Читать книгу UnHoly Communion-Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators, and Priests - Hank Ph.D. Estrada - Страница 4

In 1985 I reluctantly and publicly “came out” on a local morning television talk show as one of the first adult male survivors of incest. That same year, while living in Los Angeles, California, I found myself forming a nonprofit organization for non-offending adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, another first. Then I self-published Recovery For Male Victims Of Child Sexual Abuse, a book about my own recovery journey. Following subsequent years of intense public advocacy work, I eventually realized and accepted the purpose for my humiliating molestation disclosure with tremendous gratitude. I was finally able to confidently enjoy the emotional peace of not having to talk about being a survivor of incest and child abuse, or about my personal “healing” journey.

Approximately nineteen years later, in the spring of 2004, while living contently in northern New Mexico, I felt my sense of personal security suddenly challenged by yet another sexual assault, a psychological trauma I thought I had conquered and buried long ago. I learned of a Southern California man who alleged that a Catholic priest whom he sought out for spiritual direction had seduced him.

I discovered that the priest he identified as his perpetrator was the same priest who, in the late 1970s, had sexually assaulted me while I was in college and a Catholic seminarian under his supervision! Admittedly I was shocked, angered, and upset to hear a complete stranger tell me, in very familiar detail, how Father John Raab, C.M.F., a Roman Catholic priest, had seduced him with friendship, trust, and intimate gestures of affection. I had never spoken publicly about this experience to anyone; but now I realize, I simply have no other choice but to do so.

As of this printing, Father John Raab, C.M.F., remains an active ordained priest with the Western Province of the Claretian Missionary Order in Los Angeles, where we first met. What follows here is the painfully honest and intimate story of this survivor’s lifelong battle against pedophiles, a sexual predator priest, and those who protect them.