CINCINNATI
WCPO-TV, Channel 9
December 7, 2020
By Craig Cheatham
Abuse survivor: ‘It needs to come out’
[PHOTO: In personal journals from the 1980s, a Catholic priest repeatedly accused of molesting boys, asks God to forgive him. The Rev. Herman Kamlage worked at eight northern Kentucky churches. He died in 2018.]
BURLINGTON, Ky. — I’ve failed you again. I haven’t been faithful to my office for 10 days.
I still have these primitive urges.
August 9, 1981
In a series of hand-written “love letters” to God, penned over the course of four years, The Rev. Herman Kamlage, a Catholic priest, begged for forgiveness for undisclosed “carnal” behavior that he claimed he could not control.
In July, the Diocese of Covington publicly identified Kamlage — who held positions at eight northern Kentucky parishes — and 89 other former diocesan employees who had “substantiated” allegations of child sexual abuse made against them.
Kamlage died in 2018.
I do all the things I say I don’t want to do. It bugs me but I don’t do anything about it. It’s as tho I’m doing just what I want/chooze (sic) to do. No discipline. And yet, at times, it’s as tho (sic) I can’t help myself. Why?
April 17, 1983
There are more than 100 letters, dated from 1981-85, in three personal journals.
Nearly all of the entries end with Kamlage’s signature.
“It does give you a true insight view into his soul, which I believe is an evil soul” said Dean McCoy, a former altar boy at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Crescent Springs, Ky., where Kamlage was an assistant priest in 1984.
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