WASHINGTON (DC)
USA Today
December 16, 2018
By Lindsay Schnell
Bill Reidy says he remembers every detail about the office where he was repeatedly raped by the Jesuit priest who served as his academic adviser at Loyola Academy, a private Catholic school just outside Chicago.
A ficus tree in one corner, a desk chair in another. The credenza covered in photos. The door that opened inward and stayed locked.
While other students learned about literature or chemistry, Reidy says, he was called “every single day” into the private quarters of the Rev. Donald J. O’Shaughnessy, a bedroom that doubled as his office. Each meeting ended with the same nauseating ritual, Reidy says.
“He would always make sure he had a soda in his fridge, and he’d give it to me and say, ‘I want you to drink this and get the taste out of your mouth,’ ” says Reidy, 57, who lives in a Chicago suburb. “Then he’d send me back to class.”
Reidy was hurt and confused. Did other students know? Were other priests at Loyola Academy – a school his father insisted on sending him to because he believed a Catholic education was the best education – aware? Were they laughing at him?
On the weekends, when his parents forced him to go to church with his family, Reidy had to sit in an aisle seat, so he could make an immediate exit. When he walked into Mass, Reidy’s palms went sweaty, and his body shook. He says he flashed back to the time he was gang-raped by O’Shaughnessy and other men at Loyola’s school chapel.
He begged his parents to put him back in public school. When they asked why, Reidy always had the same tortured reply: “I can’t tell you.”
Beyond the horror and panic, Reidy was even more terrified at the consequences O’Shaughnessy allegedly threatened.
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