NEW YORK
Times Herald-Record
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
10/07/12
More than 25 years after the boys and their families were victims of sexual abuse by two local priests, an eternal flame of anger burns within them. It flares when they see another adult – such as former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky – allowed to put himself in a position of authority and trust so he can feed his appetite for young boys.
“It brings back everything,” says Catherine Westfall of Port Jervis. Her son Patrick was sexually abused by Francis Stinner, a now defrocked priest who served at St. Mary’s Church in Port Jervis and taught at John S. Burke High School in Goshen in the 1980s and ’90s, where he also coached soccer.
Just days before Sandusky is scheduled to be sentenced for sexually abusing at least 10 boys, some local victims of sexual abuse by Stinner and Edward Pipala, another defrocked priest who served in Goshen and Monroe, say there isn’t a prison sentence severe enough to extinguish their rage.
“He (Pipala) got seven years. We got life,” says one victim of Pipala, who served his time in federal prison after he abused some 50 boys while serving at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Monroe and St. John the Evangelist in Goshen in the ’80s and early ’90s. The victim first said that after Pipala was released from prison in 2000. He repeated it last week.
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