WYLIE (TX)
Associated Press
December 19, 2019
By Wong Maye-E and Juliet Linderman
[This article with photographs is part of the series Sundays After.]
It was the priest who taught Patrick Shepard to love basketball – how to dribble and block and position his body just so, to sink the perfect shot.
That is why, for many years, he wouldn’t touch a ball.
“There were so many bad memories,” he said. “I wanted to get as far away from it as I could.”
He was 10 years old when he moved into Chicago’s St. Charles Lwanga rectory and first encountered the Rev. Victor Stewart, who was the head priest, high school theology teacher, basketball coach and father figure for so many boys who came to live there.
For seven years, Shepard says, Stewart sexually abused him.
And then Shepard left St. Charles Lwanga to join the Navy, and struggle with the aftermath of a broken childhood. Shepard would find a way to survive, however imperfect and incomplete. Basketball would help.
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.