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It’s in 1955. Eisenhower is President and the Cold War is at its height, yet life on Sycamore Drive in the mid-sized city of Riverport, Illinois seems idyllic and sweet.
Much of the neighborhood’s social life centers on St. Mary’s Catholic Church, its parish school and a group of families that have known each other for generations. But then the revelation of inappropriate interactions with some of the altar boys at the church comes to light. Suddenly, they and their parents are at the center of the emerging sex abuse scandal, a drama that was unimaginable at the time. After all, the priest was seen as God’s representative on earth; the Church was believed to be incapable of harboring evil itself.
And so a story known to us all these years later began to play out, featuring the power and influence of the Catholic Church, the belief that an abuser could be safely reassigned after being sent off to be cured, and then the Church’s unparalleled effort to protect herself. The strange and unanticipated interaction between two families on Sycamore Drive provides the setting for the beginning of this story.
It then grows to reveal a brilliant but eccentric neighbor, a courageous teacher at the school, a young priest who dares to look at signs that others ignore, and, of course, the clergy and church leaders who are either naive or extremely irresponsible - or both.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It didn’t need to be this way. I remember experiencing this thought back in 2002 when the explosive news was first reported in Boston about child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Many priests were implicated in the pedophilia scandal, but perhaps the most startling revelation was that the Church hierarchy had full knowledge. There was a cover-up at work.
The news from Boston was the beginning point. Soon, similar revelations were occurring at different dioceses across the country. The cover-up was extensive. Initially, the Catholic Church used as their defense that the situation was merely the result of a few, disturbed priests and that efforts were underway to reign in the actions of these few. Future prevention efforts were not on the front burner. But as the news revealed widespread cases, and that many of the guilty priests were being transferred from parish to parish to avoid discovery, the Church went into a defensive mode. Some efforts were made to even suggest the cause of the abuse centered on homosexual involvement rather than pedophilia. The public relations’ efforts on the part of the Church to minimize the damage continued.
It was some time after that I decided to write Sycamore Drive. As a lifelong Catholic, I felt anger and disbelief at the actions of the Catholic hierarchy in trying to deal with the scandal in a less than straightforward manner. Church members were angry, and the lack of acceptance of responsibility was a major reason for this anger. In my hometown, I was aware of one such abusive priest who was linked to dozens of abused children.
Ultimately, at his trial, it was revealed that he had been transferred to numerous different parishes through his years of abuse. These transfers occurred after his actions were reported to the Archbishop by irate parents. And in the case of this particular priest, he also revealed that he had told the local hierarchy of his guilt, and asked that he not be allowed to associate with children. His request was denied. There was no culpability, no acceptance of responsibility on the part of the hierarchy.
