We believe that the real number—of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward—is in the thousands.
Pennsylvania Grand Jury Investigation of the Catholic Church, 2018
The first time you saw him, he was leaning over one of the four fountain heads at the long white porcelain trough between the girls’ and boys’ bathroom in the freshman hallway. He lifted his head too quickly from the faucet, and a drip of water creeped from his lower lip down his chin. Though he dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand, you tried not to stare at the splash of water he didn’t reach. You didn’t know why, but you felt your face blush when you met his eyes.
“You must be Ann,” he said, not smiling.
“Yes?” you said, wiping your damp hands on your polyester school skirt.
“I’ve been meaning to introduce myself to you. I’m Father Arnold,” he said.
You smiled and giggled.
“I’ve heard great things about you,” he said, again, not smiling.
Even though it was the first week, high school wasn’t particularly intimidating to you. Your brother and sister were both upperclassmen. You already knew a good deal of their friends. Your family’s last name was reasonably well respected in your small town. Your grandfather was a generous and popular doctor, and your vast extended family were benefactors to Catholic parishes throughout the diocese. Dozens of kids with your last name had been pupils at your high school, their names scattered across the various engraved plaques for sports or honors lists.
There were four kids in your nuclear family—your brother, the oldest, and the girls. You were the middle girl. Academically and athletically average, not great. You had the slim body of a ballerina with unrealistic fantasies of attending Julliard. Your nicknames were “Giggle Box” and “Twinkle Toes.” To your face, people called you pretty. Behind your back, they called you an airhead.
“Stop by my office anytime if you need anything,” he said. You couldn’t imagine what you might need.
“Ok. Thanks!” you said with a giggle and chasséd past him, a movement you made when you didn’t know what else to say.
Everything and everyone you knew was Catholic. Growing up, Sunday mass was followed by donuts at your grandparents’ house with your extended family of aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, dozens of first, second, and third cousins. Sometimes a parish priest or nun would stop by. All the priests knew who you were. They might have gotten your name confused with one of your sisters, but so did most people.
You and your cousins played church in your grandparents’ backyard, near their statue of the Virgin Mary. You’d adorn the stone with daisy chains and sing songs from the church hymnals your grandparents owned. Your grandmother kept a stash of Necco wafers above the refrigerator. You and your cousins practiced giving and receiving Communion. At home, you and your siblings played funeral. You’d wrap your little sister in a blanket and lay her on the coffee table, pretending she was in a coffin. You’d kneel and pray for your dead sister. You liked being the priest. “Let us pray,” you’d say.
Father Arnold was assigned to your family’s church. You read at mass, brought up the gifts, volunteered with the nuns in the kitchen. Your grandparents stood at the altar, side by side with the priests, giving out Communion.
To become friends with Father Arnold was not strange. And you did.
Father Arnold was a balding white man in his mid-forties, tall and slender with pockmarks reminiscent of teenage acne on his face. He had a slight Southern accent and wore priest-casual all-black pants and button-down shirt, with the standard exposed rectangular white collar below his Adam’s apple. Prior to his assignment to teach senior theology in your high school, he was a high school principal and girls’ basketball coach somewhere else in Pennsylvania. After your first meeting at the water fountain, you ran into Father Arnold in the freshman hallway on a regular basis, which always surprised you; his classroom was in the senior hallway, on the other side of campus.
One day, Father Arnold found you in the hall and said he had something for you in his office. He guided you through a set of double doors and then another door that looked like an exit but led to a trailer annex, a part of the high school you didn’t know existed. It was quiet. No one else was there.
His office, a few doors down on the left, would eventually become familiar to you. The smell of new carpet. One window facing the backside of the high school. The squat ceiling and series of white plastic strips creating a grid of two by four feet rectangles. The space in between, spongey, droopy. The floor heater, red light indicating “on.” The dining room–style chairs around a round wooden table, lace table runner. The two plush chairs, not matching, arranged at a slight angle toward one another, like a talk show set. The end tables next to each chair, doily coasters, desk lamps with on-off pull-chains, soft yellow light. Fluorescent overhead lights, dark.
He invited you to sit on one of the cozy chairs. He offered you a cup of tea. He left his office with two mugs to fill them in the kitchen, somewhere in the annex. He closed the door behind him.
