An altar boy who stole $100,000 from the Catholic church in Pennsylvania says it was ‘revenge’ for years of sexual abuse by pedophile priests.
Mike McDonnell was abused from the age of 10 by two priests in the Diocese of Philadelphia, including on a vacation by a priest who forced him to share his bed.
The church eventually agreed to pay for therapy for McDonnell, who claimed he was going to counseling sessions six times a week.
Mike McDonnell was abused for years by pedophile Catholic priests in Philadelphia, and subsequently stole $100,000 that was supposed to be spent on therapy
In fact he was forging receipts for the vast majority of the sessions and ended up stealing $100,000 before he was caught.
In 2011, McDonnell was jailed for a year with five years of probation.
He is now speaking out about the abuse and his years of crime after a grand jury report exposed serial sexual abuse by more than 300 priests across Pennsylvania with more than 1,000 identifiable victims.
‘I sought retribution in the form of submitting false invoices for a number of years,’ McDonnell said.
‘For me it’s important to be honest and share that story. I didn’t run from this issue.
I was held accountable for my actions in a court of law. Can we say that about the Catholic Church today?’
McDonnell said the abuse started at age 10, but he didn’t really know what was happening to him at that age.
But at age 12 he woke up to find a priest molesting him while on vacation after the man forced McDonnell to share his bed. That episode ‘broke’ him, he said.
McDonnell did eventually sue two priests who he claimed abused him but were not covered by the most recent grand jury report, having been exposed in prior reports.
One of them was defrocked and the other moved from a public ministry, but the pair could not be criminally prosecuted because too much time had passed.
McDonnell, who was sentenced to a year in jail for the theft, said it was right for the courts to hold him responsible – but says the church has been allowed to avoid it
He is now calling on the statue of limitations to be lifted on child sex abuse cases because victims often aren’t able to seek justice for years afterward (pictured, the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, in Philadelphia)
McDonnell, who also suffered through alcoholism and broken marriages as a result of the abuse, is now asking for the statute of limitations to be lifted on historic child sex abuse cases.
Youth advocates say a statute of limitations can block justice since it may take decades for children to realize they were victimized.
Some 41 U.S. states have eliminated statutes of limitations for criminally prosecuting child sex abuse.
In 2002, Pennsylvania was among the first to raise the age for reporting child sexual abuse when it lifted the age to 30 from 23. Five years later it raised the age to 50.
The grand jury report, released on August 16, detailed a decades-long litany of serious sexual abuse across Pennsylvania by priests and a campaign of cover-ups by some of the church’s highest-ranking members.
The report details crimes such as vaginal and anal rape, abuse by an HIV-positive priest, and at least one case where a girl fell pregnant after being raped.
‘Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all,’ the report says.
‘For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted.’
The grand jury said the church developed ‘a playbook for concealing the truth’.
McDonnell added: ‘These bishops and the dioceses and the Cardinals need to come clean. You need to tell the Catholic faith community what you did.
‘How you covered it up, how you transferred one to another parish so that he would go on and abuse more children.
‘No one knew more about these abuses and no one did less,’ he said.