Lawsuit: Famed Jesuit abused boy 1,000 times around world
CHICAGO » One day in May of 1970, an 11-year-old boy and his disabled sister were sitting on the curb outside a Chicago tavern, waiting for their mother to come out. When a priest with crinkly eyes and a ready smile happened by and offered the family a ride home, they could not have been happier.
The boy, Robert J. Goldberg, now 61, would pay dearly for the favor, enduring what he describes as years of psychological control and sexual abuse he suffered while working as a child valet for the late Rev. Donald J. McGuire. He remained in the Jesuit’s thrall for nearly 40 years, even volunteering to testify on McGuire’s behalf during criminal trials that ultimately resulted in a 25-year prison sentence for the priest.
But today, Goldberg says he has finally broken the hold McGuire once had on him. And he has begun to tell his story, in interviews with The Associated Press and in a lawsuit he filed Monday in California state court in San Francisco.
The lawsuit charges that McGuire, a globe-trotting Jesuit with ties to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, abused Goldberg “more than 1,000 times, in multiple states and countries,” during sojourns to spiritual retreats throughout the United States and Europe.
On these trips, the lawsuit says, McGuire referred to Goldberg as his “protégé.” All the while, the suit says, the boy carried his briefcase, ran errands and often endured daily abuse that included “sexual touching, oral copulation and anal penetration.”
The lawsuit filed Monday doesn’t currently name any defendants, but Goldberg’s attorneys say the defendants will include the Jesuit religious order in the United States and the order’s top leader in Rome, among others. They also say that Goldberg’s abuse occurred at a time when powerful church officials — including Mother Teresa, who was elevated to sainthood by Pope Francis three years ago — knew that McGuire had been repeatedly accused of sexually abusing boys. Church officials went to great lengths to cover up his crimes, the suit alleges.
In the nearly two decades since the clergy abuse scandal erupted, thousands of survivors have stepped forward to tell their painful stories. Hundreds more revealed their abuse in lawsuits earlier this year, when the state of New York opened a one-year window that allows survivors to file child sex abuse lawsuits without regard to the statute of limitations. And hundreds more, including Goldberg, are expected to step forward as a similar window opens Jan. 1 in California.
But many victims still suffer in silence, often taking decades to step forward, if they ever do. Advocates say that Catholic priests, as representatives of God and respected members of their communities, are often able to exert control over the children they target, especially when they are helping the child or their families overcome poverty or other obstacles.
Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the abuse crisis and maintains a data base of accused priests, said abusers in the Jesuit religious order are wellequipped to exercise psychological control over their victims because of the order’s reputation as administrators of dozens of colleges and high schools in the United States alone.
“Everyone knows the Jesuits are smart and the Jesuits are sophisticated,” he said. “And they often bring enormous sophistication to the abuse they perpetrate.”
Goldberg’s journey from supporter to accuser took years to complete. The final stretch began last fall, on a cold October night in the suburbs of Chicago.
Tyrone Cefalu, another former assistant to McGuire, was watching TV at his home when he got an unexpected call from Goldberg and his sister. Cefalu and Goldberg had bonded over the years, discussing their time with McGuire and what they knew about the priest’s dark side.
Goldberg, a scruffy former dog breeder, and his older sister Debbie, who has Down syndrome, had been living in southwest Virginia’s coal country. But they had fled their home because Bobby feared a Virginia social service agency was trying to take Debbie away from him.
Now they were holed up at a nearby gas station, wondering if Cefalu could meet them and help them out. After some missed signals, Cefalu found the pair huddled under blankets in the back of a U-Haul cube truck, parked behind a church in Forest Park, Illinois — out of gas, out of money, and out of luck.
For Goldberg, it could have been the end of the road. Years of hard living had left him with a variety of ailments, including tumors in his throat and the loss of several teeth, which made it difficult for him to speak.
But that evening, against all odds, marked a new beginning. Goldberg and his sister followed Cefalu home, and Cefalu and his wife made beds for them in their living room. Over the next several weeks, the two onetime McGuire supporters explored their shared history, recalling McGuire as a messianic retreat leader able to instill loyalty in his victims and their families, many of them wealthy, devout Catholics.
“He was very controlling. I had no say whatsoever,” Goldberg told the AP, recalling the years he spent working and living with McGuire. “Whatever he told my mother he wanted me to do, I had to do it.”
The key to Goldberg’s slow transformation was Cefalu, who was once so devoted to McGuire that he spent six years working full time on the celebrated priest’s defense, through two criminal trials and various appeals. His labors included scanning documents for McGuire’s attorneys, drumming up witnesses, and investigating McGuire’s accusers.
“McGuire asked me to find the dirt on those guys, and I found the dirt,” he told the AP.
Like Goldberg, Cefalu met McGuire when he was a boy, but his circumstances were different. Goldberg was being raised by a single, Catholic mother of limited means — his Jewish father had recently died. Cefalu, by contrast, was part of a middle-class family and was headed for Loyola Academy, a prestigious Jesuit prep school where McGuire had been a teacher.
McGuire was a family friend who frequently appeared at the family home for dinner, Cefalu said. His family attended weekly Mass to hear McGuire sermonize and took part in his spiritual retreats, events where McGuire began to acquire a cult-like following.
“When he said Mass he would give a sermon that would go on for 45 minutes and everybody loved it,” Cefalu recalled. “He’d been all over the world and could tell stories. He could sing. The guy was mesmerizing.”
McGuire also won supporters by doing favors. “He’d tutor poor kids and help them get into good schools and graduate from good schools,” Cefalu said. “If your family had problems, he would be there for you, and almost every family had some kind of serious problem that he could deal with.”