When my (now departed) husband Ron was 10, his father died. Coming from a religious family, a student at a Catholic grammer school, his greiving mother was RELIEVED and honored that one of the priests 'took him under his wing.'

What she would never know was the truth. That his long excesses with booze, smoking and sexual promiscuity --which broke her heart-- all started at the age of 10, in the room of that priest, where he smoked his first cigars, and was introduced to hard liquor, hot movies, pornographic magazines, and, things his psyche had to bury deep for many years.

Ron was just one of many boys at the rectory, which he would liken to a country club. All but one priest had their own special groups of boys in their private residences. They were taken to Coney Island, out for pizza and treats, given spending money at times...so well groomed, these very young boys developed the belief that they were special enough to be chosen to become men...members of some 'secret society' because they were worthy.

As an adult, now married and reflective...and, somewhat ready to find closure, he wrote about it as part of a scathing aspect of two of his book's characters, who, in the hands of wonton clerics themselves, would become as cynical as he had, one compassionate but lost in identity issues, the other hardened and cruel.

In a story based upon his life experiences, my husband chose himself as the hapless hero, the son of this hardened 'father' yet, with all the aspects of both these men. In the end, reflection and maturity finally frees him of his demons. Unfortunately, Ron died before we finished the book. But, by then, he learned to love himself, forgive his mother's blindness, although his cynicism towards anything remotely religious remained intact til his last breath.


When you ask how a mother would allow a child to be out so late and have a sleepover, maybe she is as naive as Ron's mother was...for where could a child be safer, than in the hands of God?

Perhaps this news story is a whole other ballgame; if so, I apologise for mistakenly personalizing it with our experience. I will never have closure.