CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune
By Christy Gutowski and Manya Brachear Pashman
Tribune reporters
10:17 p.m. CST, January 21, 2014
Joe Iacono wants to read the letters by himself so he can deal with the pain in private.
Jim Laarveld wants to be by his son’s side when Keith Laarveld sees the files for the first time.
But Diana Houston laments that her son John took his life years before Tuesday’s release of records that show how the Archdiocese of Chicago failed to protect him and other children from pedophile priests.
Those records — thousands of documents chronicling the archdiocese’s response to sexual abuse allegations against 30 priests over the past half-century — stirred many emotions, especially for the victims of clergy sexual abuse who waged a nine-year battle to see this day come. For the first time, they could see what the church did and didn’t do when they cried for help.
“It’s just really hard,” said Houston, of southwest suburban Hometown, who puts some blame on the church for her son’s suicide in 2002 when he was 33. “I was brought up Catholic, and priests are supposed to do no wrong. I just think it’s horrible that they kept all this a secret for so long.”
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