Barbara Blaine, SNAP founder, as a child was abused by an American priest
I am inserting this story because of its poignancy. It had nothing to do with Fr. Maciel directly but it gives an idea of pedophilie abuse -in this case the MODUS OPERANDI of a priest. Female readers, especially, may find this hard to read. Continue with care.
Irish woman tells her story of "Fr. Horatio"
“I didn’t ask for this to happen to me. I didn’t go looking for it. Having my story believed is huge. Especially as I later learnt that other people who knew Fr Horatio, including a priest I once confided in when I was 19, claimed that I had brought this on myself.
“I hope they are reading this. Part of me hopes that Fr Horatio is reading this too, so that he can see the damage that he has done and the hurt that he has caused.
“The most painful thing for me is that Fr Horatio has left a lasting legacy on my marriage. Because of Fr Horatio, I could never separate sex from alcohol. I never had spontaneous or natural sex and it is still a really hard thing to do.
“It astounds me how it still affects me. He should have to pay for that. He took away my teenage years.
“I hope that somebody will benefit from reading my story. Even if just one person finds that their story has a similar pattern to mine, I would hope that they come forward.
“I have nightmares about Fr Horatio. He is holding me, squeezing me and won’t let me go. That is an analogy for what happened; he was squeezing the life out of me.
“I think that every time I tell my story Fr Horatio gets smaller and smaller.
“In telling it, this big secret that I couldn’t tell anyone about becomes more and more insignificant. I have started being myself.”
A victim tells her story about ‘Fr Horatio’
By MAEVE SHEEHAN
Posted on December 16, 2009 by dialogueireland
‘I could not tell anybody because I felt no one would believe me. And of course, I felt that I would be held to blame. He was our priest. I was a schoolgirl.’ In the wake of the appalling catalogue of revelations of clerical child abuse outlined by the Commission into the Dublin Archdiocese, one victim tells of her treatment by a man identified in the Murphy report only as ‘Fr Horatio.’
Sunday Independent
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/i-could-not-tell-anybody-because-i-felt-no-one-would-believe-me-and-of-course-i-felt-that-i-would-be-held-to-blame-he-was-our-priest-i-was-a-schoolgirl-1973168.html
Sunday December 13 2009
IN 1980, Fr Horatio was moved to a chaplaincy after parents complained that he had abused their 15-year-old son in a gay nightclub. That was the year he came into the life of Mary, a shy 10-year-old girl whom he showered with gifts and attention, grooming her for an abusive sexual relationship that lasted three years. Until Judge Yvonne Murphy’s report on clerical sex abuse was published, she thought she was his only victim. The report revealed that he had also abused two 15-year-old boys, and had been for treatment at the Granada Institute, a clinic for sexual abusers. Yet he remained a parish priest until she reported him to the authorities in 2005. He is now retired from active ministry.
This is Mary’s story: “I was 10 when Fr Horatio came to our parish. He was a real Fr Trendy. He was a good-looking man and used to wear Doc Martens. He was around 40 then and a charmer. People used to say how charismatic he was. My family were religious, particularly my grandmother who lived with us. There was me, my three siblings and my mam and dad. Fr Horatio made friends with the family very quickly. He used to come for dinner and celebrate house Masses, the usual family Catholic rituals that we had back then.
“From the age of 12, he began to send me birthday cards and Valentine’s cards and I suppose that was when it started.
“I was a quiet child. I came in the middle of the family and I suppose I felt isolated. My older siblings were very outgoing and had their own interests. Whenever Fr Horatio came to the house, he made me feel special. He gave me loads of attention. I used to draw Snoopy pictures for him and put them in his pocket. He used to sign his cards ‘your special friend’. My grandmother used to say ‘wasn’t I lucky to be getting cards from a priest?’
“He started buying me presents — a religious icon for my 13th birthday, a silver chain with purple stones and a pair of earrings which he brought back for me from his holidays.
“When I was 15, his interest in me grew stronger, the presents got more personal and the physical contact started. On my 15th birthday, he bought me perfume, Yardley Pure Silk. He gave me books to read, inviting me down to the presbytery to pick them from his shelves.
“He used to hug me and say things like: ‘If life is tough, you can rely on me.’ I remember asking him if he was ever going to leave the parish. He said ‘No, I’m here to stay. I’ll always be here for you’. At the altar, he would look down at me and give me a wink. I would think: ‘Oh, is that for me?’ I was just 15 and a lonely kid. I was painfully shy. Naturally I felt chuffed. But looking back now, I can see that he was grooming me.
“I had joined a folk group to try and make some friends. On my 16th birthday we sang at evening Mass.
“The folk group got me a cake to celebrate afterwards and Fr Horatio said: ‘When you’re finished come over to the presbytery’.
“He had his own rooms, a sitting room and a bedroom, upstairs in the presbytery. The parish priest lived downstairs. At different times, other priests lived there too.
“That evening, in his room, Fr Horatio said: ‘Can I give you a birthday kiss?’ I thought he meant a kiss on the cheek. It was a full-on kiss. He was 43 at that stage and I was such an innocent. I had never even had a boyfriend. I went home in a tizz. Part of me knew what he had done was wrong but I was so naive I thought maybe I had misunderstood it.
“He started inviting me to the presbytery after school. I would show up in my school uniform and no one ever passed a comment, even though I had to pass the parish priest’s rooms to go upstairs and often had to let myself out again.
“One evening after school, he took things further. He sat on the couch and he put his hand up my skirt. I froze. He said: ‘You will get used to it and you will come to like it’.
