Sylvia MacEachern blogs about Canadian priests charged with molestation
News Talk 650 CKOM
Reported by Bre McAdam
First Posted: Feb 8, 2012 5:52pm | Last Updated: Feb 8, 2012 5:53pm
A devout Catholic is using the web to warn others about molestation and corruption within her religion.
Sylvia MacEachern chronicles the lives of Canadian priests accused or convicted of sexual abuse and one of the men on her website is former Saskatoon priest Father Hodgson Marshall.
Marshall is already serving time in a Kingston Ontario jail for 17 convictions of sexual abuse against young boys. Now the 89-year-old is facing two more charges of abusing boys at Saint Paul’s Catholic High School in Saskatoon over 50 years ago.
The two alleged victims are in their sixties now but they were only 14 when they say they were sexually abused by Marshall.
MacEachern started the website after being sued for trying to expose a priest in her own Ottawa church who was preying on young boys. Her blog has given many adult victims across Canada the courage to come forward. She was not surprised to hear about two more victims in Saskatoon because she thinks there is enough evidence to show that he was probably molesting children everywhere he went.
“I was relieved because the Crown has agreed to pursue the charges,” MacEachern said referring to the new charges against Marshall. “There are cases in which the Crown will not pursue because of the age of the accused.”
MacEachern stressed the point that the shame should never be on the victims of abuse and she wants to take away the stigma attached to speaking out.
“It breaks my heart to see the betrayal of trust of a little boy who wants to be a priest,” she said.
MacEachern reminds people that it is important to separate Catholisicm itself from the men who she says hijacked the church. She is a devout Catholic but she is able to separate her religion from corruption at the pulpit.
“I believe they got a foothold in, they’ve taken over and they have protected each other,” she said.
An official with the church told News Talk Radio yesterday that Marshall will not be stripped of his title because that decision has to come from the Vatican and that is not likely.
To read MacEachern’s website visit www.theinquiry.ca.
A little clarification to avoid confusion…
I suppose in a sense it is true that I started the website after being sued. Father Lorne Whalen showed up in my church in the Fall of 1994. I was sued by Whalen in May of 1998. I was dropped from the lawsuit in 2003. I started the website February 2006. So I definitely started the website after I was sued,- but not because I was sued and not because I was trying to expose a priest in my church “who was preying on young boys.”
At the time Whalen was at my church (St. Brigid’s in Ottawa) I did not know that he was preying on young boys. I knew that he was (1) supposed to be in Cold Lake Alberta serving as a military Chaplain, (2) he was actually at St. Brigid’s in Ottawa and saying he would be around there for a long time (3) the military was in the process of giving him the boot and refused to disclose the reasons (4) whatever trouble Whalen had gotten himself into in Cold Lake was sex-related and somehow related to children (5) I was told by a reliable source in Cold Lake: “If you’re worried about your altar boys Sylvia you’re on the right track” (6) Bishop Brendan O’Brien, then the bishop of the Diocese of Pembroke said Whalen was a priest in good standing.
Whalen disappeared from St. Brigid’s not long after he arrived – after CBC TV aired a short clip.
The lawsuit was launched in 1998, after Jacki Leroux of the Ottawa Sun ran an 8-page-expose tracking the where-abouts of 32 priests who had been charged or convicted in Canada. I was quoted in the article.
I have put a link to the the Amended Statement of Claim. Within the Statement of Claim is a link to the Leroux article “Sins of the Fathers“
While I was plumetting further and further into hell, the B@#@#d Marshall was a teacher at the school. I used to hide from him and the others on a daily basis. Glad to hear he’s in the Crowbar Hotel and facing additional charges…never let up on these perverts…until they are dead and gone, I shall not sleep well.