Survivors speak out against church sex abuse scandal outside National Shrine

WASHINGTON (DC)
ABC 7 TV

February 25, 2019

By Richard Reeve

Becky Ianni is a sex abuse survivor.

She says the man who molested her decades ago was a newly ordained parish priest.

“As an 8-year-old, I knew how serious this was,” she said. “I knew this was a sin, I knew it was wrong.”

Ianni, now in her 60s, says the priest was like an adopted member of her family.

He ate dinner in her home, said mass in their basement, bought her family a TV and went on vacations with them.

“I felt like we had a little bit of God in our house,” Ianni said.

But around her 8th birthday, the relationship began to take a dark turn.

“He took that love and adoration and began to abuse me,” she said. “He would rape me with his hands in the basement, and then he would go upstairs and have dinner with my family. I would have dinner with my family and think, ‘Doesn’t anybody see I’m different?’”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.