Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Page #3

She'd say, "A priest would never do

something like that to children."

I kept it a secret.

My mother had already been

through so much pain.

My brother

had been electrocuted,

my father

had hung himself.

My mother had been through so much

pain and I didn't want to hurt her.

It was hard for me

to communicate with my father

and so, my dad would speak and

Father Murphy would interpret.

My father never wrote back and forth

because I didn't know

how to write well,

so I depended on Father Murphy

and the nuns

to communicate with my father.

My parents were hearing,

so we used home signs,

not true American Sign Language.

We had some gestures for things like

eating and for how the scolded me,

but they wouldn't actually sign

"Bad",

they would wag their finger at me.

And there was no TTY,

and my parents were far away,

so how could we possibly

have communicated?

Murphy took advantage

of children in that situation.

My question is,

what about the sisters?

Where were the nuns who were supposed

to be watching the children?

The nuns should have been

able to hear,

but they turned their heads

and looked the other way.

Murphy wasn't the only one

that nuns should have heard

creeping through the dorms at night.

Murphy enlisted older boys

in an organized system of abuse.

One of these was Tom Tannehill,

a high-school student who

had been molested by Murphy.

As a dorm supervisor,

Tom had used threats of discipline

to force victim

to perform oral sex on him.

Pat Kuehn was only seven

when Tom first molested him.

He now believes that Tom

was breaking him in for Murphy.

I was very innocent, naive.

After the first time Tom played

with me, I got used to it.

I felt so excited that he chose me

out of all the others.

It made me

feel special.

Bambi was the first movie

that I watched with captioning.

Which was really exciting.

I was sitting towards the back

of the audience, on the boys' side,

Father Murphy walked up behind me and

pushed me in the back of the head.

So I looked up and I waived because

I thought he was just saying hi.

And then,

I went back to watching.

And he nudged me again,

so I acknowledged him.

I think about it now

and it was probably his penis

bumping up against me.

He was playing with me.

In 1963, Father Murphy

went away for a few weeks.

During his absence,

there was a visiting priest

from Chicago named Father Walsh.

I could see Father Walsh signing

and I was watching him

and I thought, "You know what? I'm

going to try my best to tell him."

I think it was in confession.

And so, I told Father Walsh

about Father Murphy molesting me.

He didn't say anything, but I could

see his facial expression change.

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