UNITED STATES
City of Angels
Kay Ebeling
I’ve learned a bit about life in Catholic seminaries, which in the USA produced seven thousand pedophile priests in the last fifty years*, from the book “Unholy Communion: Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators, and Priests.” As an 18 year old seminarian, New Mexico writer Hank Estrada found himself naked in bed with an older priest. The series of molestations, related in the book, led to Estrada abandoning his lifelong ambition to become a priest. Unholy Communion** left this reader seeing seminaries as environments where covert sexual activity is almost inevitable.
“On one occasion, Father John rubbed himself up against me so much that he climaxed right in his walking shorts. I eventually came to realize that Father John believed that as long as he did not physically expose himself or masturbate, he wasn’t really engaging in a sexual act or breaking his celibacy vow.” (From page 26)
Soon after Estrada joined the Western Province of the Claretian Missionary Order in Los Angeles, Father John Raab spotted him as an easy target.
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