‘I HOPE THE GATES OF HELL ARE OPEN WIDE’
Abuse survivor says Law’s indifference rewarded by church
Alexa MacPherson held up an old photo of herself as a little girl, smiling with a few curls framing her innocent face.
At the time, MacPherson was about 6 years old and had already been sexually abused by Dorchester pastor Peter Kanchong for three years.
The horror started when she was 3 years old and finally ended when she was 9, she said, when her father pulled Kanchong off her as he was about to rape her on the family’s living room couch in 1984. That was the same year Cardinal Bernard Law came to Boston.
“He never fully addressed the crisis. He never reached out to us. He never inquired about our wellbeing or put protective measures in place to stop this atrocious behavior,” said MacPherson, a 42-year-old mother of two daughters who now lives in Holbrook.
“Instead, he allowed more shuffling. He hid it. He requested his bishops and the local priests and the pastors to just hide it, to cover it up,” MacPherson said. “With his passing, I say, I hope the gates of hell are open wide to welcome him.”
MacPherson spoke at an emotional press conference alongside sex abuse survivors Robert Costello and Phil Saviano and attorney Mitchell Garabedian.
She held up the childhood photo.
“This is who you need to remember. This little girl right here is who I was when this abuse was happening and people forget that. This is who I used to be, a smiling, carefree child but that’s not fully who I became,” she said. “This is who you need to remember when you look at us now.”
What angers her most, MacPherson said, is that Law was never held accountable.
“He was rewarded with a prestigious position in the Vatican and he moved on with his life and he forgot about us over here,” she said.
MacPherson broke down in tears, recalling how she and her family were left to pick up the pieces. Kanchong was a pastor at St. Margaret’s Church and had sexually abused two of her brothers, she said.
“You covered it up,” she said. “You made us disappear.”
Her parents filed a criminal complaint against Kanchong in Dorchester District Court and he was put on probation for a year.
Today, she said, Kanchong lives in Dorchester.
Law, MacPherson said, had written a letter to the Archbishop of Thailand, where Kanchong was from, saying they needed to recall him so the church could avoid “grave scandal.”
“Where was I in that letter? Nowhere. Nowhere. I didn’t exist,” she said through tears.
MacPherson stressed that Law doesn’t deserve a full burial in the Vatican presided over by the pope, saying, “I hope he gets what he deserves in hell.”
‘This is who you need to remember. This is who I used to be, a smiling, carefree child but that’s not fully who I became.’ — ALEXA MacPHERSON clergy sex abuse survivor