You waited alone for him to return, curious. His office reminded you of a living room. Not the living room in your own house but that of a proud uncle showing off his family tree with dozens of framed photos, leaving hardly any wall space unoccupied. The frames were different sizes, styles, and widths, and evenly distributed across the four walls. The wall in front of you reminded you of a high school yearbook. Eight-by-ten–inch headshots of white girls with big bangs, clear skin, pink lipstick, blue eyeshadow, gold chain necklaces, some with a cross, V-neck chunky-ribbed sweaters. A few five-by-seven–inch framed photos on top of his desk in the corner. One of the other walls had framed poster-sized photos of girls’ basketball teams, with the season year printed on the top right corner. Surrounding the posters were framed newspaper clippings of girls with basketballs, dribbling, guarding, shooting, hugging. You noticed a few of the girls appeared several times in the frames—a headshot and a newspaper clipping or a headshot and a closeup of the same girl in a basketball uniform. You also noticed there were no boys.
Father Arnold returned with two cups of tea. He placed one on the doily coaster nearest you, the other next to the chair where he sat at an angle.
“Your office is so cool!” you said, smiling.
“Thank you,” he said, not smiling.
“Who are all these girls?” you asked.
“Some of the girls I coached at my previous high school. . . .” he said, standing, walking towards a poster-sized team photo.
“Wow. There are so many!” you said. You did not play basketball.
He began telling you something, but you weren’t paying attention. Your eyes couldn’t focus, roaming from image to image, girl to girl. You didn’t have any uncles like him, and you had a lot of uncles.
He finished his story, walked to his desk, picked up a book, and brought it back with him to his chair.
“One of the brothers mentioned your parents have recently separated. I wanted you to know that I’m always happy to talk with you about how you are doing at home. I imagine it’s lonely, and I thought this book of prayers could come in handy,” he said, giving you the book, not smiling.
It was the early 1990s. Divorce was taboo in your town. All your friends had a mom and a dad who lived together. You didn’t want people to know your dad had left. You were embarrassed when tears came to your eyes and your nose dripped.
After tea, he gave you a hall slip to take back to the teacher whose class you had skipped. That’s how it began, and how it continued. Him finding you in a hallway, inviting you to his office, then leaving his office with a hall slip. In sophomore year, once your parents’ divorce was finalized and your brother had left for college, Father Arnold began visiting you at the house where you lived with your mom and sisters.
He’d visit in the evenings. Your mom would prepare cups of tea. The two of you would sit at the kitchen table while your mom was in view, busy cleaning, or just busy. Your sisters never seemed to be around when he stopped by.
“Mom, I think Father Arnold has a crush on you!” you’d tease your mom once he left.
“Stop it. Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d scold you.
He bought you a Christmas gift that year. And an Easter gift. For your sixteenth birthday, at the end of summer before junior year, he treated you to a fancy dinner. He told you to dress up. It was a long drive. You babysat kids whose parents went to that restaurant. Not your own. Cloth napkins, two forks, a bread plate, thick paper menus, dim chandeliers. He had a glass of red wine. You had steak. A candle on top of the ice cream you ordered for dessert.
Father Arnold was a regular guest at your house by the time you were a junior. During the Christmas holiday, your mom prepared a tray of cookies while you and Father Arnold sat at the table. He gave you a small box. Inside were sterling silver hoop earrings. You always wanted sterling silver hoop earrings.
“They’re beautiful!” you said. You giggled when you felt him looking at you.
He then gave you a sealed envelope with your name typed on the outside. Inside the envelope was a typed letter. You read it while your mom read over your shoulder.
“Isn’t that nice,” she said.
“Thank you, Father Arnold,” you said. Your first instinct was to be gracious.
“You’ve very welcome. I hope you can join me,” he said. No smile.
He finished his cup of tea. You and your mom walked him to the front door and wished him a merry Christmas.
December 25, 1993
Dear Ann,
Blessings to you on this holy day.
For your seventeenth birthday, I invite you to join me for the University of XX’s homecoming football game September 22–26. We will visit with my good friends from high school, Diane and Bruce, who live in XX and are excited to meet you. I will cover tickets to the game, airfare, hotel, food, and other expenses. You will need to make up any assignments from the three days of school which you will miss. Your absence will be excused.
My blessings to you and your family during this sacred time of our Savior’s birth.
Yours in faith,
Father Arnold
Your seventeenth birthday was eight months away.
Your mom went back to the kitchen and was busy. You started up the stairs to your room when you realized that if you left the earrings and invitation at the table, your sisters would see them and make fun of you. You changed direction, retrieved the evidence, and ran past your mom washing dishes at the sink. You did not chassé. You locked your bedroom door behind you.
The rest of the school year carried on. You continued to see Father Arnold in his office and receive hall slips. He continued to visit you at your home. You’d see him at mass. He never stopped by your grandparents’ for Sunday donuts.
