UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast
September 8, 2018
By Paul Moses
The author of the leading study on the topic warned that clergy sexual abuse of women “is much more pervasive” than that of children. And the Church still hasn’t reckoned with it.
In a brief aside in its stunning report on clergy sexual abuse of some thousand children, a Pennsylvania grand jury noted finding “numerous other cases” of Catholic priests’ misconduct, but with adults. That was outside the scope of its investigation, but it’s a problem some experts say may be more pervasive than the abuse of children.
For women like Rachel Mastrogiacomo, it can be just as devastating. At age 23 and filled with religious zeal, she studied Catholic spirituality in Rome, where she met a deacon studying for the priesthood in 2009. After he was ordained a priest in the Diocese of San Diego, she invited him to meet her family in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where, authorities said, the priest violated her when they were alone during two private masses.
“In plain terms, Father Jacob Bertrand sexually injured me in humiliating and degrading ways during the central liturgical ritual of the Catholic Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,” she said at the priest’s May 7 sentencing for criminal sexual conduct.
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