The wounds of clergy sex abuse remain unhealed, but truth may yet see light of day — NewsWorks

"He is the one who started me drinking and gave me the money to buy drugs so he could have his way with me. It makes me sick to think about it," the letter reads. "You always thought I liked Father Charles. The truth is I hate him! And I used him for what he did to me. [...] I thought, at 17, I knew everything. The truth is I know nothing. [...] He always told me that if I told anyone, he would kill himself."

Arthur Baselice Jr.'s grief has pushed him into a self-imposed exile.

Almost 10 years after his son died from a drug overdose with links to his abuse by two Franciscan clergymen in Northeast Philadelphia, Baselice rarely leaves his house.

"I don't want to go nowhere," said Baselice.

Walking through the Baselice home in suburban South Jersey is like walking through a monument to their lost son, Arthur Baselice III. Pictures of him are everywhere. The urn with his ashes sits on a table at the entrance to the living room, where each night his father and mother light a candle in his honor.

Arthur's bedroom, covered in sports memorabilia, is exactly the way he left it on the night that he died.
"Nothing's changed," said the father. "Same sheet, same bedspread. Everything is the same."

Baselice Jr., 67, a retired Philadelphia detective who grew up a Catholic school kid in South Philadelphia, has a tattoo of his son's face on his left forearm. Some of his son's ashes rest in a bracelet on his right wrist.

All these years later, the pain hasn't dulled. Baselice often wakes up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, tormented by what happened. Sometimes, as he jogs through his Gloucester County neighborhood – seemingly out of nowhere – he bursts into tears.

His wife, Elaine, and his daughter, Ashleigh, he says, are no better.

[,,,]
Changes to Pennsylvania law that were made too late for Arthur Baselice III now give victims born after 2002 until age 50 to file suits criminally and until age 30 to file civilly.

But Baselice Jr. and other victim advocates say those reforms do not go far enough.

They've pushed to completely remove any statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse in Pennsylvania moving forward. They also want past victims to have a two-year window in order to file civil charges against their alleged abusers.

The wounds of clergy sex abuse remain unhealed, but truth may yet see light of day — NewsWorks