MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Ruben Rosario
rrosario@pioneerpress.com
Linette Gavin was not surprised when she heard the news that criminal charges were filed this month against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for failing to protect children from pedophiles in their midst.
The charges were “long overdue and probably the only way to bring a catalyst for change,” said Gavin, 57, a married mother of two who was raised Catholic. “Their lack of transparency over the past decades put a lot of children in harm’s way, including myself.”
Gavin is not a victim of clergy sexual abuse. But she has a related story to tell, one that involves surviving a brutal abduction and rape, an attempted suicide and a scary bout with breast cancer. Yet, one lingering emotional scar is what she strongly feels, in hindsight, was neglect and betrayal by church officials in her parish during the most traumatic year of her life more than three decades ago.
Gavin was 15 years old when a stranger lured her into his car while she was walking home from school in South Minneapolis one September afternoon in 1972. Her eyes were duct-taped shut and she was driven at gunpoint to a motel in St. Paul and sexually assaulted. She was let go on the Minneapolis side and walked home in a state of shock. The case was never solved.
When informed, her parents, devout Catholics, contacted police and turned to their parish at St. Albert the Great, staffed by the Dominican order, for spiritual guidance and help for their daughter.
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