the sexual abuse of young boys

In my memory, there were two times when I was a boy where other boys tried - tepidly - to abuse me. Neither time were serious - thank God - and I bear no ill will at all from those tepid fellows. They were less cases of attempted abuse than confused young kids not knowing about thir sexuality. makes fro a nice blog post 30 years later.

Again, I was lucky.

The first time was when I was somthing like 7 or so. One of the deziens of the old neighbourhood - w. an impossibly Italino name - and I were hanging out in the allies or gangways or a foyers or where ever Marquette Park boys hung in the early 70's. Now, he was a few years older than me and always was looking for 'trouble' - simple stuff, like forging notes from a ficticious 'old lady' asking us to buy ciggerettes for her from the old gas station on 63d and Sacremento. If he got bored, he'd take it out on me - I can remember once when he held me on the ground in an alley threatening violence demanding 'the pot of gold' since I was a 'leprehaun.'(62d street alley between California and Mozart). He wasn't a close friend - he was older and was from the other side of one of the largest divides in the old neighbourhood - those Catholic schooled, and those public schooled. These days me being a fulltime arbieter in the public school system w. a deep knowledge of the old 'hood allows me to tell you the deep trouble these kids were in - us Catholics being on the college track even @ 7 yar old. But we did hang out as were were kids from the old neighbourhood.

This particular day he had me in tow and somewhere in the north alley of 63d between Cal and Kedzie and he asked me "Hey- do you want to get gay w. me?". Since I had no idea what 'gay' meant, he said " Well, first you do his to me, then I'll do it to you."

Me: "Um. Maybe not."

Tepid. More a case of exploring sexuality in on so young (he must have been 10). The second case was even But the second case was even more benign. This one happened in the summer between 7th and eight grade. Three of us, Tommy Gun (year younger than me who lived across the street - good friends w. him and his bro who was my age) and another frind who was two years older than us (also lived on the block) were hangng out in the hallways of the apartment block on the corner of 63rd and Mozrt called The Shrine in later Lancing Five lexigonagraphy). Now, the Shrine was a huge wraparound block of flats that reached four stories above a major city avenue - 63rd. We'd been using this building to play in for many years. Everyday, for example, us boys would play game after game of fast pitch (a baseball type game two could play) against the building, would climb the four stories to throw ballons @ people down below, and play hise and seek. It was the kind of neighbourhood back then where door were unlocked and dozens of kids could actully play hide and seek in side strangers apartment complexs. It's a cherished building in my life still - massive, tall, and filled w. my childhood.

So, literally just looking out one of the hall windows on the second floor doing nothing the older kid asked the two younger ones if we knew that guys could get pregnant? Now, the Tommy Gunne and I were not little kids and we knew better. We both said "impossible". But he insisted - and when he asked to demonstrate on us, Tommy Gunne and I shared an incredulious look w. each other and indicated to him that this was not going on. It wasn't a big deal - we didn't tear out of the building screaming what he wanted to do to us to defame him in the hood.

I'm not sure if either of these incidents would have actually qualify as 'abuse'if anything had happneed. Again, i sailed through pretty easily. But seemingly there were hundreds of boys who weren't so lucky . There has been in the international news recently the case of the deceased Father F. Murphy. He was a priest who molested (allegedy, should I add?) many young boys in the 1970's in a Wisconsin school for the deaf. Now, in the old days the church would just relocate predator prists to new parishs - and the abuse cycle would start again.

If you read the stories (broken in the NYT last week) about the protection afforded Fr. Murphy by the then Cardinal Ratzinger (the present Pope) to not prosecute Murphy for his deeds and instead sweep the allegations 'under the rug' and switch him out of the Wisconsin school in about 1974. My memories of Fr. murphy start rite around then - about time when Fr. Murphy was sent to my parish, St. Rita, to be a parish priest.

Oh, yes, the stories about him that started almost immediately. By the time I was in 6th or 7th grade, it was widely joked that Fr. murphy was a molester. When you brougt up this parish priest name in, say, 1979, 'molester' as the only imag that popped up. Father Murphy would always take the boys out to do things - I came along a few times - and the standing joke was his wrestling the boys in the grass @ Marquette Park.

There hasnt been talk of what he did in St.Rita, but i do remember when Father Murphy originally hit the news 10 years ago (he is in the news again simply because they found out the present day Pope was involved in a possible cover up- we have follwed this story for years now) there were cases of abuse among older boys I didnt know.

Buy, typically, the church did us a potential heavy damage - moving this predator into an enviroment of many boys. Again, luckily I escaped this dude.