UNITED STATES
Steve Julian
I attended an all boys’ Catholic high school in the mid 1970s, but never was sexually abused by a priest. Not even approached. Nor did anything bad happen to me at the Lutheran parochial schools I attended from K-8 although, looking back, I find it peculiar we boys, and our two pastors, swam naked at the Y for two years.
In early 2011 I learned that my high school principal, a Catholic priest, had admitted in the mid 1990s to a sexual relationship with an underage female student of his a decade before I knew him. This news appeared online, created a hubbub among the Facebook group of ’76 grads, and triggered my play Altarcations.
I began writing it over a year ago. It has been through several iterations and even more working titles. Thanks to information I obtained through SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and the smart people in the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Playwrights Unit in Atwater Village, it is now presentable. And I believe it’s an important story to tell – stories, actually.
When I was a police officer in the 1980s, a new spousal abuse law took effect and, because of my keen interest in it, I was tasked with writing the department’s policy on handling domestic violence matters. It changed how cops dealt with victims and the people who beat them.
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