Here’s an excerpt from a letter the Cardinal wrote to a Bennett supporter:
It is this kind of response that angers Kathy and Jim Laarveld. They say their family has paid a high cost for priest sexual abuse, and how the Archdiocese handled it.
Jim no longer goes to Mass. Kathy tries, but she sometimes starts to sob when she begins to walk into church.
She says their son, as a boy, was carefree, a firecracker. Now he is a compassionate man who has struggled because of the abuse.
“I look at him and I see the day he was born, all the hope, all the love, the sparkle in his eye, and his face,” Kathy said. “He’s a very playful individual, but he’ll catch himself, and I say, ‘Go for it. Be that little boy you could never be. You always had that over your head.’”
Her husband, Jim, plans to look at the documents. Their parish had two abusive priests at the same time.
“It’s going to hurt, although we know a lot of what’s in there, I’m sure there’s stuff we don’t know,” he said. “It’s going to hurt my son. Hopefully we can be with him when he looks at it, because I don’t want him to be alone.”
Kathy Laarveld expects that pain will be short-lived. She thinks seeing the documents — and the acknowledgement this all happened — will help her son, and her entire family, to heal.
And she hopes it brings healing to others as well.
Article Appeared @http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/survivors-lawyers-say-documents-prove-priest-sex-abuse-cover-109557