Man in California, William Lynch, arrested in beating of priest who sexually abused him 35 years ago
A man who was allegedly molested by a priest more than 30 years ago was arrested Friday on charges that he took savage revenge on the now-elderly clergyman by beating him within an inch of his life in the lobby of a retirement home.
William Lynch, 43, had said he had dreamed for decades of confronting Rev. Jerold Lindner, 65, who allegedly molested him and his younger brother in 1975.
Lynch's festering anger finally erupted on May 10 when he visited Lindner at the Sacred Heart retirement home for Jesuit priests in Los Gatos, Calif., where he had been living since 2001.
Lynch met Lindner in a small room near the lobby of the home and asked the old priest if he recognized him, police said.
When Lindner said he did not, Lynch began pummeling him in the face and the body in front of horrified witnesses.
"They're saying it was pretty close to beating him to death," defense attorney Pat Harris told The Associated Press. "They're essentially saying that he waited all these years and then took out his revenge. It's sort of the ultimate revenge story."
Lindner was treated at a local hospital for bruises and lacerations.
Lynch surrendered to Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies Friday and was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He posted $25,000 bail.
Harris said he will plead not guilty at an arraignment in November.
Police said they were able to tie Lynch to the attack using phone records.
A half hour before the attack, a caller identifying himself as "Eric" called the home and said someone would be visiting Lindner to report a family death, the AP reported.
In 1998, Lynch and his younger brother received $625,000 in a settlement with the Jesuits of the California Province after accusing Lindner of sexually abusing them in 1975 during church-led camping trips in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The boys, who were 7 and 5 then, were raped in the woods and forced to have oral sex with each other while Lindner watched, Harris said.
Lindner denied abusing the boys and was not criminally charged.
He has been accused of abuse by nearly a dozen people, including his sister and nieces and nephews, and was named in two lawsuits for abuse between 1973 and 1985, according to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Lindner was removed from the ministry, and has lived at the Los Gatos home since 2001.
Rev. John McGarry, the provincial at the home, told the AP that Lindner had recovered from the attack and resumed caring for 75 ill priests at the home.
He is not allowed to leave the facility unsupervised, McGarry said.
In a 2002 Los Angeles Times article, Lynch said he'd had nightmares for years, battled depression and alcoholism and had attempted suicide twice because of the priest's abuse.
"Many times I thought of driving down to LA and confronting Father Jerry," Lynch told the Times। "I wanted to exorcise all of the rage and anger and bitterness he put into me… He stole my innocence and destroyed my life."
BY Philip Caulfield
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
The Love and Sex After (Part 1)
Shahida Muhammad’s recent piece about dating a man who had been the victim of sexual abuse got me thinking about the inverse. What is it like for the men who lie with and/or love sisters like myself: those of us who belong to a sisterhood no woman would ever pursue. Victims, survivors, or whatever title you deem most appropriate (and by “you,” I only mean other women who have experienced this. I genuinely don’t care about what others think the term should be). And why do we here so little from women when it comes to their “life after?”
**Couple things: the relationship of the male victim of abuse/rape to society and community is very different than that of the female. This is why I am discussing women separately. Furthermore, when I put out the call for lovers of female survivors of sexual maltreatment, I only heard from men. This was not a deliberate attempt at being heteronormative. However, I’d imagine that there are some varying feelings between male lovers of female victim and female lovers of female victim, right? Okay. But we are all here to talk. All voices and ears are needed.**
This is the first in a series of a few pieces about love and sex after abuse. I have spoken to a few people about their experiences with this side of the road, and will present them sans judgment. Let me start with mine. I was sexually assaulted in Maryland on July 6, 2007. I think I would have forgotten the exact date, except that my homegirl was born on the 7th and I remember calling her up like “Hey! Happy birthday! So, um . . . bad news, though . . . ” No need to get into all of the details, but a brief overview would go something like this: it was dark, it was late, I was in car by myself. He had a gun. He got all my money and I had to perform a sex act. I was just happy he didn’t shoot me.
After: I do recall wanting to put something physical in between myself and my assailant as soon as I could. As I wasn’t dating anyone at the time (I had been cutting people off in preparation for my move), that left me with a guy with whom I had a casual acquaintanceship. We hooked up a couple of weeks later when I came back to DC for my belongings. I thought about being assaulted while I was with him. This was the case with the next few lovers. I couldn’t help it, it was still there. It’s still there now, but it doesn’t usually come up in the heat of passion.
