NEW YORK (NY)
Vox Media
September 4, 2018
By Tara Isabella Burton
And why revelations are still emerging today.
His story was one of thousands.
“It happened in the wee hours of the morning,” a Pennsylvania man wrote in a letter to the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 2008, describing the moment he tried to take his own life. He’d spent the night drinking heavily, “which my doctors have explained may have induced an inescapable episodic flashback of sexual abuse, which has haunted me over the years.”
His alleged abuser, Rev. Richard Dorsch, was his childhood priest in Pittsburgh. The events he recalled took place throughout his childhood. According to the letter, Dorsch forced his victim — whose name has not been made public — to sexually stimulate him repeatedly, ignoring the child’s objections.
The diocese settled with the man quietly after his suicide attempt, paying for his mental health care. But in 2010, payments abruptly stopped. Two months later, the victim attempted suicide again. That time, he succeeded.
This story is just one account out of hundreds listed in a recently released Pennsylvania grand jury report. A 1,400-page document compiled over two years, the report implicated 300 priests in the sex abuse of over 1,000 minors across six of the state’s eight dioceses. (The other two, Philadelphia and Altoona–Johnstown, had been the subject of previous investigations that were no less damning.)
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