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Sunday, February 20, 2005

Games pedophiles play

Baltimore, Maryland --

A priest being convicted of child molestation may no longer be front page news, but that doesn't mean the problem can be relegated to the inside pages of our collective conscience.

Thursday defrocked Roman Catholic priest Maurice Blackwell was convicted of molesting an altar boy during the 1990s, while serving at a church in Baltimore.

Sadly, we have heard some version of this story so often that we are now desensitized. But the Blackwell story is not exactly the same old story. A decade after alleging Blackwell molested him, Dontee Stokes shot and wounded the priest on the street in a fit of rage when Blackwell refused to apologize, the Associated Press reported.

"In May 2002, as the sex scandal that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church was unfolding in Boston, a tormented Stokes shot Blackwell three times in the hip and hand on a city street," AP reported.

The condensed version of what likely happened is that current events forced Stokes to relive a painful past. His past was especially painful because after suffering at the hands of a respected representative of God and all that is supposed to be good, authorities took no real action when he reported the abuse.

"Stokes reported the alleged abuse in 1993, at age 17, but prosecutors declined to press charges. He testified that he did not report the abuse earlier because he didn't want Blackwell to be removed, because of his stature in the community," AP reported.

Read the article at Ledger-Enquirer dated 02/19/2005
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