The Hidden Abuse
Interview with John Dougherty

The [Wilmington DE] News Journal
November 21, 2005

Streaming video available under "Multimedia" at:
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051121/NEWS/511210354/-1/NEWS01

[Transcribed by BishopAccountability.org from the streaming video.]

[See links to other articles, documents, and transcripts of interviews in this series.]

John Dougherty, 61, a jazz musician now living in Las Vegas, finds it difficult -- but necessary -- to share the story of his sexual abuse at the hands of the late Father Edward B. Carley.

My mother came into the living room, and she said, "Father Carley called, and he wants to take you up to New York for a couple days, to his family home." Well, I said "No, I don't want to go." "Well, you have to go. He's been so nice to you. He does everything for you." "I don't want to go." "You have to go." So I started crying. I said, "I don't want to go. He's queer." That's the last words that were said, there was never another word said about anything, it was never brought up again, and off I went that afternoon to New York with Father Carley. I had no choice.

There was always a gift on the table. So the gift was a weekend in Ocean City, Maryland, at the Stowaway Hotel. And so, if you're gonna go on that trip, you're gonna have to sit next to him in the car. And nobody wanted to sit next to him.

We didn't know what was going on. We didn't know what queers were. That's the only term we had for gay people. We didn't know what that was.

I mean that's been brought up to me before, "Do you think you're responsible?" I'm not responsible, cause I'm not responsible for any of this. You can tell, I don't have any shame about this any more. And what the doctors promised me when I did that EMDR stuff, their words to me in the very beginning were, "Someday this'll become a memory just like any other memory you have."