KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News Sentinel
September 7, 2018
By Amy McRary
Sevierville – John Delaney was a quiet, skinny altar boy of 11 when a priest in his Philadelphia parish began sexually abusing him.
Father James Brzyski abused him more than 100 times in the early 1980s, Delaney said. The abuse — from groping to rape — went on until Delaney was 16.
He tried fighting back. “I was a skinny little kid, but I was throwing punches at the priest. He got violent when I tried to get him to stop.”
Delaney almost never talked about what was happening to him and what he knew was happening to other boys. When he did, he was called a liar and slapped. But for the last 15 years the Philadelphia native who’s lived in East Tennessee 12 years has been speaking up.
“This abuse doesn’t define who I am. This is just a fraction of who I am.”
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