PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
November 19, 2018
By Peter Smith
When Michael Norris talks with fellow survivors of sexual abuse by clergy, he finds that they have a lot in common — the betrayal by a trusted priest and the long trail of damage to family relationships, schooling and a career path.
But Mr. Norris said many victims are astonished when he gets to the part of the story in which he sat in a rural Kentucky courtroom on a November day in 2016. There, he witnessed a group of jurors come out from their deliberations and convict his perpetrator.
“It was the ultimate release,” said Mr. Norris, 55, now of Houston. “To hear the jury come back with a guilty verdict, it just overwhelmed me. Most survivors don’t get that kind of justice.”
Abused by the Rev. Joseph Hemmerle in a summer-camp cabin in 1973, Mr. Norris first came forward to the church and police in 2001, but no charges were filed and the priest returned to ministry.
More than a decade later, after a second victim came forward, Hemmerle was charged and convicted in separate court cases. As long as the wait was, such an outcome wouldn’t have been an option at all if the abuse had happened at that time in Pennsylvania or many other states.
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