There’s no lucky side of sexual assault, nor is there “diet” rape. But I can say that the nature of my experience allowed me to have a much easier trajectory towards healing than those who may have endured prolonged abuse, a more physically violent attack, an assault at the hands of someone they trusted, etc. However, it’s still a part of who I am and a part of the Jamilah narrative that I can’t dismiss. Thus, it is part of the information with which I have to present the men I date once I have determined that we are going to have a certain level of connectedness. I recognize that this is a part of my life—one that does correspond with my sexual identity—that they should know about.
I discovered rather quickly that I had both uneasiness about telling men what I had been through and a strong desire to do so. It’s hard for me to tell my story to platonic friends and women as well. This may sound silly, but it makes people sad and it is really hard for me to make people feel sad. Ain’t that ridiculous? I gotta live with being assaulted my whole life, but I’m worried about someone feeling sad for hearing it? LOL! (Go on, laugh. We need a LOL moment up in here.)
As this particular matter goes, I have made wise choices in picking suitors; every guy to whom I told my story has been either infuriated that it happened, deeply compassionate about my experience, and/or supportive in some other way. This was the case with my platonic brothers as well; while the women around me were saddened, there is this feeling we girls seem to have . . . this understanding that rape is just all too possible. It’s bad to hear that it happens to someone, but never surprising. The men, however, seemed to go into protector mode. An ex informed me that he felt protective of me upon hearing this, that he wanted to take care of me and keep me safe. Aww. It’s not feasible in a rape culture, but “aww” nonetheless.
Life and love and sex . . . good, hot and SAFE sex . . . continue for me post-rape, and my daily existence is not centered on what I’ve been through. It’s a piece of my story, but it’s hardly the climax. My life (love, professional, otherwise) will be colored and shaped far more by the beauty in my hands than by the ugliness of my past.
By Jamilah Lemieux
http://clutchmagonline.com/lifeculture/feature/the-love-and-sex-after-part-1/
The Love and Sex After (Part II)
The nature of my assault made my path to “normal” relationships with men a bit easier than that of women who may have been subject to more brutal attacks and/or sexual maltreatment at the hands of loved ones, during childhood, etc. Not to reduce my experience (“Well, I only got a little bit raped”) but it wasn’t as much of a life-changer as some people would expect. When I reached out to readers and asked for their own stories, I received a most heartbreaking tale from a 22-year-old sister named Kali. I admire that she even had the ability to put these words on paper, because it was hard for me just to read them.
Now, while you out here judging your sisters for not walking around with a perpetual smiley face, just take a taste of what some of ‘em are carrying with them: Kali witnessed repeated abuse of her younger sister at the hands of her uncle when they were both small children. Not long after, her mother entered a physically violent relationship with her stepfather who has also sexually abused his biological daughter. Kali’s story is the sort that would appear in a book by Alice Walker to cries of Black men saying “This ain’t real,” instead of acknowledging that it’s not the norm . . . but it’s far too common.
“I have, in the midst of all of this, found love. Difficult task would be an understatement. It came as I was by no means looking for love. I don’t know if it was the taboo of talking out that stained me or the abuse or if I may, I’d say both. In different ways. I lost my virginity at seventeen to someone that I barely knew. I just knew that I really liked him (and) he was attractive. I have been in an abusive relationship but it only took one hit or shove and it was over, no looking back at all . . . I was (also) in a relationship with a much older guy that I met (when I was sixteen) at a club. I can’t really define that relationship, whether it was a ‘friends with benefits’, boyfriend/girlfriend (situation) or what. It was just a relationship that I had come to understand, as I did the one with my mother . . .