“But I never did. I hated it but I wanted to please him. He had built up his power over me during all the years of him being in our house, of making me feel important to him, that he was only doing it because ‘I care about you’.
“He spent all of my 16th year trying to have sex with me. I could not do it. Physically I just wasn’t able. That did not stop him trying.
“Not long after my 16th birthday, he gave me a book, The Joy of Sex, and told me to take it away and read it.
“He brought me to his cottage in the country on Fridays. He would bring a brown single mattress rolled up in the boot of his car, and an itchy brown patchwork quilt that some poor woman probably sat stitching away at for hours for him. The cottage was cold and basic. He used to try to have sex with me there and when I couldn’t, he would tell me to do things to him, even though I was distraught and crying. He always kept a kitchen towel beside him.
“I was confused and upset. I could not tell anybody because I felt no one would believe me. And of course, I felt that I would be held to blame. He was our priest. I was a schoolgirl.
“When the sexual activity started, the stress became so bad that I got eczema. The skin on my face was raw. Fr Horatio suggested that I go on the pill even though I was only 16. He said to me you can tell the doctor that you need the pill to improve your skin. How he knew this I don’t know. The thing was, I hadn’t even started menstruating at the time.
“Fr Horatio put a fear in me that I can’t really describe. I was waiting for this awful thing to happen each time I was with him. But the way he saw it was he was doing me a favour. He was preparing me for the world.
“I lost my virginity on my 17th birthday. He gave me altar wine. I had never had alcohol before. The sex was horrible, cold and calculating. I remember listening in religion class to the teacher saying sex was for someone special, for someone that you love. I remember thinking that maybe he must love me because he’s doing all these things to me. That night on my birthday, I asked him did he love me. He said ‘no, not yet’. Afterwards, he flicked on his priest’s collar to go say Mass, leaving me to make my own way out of the presbytery.
“He often took me out, to restaurants, concerts and to the cinema. When I was 16, he took me on trips to London and Scotland. In Scotland, we stayed in a large house, it could have been a monastery, where a priest opened the door to us and showed us to a dormitory.
“Other priests must have known what was going on. He brought me to Wexford once to see a friend of his, a priest, who was an alcoholic.
“No one seemed to think this was strange.
“One day Fr Horatio told me he got keys from Sean Fortune (the notorious child abuser who is now dead) to a house in the country and that he was going to take me there.“Later I wondered how friendly they were with each other that they would exchange keys.
“Fr Horatio never acknowledged that what he was doing was wrong. As I got older, I got braver and asked if he ever had done this before. He told me he had been with two women. Sometime after that, he told me I should have an Aids test. When I asked why, he said: ‘Remember one of the women I told you about? She had a lot of partners’.
“When I was 18, and at a stage when I wanted him out of my life, I sat on a harbour wall and thought how easy it would be to throw myself in and it would all stop. At 19, I knew that I had to get away from him.
“I think he sensed that because then he started talking about marriage.
“He spoke to Bishop Donal Murray, then an auxiliary bishop, about wanting to marry me. But, according to the Murphy report, he never disclosed how old I was or the history of sexual activity.
“Fr Horatio was moved to another parish.
“I went to see him there and, one morning when he went to say Mass, I found an old-fashioned brown case full of pornography in his room.“When he returned, I made clear my disgust. For me to even say this was a huge thing. I never, ever questioned him or spoke out of turn. We drove up to his cottage and he burnt them as though to say ‘are you happy now?’“That was a turning point. I had started my first job by then. A girl my own age who I worked with invited me out with her friends . . . I thought this was another world.“I met him one lunchtime near where I worked. I told him I did not want to see him anymore. I remember saying I needed to get away from him. He was crying. I just walked out. I don’t know where I got that strength from.
“I met my husband soon after that. I had started to drink quite heavily. Every day of my life, this hung on my shoulders. I just wanted to forget about it.“I was ashamed of what happened and put the whole burden of it on myself: why hadn’t I stopped it? Why didn’t I see what he was doing? I was beating myself up.
“Before we married, I told my husband sporadic bits of what had happened, thinking that he should go away and not get involved with me.“He kept coming back. If he didn’t, I could have easily gone down a very bad path. His gentleness and goodness kept me on the right track.“We were married and had our first baby when Fr Horatio made contact in 1995. I was all over the place emotionally then. When my daughter was born, I knew that I needed to get some help so I could make some sense on what happened to me. We went for a walk in the park. I said to myself I will be brave and confront him. But I just felt like that kid again who couldn’t put two words together. So I said nothing.“Later on, he was appointed a parish priest. I went to his house on the bus to confront him about what he had done to me. I got there and I just couldn’t do it. The confidence just left me.
“It was 2003 before I went to counselling. It took me a long time to get there and a lot of drinking. I knew that he did not deserve to be a parish priest. I knew that he should be held responsible for what he did. Two years later, I made a complaint to the archdiocese and to the gardai.“He was removed from his parish within a week.“Fr Horatio never denied anything. He admitted that what I said was true but he claimed it was a loving, mutual relationship. I know now what a mutual loving relationship is and that was not what I experienced with him.
“The Director of Public Prosecutions did not press charges against Fr Horatio in my case. But I feel vindicated by the Murphy report.“It confirmed that what happened to me was child sexual abuse and said he also admitted to abusing two 15-year-old boys. It is now clear that Fr Horatio had a history of problems that were known to the archdiocese. The Church authorities had received two complaints about him before mine. He seemed to have been in and out of the Granada Institute.
By MAEVE SHEEHAN
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