When I saw the name of the priest who molested me listed in the Pennsylvania grand jury’s report, I thought: I’m gonna be in big trouble. The abuse started when I was about 12 years old, so it’s not a surprise that the language that came to mind was straight out of that period of my life.
I scanned through the nearly 900 pages of the report that was released by the attorney general last week. It detailed abuse in six dioceses over 70 years, listing more than 300 abusive priests. The accounts were horrifying — young victims were given gold cross necklaces to signal to other predators that they were ‘optimal targets’ — and the documentation of what happened is surely a good thing.
But what stunned me was my second reaction: a perplexing disappointment that I still don’t know whether I was his only victim. Of course, I didn't want others to have experienced what I did. But I did want some confirmation that his behavior was part of a pattern.
In the 1960s, Catholic priests were a special class of bachelors, fed pot roast dinners by a bucket brigade of parish women, so when Father Bradel came to our house in central Pennsylvania for the first of many regular visits, my mother got out the good china.
Then our family sat stifled into silence as he held forth on evils of the changing times, reserving special fury for the New Mass, where the organ was replaced by a guitar and tambourine, and where laypeople carried felt banners decorated with handprints and doves. Taking her cue, my mother once asked him what he thought of my Catholic high school teacher who’d assigned the book “A Clockwork Orange” to his class despite a church ban on the movie.
We weren’t just Mass-on-Sunday Catholics. My mother had laundered the parish vestments when the parish was newly founded, and my father put 10 percent of his take-home pay in the collection basket every week for his entire life. My sisters and I went to parochial school; I wrote flowery poems about the Virgin Mary for the church bulletin. And in the dining room, behind where Father Bradel sat, hung a gold-framed reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”
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When my mother asked about the Catholic teacher’s defiant assignment, the priest slammed his palm on table. The plates jumped. The water in the water glasses sloshed. The lamp over the table vibrated ever so slightly. “I want to know what Patty thinks,” he said. He turned his mastiff-like head in my direction. My three younger sisters looked at me in awe, as if they were expecting me to turn the water into wine. My father looked on in pity. My mother adopted a pose of polite curiosity.
I found myself answering, slowly at first, then, under the blaze of his questions, articulating an opinion in favor of the assignment. Until now, ours was a home where only the adults had opinions. I waited to be sent away from the table for this heresy — or for my mother to mete out the real punishment later, to the backs of my legs with a wooden spoon. But when I finished, Father Bradel made the sign of the cross over my head. My father exhaled. My mother adopted a tight smile. Amen.
The dinners became a tradition. One night, Father Bradel arrived early. My mother, who grew up in an era when girls tap-danced or recited poetry for guests, said to me, “Go in the living room and entertain Father Bradel.” She ushered the two of us into the living room, that museum of suburban propriety, and left. Father Bradel and I stood there awkwardly, as if we were waiting to be introduced. He was wearing a long black cassock and stiff white clerical collar; I was in my school uniform and knee socks.
With no warning, he pulled me to him, crushing me in the blackness of his robe, my cheek so close to his heart that I could hear it pounding. He pulled back, appraising me. I looked away, terrified by this display, focusing intently on a nearby studio portrait of me and my sisters. He bent his knees, so we were at eye level, and tipped my chin toward him. Then he kissed me, his lips wet and flaccid, his mouth open wide enough that his teeth dug into my lower lip. His tongue probed for mine. I stood frozen, my arms at my sides.
It was my first kiss.
Sure, children were raped, but if Catholics don’t eat as much, we’ll call it a draw.