to money.”

After a 16-day trial, a jury in 2017 ordered the diocese to pay McCabe general and aggravated damages of $250,000, loss of income of $280,000, treatment expenses of $5,000, and punitive damages of $15,000 for increasing his suffering by waiting until the morning of the trial before admitting fault.

McCabe was relieved the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision earlier this week upheld all but the punitive damages.

“The tension just exhaled out of me. I’ve been in limbo for years and I now had my life back.”

He was 11 when Father Alphonse Robert came to Scarborough where he lived with his devout Roman Catholic family.

“I was the most naive little sucker you ever met,” he recalls.

“When the priest wore the collar, he was God’s representative and you never questioned what he told you to do. That was drilled into me by my own mom.

“I was the perfect victim for this guy and he scoped me out perfectly. The mind of a pedophile must have some kind of instinctive radar — not only who is susceptible, but who won’t say anything.

“In fact, I thought it was my fault.”

In 1963, the priest took him to visit the Basilica of Notre Dame in Montreal and they stopped overnight in Cornwall.

That’s where Robert fondled the altar boy and performed oral sex on him.

McCabe remembers he couldn’t get home fast enough. He also vividly recalls knowing he couldn’t tell his parents.

“It was me against God. They were never going to believe me.”

Robert would be moved around, with new allegations sending him off to new parishes.

And new victims.

In the ensuing decades, McCabe learned to drown his nightmares in alcohol — ultimately losing his job, destroying his first marriage and alienating his children.

He contemplated suicide.

“But I didn’t have the courage. I was even a failure in death.”

In Dec. 2010, McCabe sought help.

On Christmas Day three years later, finally sober, the memories of the assault suddenly came flooding back.

He knew Robert was dead, but it was time to hold the church accountable.

“My lawyers warned it was going to be hell. But I had no idea.”

He figures the church’s strategy was to drag it out and hope he’d walk away long before it got to trial.

“They ran into someone like me who’s too Irish and too stubborn to do that.”

But when the church appealed the $550,000 award, he admits it almost drove him back to drink for the first time in eight years.

He’s lucky to have a good therapist, a new wife, and children who have forgiven him.

He worries about other victims who don’t have that kind of support to pull them back from the brink.

That’s why McCabe is setting aside some of the award to set up a foundation to pay for counselling for sexual abuse victims.

He believes there are many like him still hidden in the archdiocese’s records, broken men abused by the same priest, or by others, and who’ve been left to battle addictions or PTSD on their own.

“I don’t believe a pedophile just picks out one child,” he says.

“If there are other victims – though I classify myself as a survivor — I would love to find them and seek justice for them.”

So he is challenging the Toronto diocese to make this right.

“Open up your records,” McCabe insists, his voice breaking.

“Men are dying.”

Contact: mmandel@postmedia.com