NEW YORK
Newsday
By Ron Howell
STAFF WRITER
December 15, 2002
The half-dozen men and women who gathered in the basement of the Park Slope Public Library said their lives had almost been destroyed.
They blamed their spiritual near-deaths on clergymen who sexually abused them as children. But they were equally critical of the secrecy that had caused them to suffer in isolation.
“I never told anyone till I was 24,” said David Cerulli, who told the group he was 14 when a Roman Catholic priest in Allentown, Pa., began to touch him, then later kiss him and finally have more intimate contact with him.
They blamed their spiritual near-deaths on clergymen who sexually abused them as children. But they were equally critical of the secrecy that had caused them to suffer in isolation.
“I never told anyone till I was 24,” said David Cerulli, who told the group he was 14 when a Roman Catholic priest in Allentown, Pa., began to touch him, then later kiss him and finally have more intimate contact with him.