UNITED STATES
St. Anthony Messenger
By Rachel Zawila
Clergy sex abuse affects a victim’s entire family. Ginny Hoehne’s son David (pictured) was twelve when he was abused by his parish priest. More than two decades later, the family still struggles with the pain. It’s the summer of 2002. Ginny Hoehne is sitting in a hotel lobby in Charleston, South Carolina, her family milling about nearby, waiting for the police. Having their car stolen was not on the vacation itinerary.
Now all they can do is wait. And watch the hotel TV, which airs a meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops in Dallas regarding the Church’s sex-abuse scandal. Ever since the Boston Globe published its expansive investigative report into the matter in January, the media coverage has been seemingly nonstop. By now for most people, a passing glance would suffice, but Hoehne’s eyes remain fixed on the screen.
Hoehne’s son David was twelve when he was sexually assaulted by his parish priest in the early 1980s. Their house was just across the parking lot from the church in Fort Loramie, Ohio, and the family shared a neighborly rapport with the priests. “Unfortunately, our son was taken advantage of because of that,” she says.
She and her husband, Larry, didn’t learn of the abuse until more than a decade later, however, when David came to them in 1995. Their son’s secret then became their own, as David begged his parents to stay silent. “He was just so emotionally fragile that there wasn’t too much we could do,” Hoehne recalls.
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