OREGON
The Register-Guard
By Bob Keefer
The Register-Guard
[with copy of a letter from Bishop John G. Vlasny]
Published: August 27, 2012
REEDSPORT — What Carolee Horning wanted most was for her former church to say it was sorry. On Sunday, when she came to Mass, she got not only an extraordinary apology but also found, amid her taut nerves and copious tears, a sense of homecoming and liberation.
Horning, 41, has lived in Eugene for a decade. She was even born here. But a quarter-century ago, when she was a girl growing up in Reedsport, she was molested by a Catholic priest at St. John the Apostle Parish, where her family was and still is part of the congregation.
Father Edward Altstock became a trusted family friend when he headed the parish from 1984 to 1986. Horning, then a young teenager who had been an altar girl, came under his sway, flattered by gifts and attention from such a figure of authority. He pursued her sexually for years, even visiting her in Corvallis when she was a student at Oregon State University.
Decades after the abuse started, she says, her romantic life remains wrecked by what happened with Altstock, who is retired and living near Portland. Because of the statute of limitations, he never was charged with a crime.
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