MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald
Joe Fitzgerald Saturday, July 29, 2017
Though many columns decrying the blanket indictment of priests reaped anger and resentment here during the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church, they never minimized the horrible things done to young victims by vultures camouflaged in Roman collars.
Indeed, you read about some of them here, like Ron, who was 41 the day he called, weeping.
“I’d like you to hear how my life was ruined,” he said. “I was 11 when it happened. I trusted this man more than you could imagine. Then he reached inside my pants and proceeded to do things to me. Today I trust no one.
“I didn’t get married until I was 36 and my wife still doesn’t understand what’s wrong with me. I sleep on the couch more than I should. I’m not close to her like I ought to be and I’m sure she thinks it’s her fault. She’s the nicest woman in the world. But even now, there’s still so much guilt associated with sex, it’s unbelievable.”
There are many Rons in the files here, all of whom bear painful witness to traumas that haunt them to this day.
But they were not the only victims of predators such as the defrocked Paul Shanley, now 86, released yesterday from the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater after completing a 12-year-sentence for raping a boy in the 1980s.
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