Your seventeenth birthday came around at the end of August, just before the beginning of senior year. He didn’t come over to your house, he didn’t give you an additional gift, he didn’t treat you to dinner. He sent you a generic Christian birthday card in the mail. No additional handwritten note. Just his name.
School started in early September and Father Arnold, finally, was your senior theology teacher. Two weeks later, Father Arnold asked to see you after class. He waited for your classmates to leave, then shut the door.
He handed you another envelope. These were plane tickets. Scheduled to depart one week later. Thick white paper. Perforated on the right hand-side, seat assignments. You heard the clock ticking above the blackboard. Your nose tickled from the chalk dust. You didn’t sneeze.
“Thanks!” you said.
“One thing you should know is that I can’t find a hotel with two rooms because it’s homecoming weekend. I reserved a room with two queen beds. I can leave the room at six so you can get ready. It won’t be a problem,” he said.
“Ok. Thanks!” you said, made a giggling sound, and chasséd out the door.
You were a few minutes late for your next class. Your teacher excused your tardiness without a hall slip. You didn’t tell any of your friends about the trip. You thought it was better to be an airhead than a teacher’s pet. You prayed for something to happen. You weren’t sure what.
When you finally got home, you went to the bathroom and thought you would vomit or have diarrhea. You did both. You were scared and ashamed but you didn’t know why. You considered not telling your mom what he told you. But you did. Before your sisters came home.
“Hmm,” she said.
“Yeah,” you said.
“And he gave you the plane tickets?” she asked.
You dug in your backpack and gave them to her.
Your mom took the tickets and put them in the china closet in the dining room, where she kept things she didn’t want to lose.
Your mom went back to the kitchen, busy with something. You went up to your room until your sisters were home and your mom called you all for dinner.
The next morning, as you were leaving the house to catch the bus, your mom gave you an envelope addressed to Father Arnold. It was not typed.
“Give this to Father Arnold after class,” she said.
“What does it say?” you asked.
“Just make sure you give it to him,” she said.
You did.
Father Arnold did not open the envelope in front of you. You were not late for your next class. You did not see him in the hall that day.
After school, you asked your mom, again, “What did you write to Father Arnold?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
But you did worry about it. You worried what it said, if you were still supposed to be going to some random homecoming game with him, if he would give you bad grades in theology. You worried you would get in trouble. You weren’t sure what kind of trouble, but you thought you’d done something wrong.
From that day on, you no longer ran into Father Arnold in the hall. He stopped visiting. You received no more gifts. No more hall slips.
You wondered if this was what it felt like to be dumped.
August 20, 2001
Dear Bishop W.,
I graduated from XX High School in 1995. Since then, I have wanted to tell you about my relationship with Father Arnold, who taught senior theology and was a pastor at XX. But I have never known where to begin. I wanted you to know that Father Arnold and I were friends. He never touched me. But I worry if I don’t say anything, I worry about the kinds of friendships he makes with high school girls. I worry that if I went to XX with him, I worry about the relationships he had with girls before me, and maybe after me. He never touched me, what he did to me was not sexual abuse. He was my friend. I don’t know where to begin.
For decades, you wrote the bishop dozens of letters, never sent.
Twenty years after you graduated from high school, a grand jury report was published in Pennsylvania that included hundreds of letters from concerned parents, parishioners, and even members of the clergy who reported a range of troubling behavior of the priests who served their communities. These letters brought the bishops’ attention to priests raping and abusing young boys and girls, including at least once impregnating a minor, taking children on vacations, sharing beds, “wrestling,” touching in public, groping, masturbating. The report covered decades and hundreds of priests. Some priests abused multiple children over those decades, other priests targeted individual children over several years. These children’s families were often financially struggling or going through challenges like divorce or illness. Gifts were common, as was time spent alone with the children in offices, rectories, basements, bedrooms. Most of the sexual abuse occurred with boys, but girls were also victims. Some families were given settlements. Some priests went through “psychological treatment.” Most often, priests were reassigned to a different parish without any investigation after an accusation was made. A fraction of the priests were defrocked before they retired or died years before the report came out.
Your relationship with Father Arnold was not criminal. The only mention of him in the report is by association. He was transferred to a different diocese at some point. He is now retired from the priesthood.
It’s been nearly thirty years since the water fountain. Your mom is still reluctant to tell you what she wrote in the letter. All she’s ever said is, “He got his hand stuck in the cookie jar.” She is still busy.
You have your own daughter now. She doesn’t know any priests.
You wonder if it’s too late to write your own letter.
