MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
April 20, 2018
Aisha Sultan
Chris O’Leary started to sweat in church as he moved up the line of parents and kids waiting for a turn at the confessional. When they got to the head of the line, O’Leary was crying and trying not to pass out.
O’Leary’s panic attack hit as his son made his first confession.
He wasn’t sure why, but he wondered if it had something to do with hazy memories from his childhood confessions. Three years later, in 2005, his daughter made her first confession. He had another panic attack.
O’Leary had talked to church officials in 2002 when the New York Times broke a story involving sexual abuse allegations against Father Leroy Valentine, who had been a priest in O’Leary’s childhood parish. The story revealed that in the late 1990s the St. Louis Archdiocese had settled with three brothers who had accused Valentine of sexual abuse, paying them $20,000 each.
O’Leary wasn’t sure if his vague, uncomfortable memories with Valentine meant something inappropriate had also happened to him. He says then-Bishop Timothy Dolan reassured him back in 2002 that he was misreading the situations from decades ago.
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