RESTON (VA)
CNS News
Dec. 19, 2019
By Janet Patterson
The following commentary is written by Janet Patterson, whose son Eric Patterson (1970-1999) reportedly was sexually abused multiple times by Rev. Robert K. Larson. Larson spent 5 years in jail for sexually abusing altar boys and died in 2014 at the age of 84; Eric Patterson died at age 29 after shooting himself in the head. Clergy abuse expert Dr. Leon Podles estimates there have been between 100,000 and 200,000 clergy abuse victims since 1950 in the United States alone, and possibly up to 2,000,000 victims worldwide.
I stood there, rooted to the spot, stroking my son’s hair, gently touching his cold face, gazing at my precious child. “Eric,” I thought, “oh, Eric.” Then I turned to walk down the church aisle as the funeral attendants closed the casket.
Numb from shock, I joined the rest of my family, clutching my husband’s hand tightly, feeling his arm caressing my shoulder. Now, three years later, I am sitting at Eric’s computer, the one on which he typed his suicide note, painfully recalling the series of events that culminated in his death.
Slowly, painstakingly, our family grapples with the awful truth—our son was sexually abused at the age of 12 by our parish priest.
How could this be? Sexual abuse happens to someone else’s child, in someone else’s family, not ours. Then reality hits. My mind constantly reconstructs the details of Eric’s life; sifting and sorting through memories, wondering what clues I missed, what behavior I didn’t understand at the time.
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