. . . (I) met my now fiancé and just knew he was “the one.” You know how you meet someone and they ask, “What type of guy/girl do you typically go for?” Well he asked that and I declined to answer because after what seemed to be a lifetime of being let down, I didn’t need someone trying to live up to a definition undefined. Does that make sense? Someone trying to live up to the fairytale that doesn’t exist, I mean my mom was supposed to be my mom. As in ideally a nurturing protecting and loving person of their child, when in all reality she was the mom that she knew. Not the mom by the books. All I required was that he didn’t drink beer and try to kiss me etc. The stench of my mom’s husband’s breath haunts me to this day. We fell in love and . . . my new found boyfriend was now what school was to me then: an escape. Willingly, we had sex before he knew of the abuse. We were coming from Orlando and I had wandered into the thoughts somehow and I folded like a chair. He immediately pulled over on the interstate and heard me out and held me so close and felt my pain. He was absolutely disgusted and never wanted to meet him, declaring that if he did he’d confront him. I made him promise not to; he agreed but said he’d never shake his hand though. I had, at the point of meeting my fiancé, just come to know that I had to heal to move forward. I have forgiven my mom and her husband although they don’t know it, and I am trying to overcome . . .
When it comes to sex with my fiancé and me, it is sometimes a process. Sometimes I breakdown and cry in the middle of us having sex. Sometimes I want him to be aggressive, (which) I don’t understand. (But) he declines because he doesn’t want to hurt me. I think I want the pain or aggressiveness to void the thoughts I am really confused about that; again it’s been a long process over the past almost three years . . . I don’t think that the abuse affects my relationship now because I have almost total control of it. I don’t feel I will ever have absolute control because small things will trigger the thoughts. I don’t want to forget what happened, but I want to not be affected in anyway . . . Having talked with others that have been sexually abused that are much older, (I have heard that), you never completely heal . . .
A reader by the name of Natasha, age 33, first experienced abuse at the age of three at the hand of a family member: “I remember it like it was a dream . . . no one ever talks about it . . . and for a long time I thought maybe it was something I dreamed up as a child . . . but it wasn’t . . . I faced that family member much later in life (late 20′s) . . . and his inability to look me in the eye confirmed it was not a dream . . . ”
She was assaulted in college by a classmate who was a campus activist and was then raped a few years later by a man she was dating: “I felt completely powerless . . . confused. What’s crazy is that I told no one and remained with him for 4.5 years. Crazy I know . . . I put what happened that night in the very back of my mind never once thinking about it . . . never mentioned it . . . not even to myself . . . I even went through a bout of depression . . . not eating or really sleeping and contemplated suicide.
When the relationship was over . . . I finally admitted to myself it did happen . . . I had been raped . . . and I told my closest friends . . . who were all completely and utterly shocked.
It took several years for me to figure out why I remained, silent and ‘in love’ . . . you see he provided me with something I was missing and because I had ‘it,’ I was afraid to let ‘it’ go . . . I read the book the five love languages and it completely opened my eyes to the psychology of why its totally possible for one to remain with their ‘abuser’ or person who is really manipulating the way our soul needs to be loved . . .
How has all of this affected me? I’m cautious . . . standoffish . . . protective . . . but no longer silent. I think that I’m more likely to not trust men . . . and keenly aware that anything is always possible . . . I’m probably more afraid of commitment than I would have been . . . I think . . . though this is obviously hard to say . . . and I use to cry after sex . . . it was hard even when I liked the person and wanted to be with them . . .
Now . . . today . . . this minute . . . this second . . . I love myself . . . I really really do love myself . . . and I’ve realized I had to learn to love me fully . . . every fault . . . flaw . . . perfection . . . thought . . . ability . . . I’m a work in progress . . . but everyday I love me even more . . . and I think the man that finally does capture my trust . . . heart . . . mind . . . body and soul will get the very best of me . . . and yes prayer really does work.”
After last week’s post, I received a Facebook message from a young lady I had in my class during my brief stint as a middle school teacher. Now a high school junior, she had an experience recently that brought me to tears: ”I just wanted to tell you how much I admire you and how grateful I am that you wrote your piece of love sex after sexual abuse. I myself have been sexually abused. It happened in June with a 19 year old boy that had been my boyfriend for 2 weeks. Unfortunately that’s the way I lost my virginity. I was saving it for my wedding day, you know white dresses and all. I go to counseling and everything now but its been rough. Thanks for just having the guts to write about the thing everyone’s embarrassed to talk about.”
I made a point to let her know that everything she wants from romance and boys, from puppy love to a white dress wedding, is still possible. We, the survivors, must make a conscious choice to keep living and loving, despite the pain, and despite how hard it may be. We didn’t ask for this path, but it’s what we have. Nevertheless, the world is full of love and romance and good sex and tender moments and everything you see in the movies and we are no less worthy of those beautiful places than anyone else.
