MICHIGAN
WOOD
[with video]
Marlee Ginter
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The most traumatic moment of Bill McAlary’s life happened in 1958. Nearly 60 years later, he’s still visibly shaken just talking about it.
McAlary says a Catholic priest molested him when he was a 12-year-old altar boy in Ionia.
“I woke up. He was molesting me sexually, on his knees next to my bed,” McAlary recalled. “That’s how I woke up.”
He said he immediately told his mother, but she didn’t do anything about it.
“I didn’t know what the right word was for a pedophile, but I knew what the word ‘queer’ meant. She said she didn’t know what it meant and didn’t do anything,” McAlary recalled.
He remembers going up to his room, where he stood and stared for 45 minutes. With no support, he continued Catholic school under the same priest.
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