I saw an advertisement on TV today for an upcoming toy train exhibit at the Knoxville Expo Center. Huge displays of trains with long winding tracks, landscapes, villages, imitation ponds and lakes. It looked so idealic. Like a Norman Rockwell painting. Families will go there and enjoy the day. Dads and Moms will laugh and smile as they watch their sons and daughters enjoy the meanderings of the toy trains.
Then I remembered the boys. The 11-year-old olds. The 10-year-old olds. The 12-year-olds. The ones whose parents dropped them off at Father Edward McKeown's house, the rectory where he had a huge train set up in the basement. The house where he gathered boys for sleepovers to play with the toy train set. To have innocent fun. Or so the parents thought.
But Father McKeown never had enough room for the boys to sleep. Seems like one boy always found himself sharing the bed with McKeown. And the stage for McKeown to molest was set, organized every bit as meticulously as his elaborate train set and fake landscape and sleepovers. Arranged to feed his evil predilection for these boys, whose parents trusted him. The rape of childhood had begun.
I know so many men, once happy children in small Tennessee towns, who will not attend a toy train show this weekend. They can't. The very sights and sounds of those trains will nauseate them and fill them with revulsion and despair. Their childhood was robbed from them by McKeown. The church officials knew. They did nothing.
McKeown was put in jail years and years later by an irate non-Catholic mother whose son was molested by the wicked ex-priest McKeown. In a trailer park where he lived. Long after the diocese of Nashville turned the monster loose to abuse where they could turn their shameful faces away and not see.
Clergy sexual abuse ruins lives in so many ways, hidden dreadful ways. The toy trains are dust-covered and put away in attics as grown men weep for their childhood lost.
Keep Edward McKeown in prison. Away from his toy train set. Away from the young boys. Your sons. Your neighbors.
Ask your bishop to tell us the names of all of these evil clergy predators. It's the least they could do.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
It is a bad, difficult time for everyone who has any dealings with clergy sexual abuse. It is with heavy heart that we see that situation wi...
-
At the request of the Nashville media, I am going to briefly summarize the issues that surround the accused pedophile priest, Paul St. Charl...
-
I am so sick to death of these arrogant, self-righteous adults! Here is the picture of a molester of young boys. Dan DuPree. AKA Father Da...
1 comment:
I played at his house, was an alter boy and knew of his "collection" he kept in his closet. My kids will never know the Catholic faith due to this man and what he took away from me.
Post a Comment