ATTLEBORO (MA)
The Sun Chronicle
BY MIKE KIRBY SUN CHRONICLE STAFF
Sunday, May 13, 2012
The biggest story of my career? That’s easy. The 9/11 terrorist attacks altered the nation’s history, and the fact three of the roughly 3,000 victims had local ties make it an easy number one.
But the story that resonates just as deeply with me is the Father Porter case.
It was 20 years ago this past week that about a dozen men revealed on WBZ TV how they had been abused by James Porter, a priest at St. Mary’s Church in North Attleboro in the early 1960s. One of them, a private investigator named Frank Fitzpatrick, had tracked down Porter in Minnesota, where he had lived and married since being thrown out of the priesthood in the mid-1970s. Fitzpatrick had taped Porter acknowledging that he had molested
several children during his time in North Attleboro.
It was shocking – especially, as it turned out, because I knew some of the victims. These men were a few years older than me, men with whom I had had a drink or meals, played golf, socialized.
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