Sisters make terrible discovery after report goes public
Ms. Jackson wondered why. “’Did you work there?’” she asked.
And then the sisters realized that they had both been abused by Father O’Connell — eight years apart.
• Their experiences are identical.
The Carr family lived just two doors away from St. Gabriel in Whitehall and was heavily involved in the church.
Ms. Jackson, who retired in 2014 as a longtime on-air personality from KDKA, remembers when she worked for Father O’Connell. He took her to dinner at LeMont Restaurant on Mount Washington and bought her a beautiful green, cable-knit sweater and a watch.
When Mary Robb finally told her mother, Dorothy Watt Carr, about the abuse, her response was to remove her from the situation.
“‘I think you have too much on your plate now,’” she recalled her mother saying. “‘You don’t have to work at the parish house anymore.’”
And that was it, Mary Robb stopped working there.
“She did what she thought was right and took me out of harm’s way,” she said.
But her mother never told anyone what had happened, and neither did Ms. Jackson.
And seven years later, when their mother died while Ms. Jackson was away at college, it was Father O’Connell who delivered the news to Ms. Gardner, who was 11 at the time. He also was the celebrant at their mother’s funeral Mass.
Within a few months, Father O’Connell asked Cynthia to start working in the parish house — just as her sister had years before.
“He knew what was going on at our house,” Ms. Jackson said. “He was our family priest. We lived two doors away from the church.”
Ms. Gardner, a television wardrobe stylist, remembers, as young as 7, having a close relationship with Father O’Connell. He took her on trips to the circus and Ice Capades — and also to dinner at LeMont.
She vividly remembers having dinner at the fancy, expensive restaurant, drinking Shirley Temples and talking with the priest, who then was in his late-50s.
“What did we talk about?” Ms. Gardner wonders. “What do you talk about with a 7-year-old for an entire evening?”
The priest also regularly gave her $5 to buy candy. He bought her a doll.
It wasn’t until the priest abuse scandal was revealed in Boston in the early 2000s that Ms. Gardner recognized that Father O’Connell’s behavior was “grooming.”
“My mother was so trusting and respectful, and she honored him on a daily basis and made us do the same,” Ms. Gardner said.
Once she was working in the parish house, Ms. Gardner said, it did not take long for the physical abuse to start.
She would go after school — also at St. Gabe’s — wearing her “scratchy plaid skirt and V-neck blouse” and sit at the secretary’s desk.
Father O’Connell would come up behind her, rub her shoulders and shove his hand down her blouse.
And he’d ask, “‘Does this bother you?’”
“The man is the shepherd of my church and the arbiter of all things moral,” Ms. Gardner said. “This was just wrong. I just remember being completely adrift and completely confused.”
About a year after the abuse started, the then-12year-oldrealized she could pin thetop of her blouse closed.
“And he couldn’t get it open,” she said.
Ms. Gardner remembered Father O’Connell always trying to get her to go upstairs with him.
“I’d say, ‘Oh, no, Father, I can’t do that.’”
Sometimes, she would lie and say her dad was waiting for her outside so she’d have to leave. And at the same time that the young girl was trying to avoid being sexually abused, she recognized that she’d just lied to her priest and would have to confess to him later.
“I’m grateful I had enough fortitude to keep him at bay,” she said.
One night as she was leaving, Father O’Connell asked her to join him in his office. She told him she couldn’t, but he insisted.
“‘Come back here. I need to talk to you. Put your books down,’” he told her. And then he kissed her. “My first French kiss was from a big, fat, 62-year-old priest,” Ms. Gardner said. “That was it for me. I remember being so horrified.
“I grabbed my books and never went back. I never had a conversation with anyone about it.”
Ms. Gardner figured she was the only one it happened to.
“Knowing I had no mother and a father who was in completely over his head — that he would choose me — is completely evil,” Ms. Gardner said. “The sickness of all of that is incredible.
“It makes me so mad he wasn’t alive to be brought to task. I would have been a great witness.”
Father O’Connell, who was ordained in 1930, resigned in 1983. He died three years later. The grand jury report includes allegations that he inappropriately touched and kissed another girl, from ages 11 to 13, and had made her perform oral sex on him.
He told the girl, the grand jury report said, “‘You are special, and this is our special time together.’”
He also told her not to tell their secret because “‘otherwise, it would not be special anymore.’”
Ms. Jackson and Ms. Gardner have decided to speak publicly about what happened, they said, to try to help others heal.
“This can’t continue,” Ms. Jackson said. “There’s no more sliding anymore. There’s no more pretending this doesn’t exist — saying you’re sorry and you’re ashamed — that doesn’t cut it. It can’t be enough.”
Ms. Gardner acknowledged that so many other victims experienced “far more awful acts,” but she also wonders what the abuse she experienced did to her own psyche and sense of self.
Since learning that her sister was abused, too, Ms. Jackson said she has had difficulty coping with what happened.
“I had moved out. My sister had no one at home who knew what happened to me or who could protect her,” she said. “I’m very, very sad. I’m very, very angry, and I’m very upset I wasn’t there to protect my sister.
“I can separate faith and religion,”Ms. Jackson said. “My personal faith has nothing to do with religion. I, personally, can handle things. But a lot of people can’t, and my heart hurts for them, and my heart achesfor my sister.”
“It makes me so mad he wasn’t alive to be brought to task. I would have been a great witness.” Cynthia Carr Gardner