Beth Taylor Book ...

Imagine a child experiencing something so traumatic that her brain forces her to forget the events for more than 40 years. That’s what happend to Beth Taylor, and that’s her personal story of clergy sexual abuse chronicled in Bless Them Father, for They Have Sinned.

Taylor’s story is an honest, heartbreaking, and hopeful look at her journey to explore and overcome the sexual abuse she endured at the hands of the Catholic clergy.

She gives her excruciating account of discovery, as she copes with repressed memories which surfaced with unexpected, and unwelcome, flashbacks of sexual abuse. That abuse began in 1958, when she was a 5 year old student at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School in New Orleans. She writes as a journalist, in factual tones, as she and her therapist chart a course to move from confusion and despair to understanding and promise.  

During her odyssey, Beth Taylor chronicles going head-to-head with members of the clergy within the Archdiocese of New Orleans and members of the Dominican Order ... a Roman Catholic religious group of men and women officially called the Order of Preachers. She also takes her case before then New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes, who was formerly vicar general and vicar of administration of the Archdiocese of Boston under Cardinal Bernard Law. During that time, Hughes was named as a defendant in lawsuits filed by individuals claiming they were molested by priests.

While the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church no longer garners daily news headlines, survivors still battle church leaders in an effort to obtain justice for themselves, and prevention for others. They, like Taylor, have -- and continue to -- fight their internal demons, and recover from the scars inflicted upon their souls.