By Jamilah Lemieux
http://clutchmagonline.com/lifeculture/feature/the-love-and-sex-after-part-2/
What If Your Man Was Sexually Abused?
Oprah, Monique, Gabrielle Union, and Queen Latifah are all famous Black women who have shared stories of sexual abuse, and/or rape, with the public. And in each case, the response to their experiences was generally met with compassion and sympathy. They were praised for being courageous enough to speak up and for inspiring other woman to do the same. But why is it that when Lil’ Wayne revealed he was molested and introduced to sex at the age of 11 by a 14-year-old girl on Jimmy Kimmel Live, he was met with laughter rather than shock or sympathy?
It seems there is a double-standard in the way sexual abuse is viewed when it comes to men vs. women. For men, childhood molestation by a female can be viewed as a rite of passage. While women who experience sexual abuse from a male are usually viewed as victims of a serious crime. However, there is a certain aspect of male sexual abuse that comes with a significant level of taboo, hush-hush, shame, scandal and dismay—and that’s male sexual abuse at the hands of another male.
Both male and female victims of sexual abuse can adopt a feeling of shame in regards to their experience, moreover, men who suffer abuse at the hands of a male predator can also feel emasculated; making them less likely to reveal the abuse. Men who come forward run the risk of being ostracized by their peers, having their manhood challenged/questioned, or having society speculate about their sexual orientation.
With all the sexual abuse scandals in the media as of late, I wondered about the prominence of this type of abuse among Black men. There’s a plethora of literature, movies and open discussions dealing with the sexual abuse of women, but one might find it hard to find as much attention granted to male victims—Black men in particular. Even the Catholic priests’ abuse scandals have a White face associated with them, when there were many Black males victimized as well.
If you think you don’t know any men who have experienced this, chances are you do. According to online support system BSAS (Black Sexual Abuse Survivors), 1 in 6 Black males have been molested as children, and 1.9 million African-American men have been sexually abused. The reality is that this type of abuse is taking place every day in prisons, our communities, homes, schools, etc. and has yet to be properly addressed.
Taking this all into account, I considered how I would react if the man I was in a relationship with told me he was a victim of same-sex sexual abuse or rape. I’ve had men tell me (very nonchalantly) that they were taken advantage of sexually at a young age by women much older. However, I’ve never had a man come forward about sexual abuse at the hands of another male. Would I be able to accept my partner if he told me he had been? As a heterosexual woman, would the thought or fear that he may secretly be sexually attracted to men linger in my mind? I’ve asked myself all of these questions, and I believe that the first step I would take would be to have an honest and open dialogue with my significant others. I believe women shouldn’t be scared to ask. You have a right to know, and it will allow you to make an informed decision regarding whether, or how, to move forward in your relationship.
Most importantly, I think it’s important for us as women to have the sensitivity, compassion, and understanding with which we would want to be met were we to reveal that we had been abused—and not to further victimize the victim. Don’t let the constant “Down Low” rhetoric spark paranoia and/or apathy towards male sexual abuse victims. The affects of sexual abuse can manifest in various ways. While it can lead some victims to engage in homosexual behavior, this is certainly not always the case. Depression, promiscuity, low self-esteem, anger, aggressiveness, emotional disconnect, etc., are among an extensive list of potential results. If you’re a women who has experienced sexual abuse, just think of how it has affected you and imagine how it could be eating your man up inside. In a culture that irresponsibly promotes irrational ideas of hyper-masculinity and macho-ism, same-sex molestation and/or rape can leave Black men feeling powerless, emasculated, and alone. Remember, they are the victims, so we should do our best not to further any sense of shame or guilt.
Look into the stories of KEM, Donnie McClurkin, Tyler Perry, Todd Bridges, and other Black men who have publicly shared stories of sexual abuse. Also, BSAS recommends the books: Broken Boys/Mending Men: Recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Stephen D. Gruban-Black, and African Americans and Child Sexual Abuse, by Veronica D. Abney, as resources for healing.
As women we’re often the first nurturers and consolers who men have in their lives. If you find out your man was a victim of sexual abuse, with the right approach your womanly intuition and support could be the first step in helping him to heal and seek the best way to move forward.
By Shahida Muhammad
http://clutchmagonline.com/lifeculture/feature/what-if-your-man-was-sexually-abused/
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