ST. LOUIS (MO)
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Most of this is just a teenage girl’s fantasy.
… so said a commenter on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, dismissing in the most brutal manner possible a teen-aged girl in Old Monroe, Missouri who claims to have been molested by a St. Louis priest, whose crime her parents insist Archbishop Carlson enabled and tried to cover up.
As I said before, this case has yet to go to trial (and I strongly suspect it never will, that it will now be plea bargained away). And while we don’t know many things, nor can we pre-judge the guilt or innocence of the accused cleric, we do know some things for certain.
* The priest was a favorite of Archbishop Carlson’s, actually living with the archbishop in the archbishop’s mansion, and having been brought by Carlson to St. Louis from Saginaw, Michigan, where Carlson was last assigned.
* The priest became a very close friend of the alleged victim’s family’s, and would often spend the night at the family’s house – even though it was only an hour from his room in the archbishop’s mansion.
* The parents became concerned about inappropriate contact between the priest and their 15-year-old daughter – stroking, physical displays of affection. When they confronted the priest about this, he stopped seeing the family, asked for a transfer from St. Louis for “personal reasons”, but eventually ingratiated himself back into the family, visiting them frequently.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.