‘The Catholic church failed me. I despised myself and lost all confidence’

  An inquiry into child abuse by Catholic priests is published today. Its impact will be seismic, says victim and author of new book, Colm O’Gorman.

Few men have made such an extraordinary personal journey. Raped and abused in his early teens by Father Sean Fortune, one of Ireland’s most notorious paedophiles, Colm O’Gorman ran away from home when he was 17 and lived rough on the streets of Dublin. It was the Seventies, when both church and state were in full-blown denial that any priest could be guilty of sexually abusing a child, and Colm felt only shame and fear. His future could not have been bleaker.
 
 
Yet, with effort and determination he fought back, spoke out about the abuse, and in 2002 even tried to sue the Pope arguing that, by moving paedophile priests like Fortune to different parishes and deliberately concealing their actions from the local authorities, the Vatican had failed to protect children like him. He was outraged when the Pope claimed diplomatic immunity but, undaunted, continued to campaign that the authority of the Irish church should not be above that of the State.

Read Full Report at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5350878/The-Catholic-church-failed-me.-I-despised-myself-and-lost-all-confidence..html

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