Just When You Thought It Was Bad Enough

A few days back, I posted a bit about a torrent of allegations cropping up about a priest in Denver. Well, it's getting worse -- and quickly.

Over a 10-year period, a Roman Catholic priest who had been welcomed into the life of a Loveland family repeatedly molested two of its sons, crawling into the boys' beds while their parents slept and enticing them with motorcycles, fast cars and a cabin in the woods, the brothers allege in interviews, complaints to the church and police reports.

The allegations of Tom and John Kolde bring to 12 the number of men who have told The Denver Post they were sexually abused as minors by Harold Robert White, who served in 11 parishes across Colorado during three decades as a priest.

Another new claim, from an Aspen man, extends the timeline of allegations against White to the late 1970s or early 1980s, meaning White now stands accused of molesting boys in Colorado over a 20-year period.

But the worst claim of all: White abused his own godson and called it "the will of God."

"He groped me, fondled me, told me it was the will of God," Skip Nielsen told The Denver Post this week. "He said that he was one of God's disciples, that it was OK, that it was normal."

You know, I sometimes wonder if all this will ever stop. This is Year Four, and practically every single day we still have new disclosures coming to light. And the worst part of it all is that, as the stories blend together, it's impossible to become immune to the visceral reaction that each inspires.

Every one, a new nail hammered in.

Ugh.

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