A friend told me about a HBO documentary that is available On Demand until March 4.  It is called Mea Maxima Culpa and it will be in theaters on Friday.  The documentary is about sex abuse in the Catholic Church, explored through the case of a pedophile priest and the four men who set out to expose him.  These men were boys at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  The movie is very difficult to watch.

The response of the Church was concern for its own reputation and the reputations of these “men of God,” not for the many, many victims.  The voices of victims were repeatedly drowned out by the powerful. The four men who have never given up on exposing what happened to them and thousands of others are truly courageous.  They never gave up.

Attorney Jeffrey Anderson has represented thousands of victims of pedophile priests.  He described the reaction of the Church—“Deny, minimize and blame.”  Blame the media, blame the lawyers, and now even blame the survivors.  It is a sadly familiar refrain.  You should watch this documentary.

Twenty-one years ago today, I gave birth to my first child, a son.  It was one of the two happiest days of my life, the second being the birth of my second, a daughter.  I don’t know what I did to deserve these two kids, but know that I am grateful.

My son was born sixteen years to the day Mark Stebbins, the first victim of the OCCKs was abducted.   I would not put this together this for decades.   I do know I didn’t save the newspaper from the day he was born, because the huge headline was something having to do with Jeffrey Dahmer.  When I realized my son was born on the day Mark Stebbins was abducted—after I moved back to the Midwest in 2005 and started taking another look at these murders–I was humbled.

When my firstborn was young, on occasion, my Dad would refer to my son as Tim.  It broke my heart.  Once, when my little family visited my parents, my young son saw the paintings of Tim (I never hid what happened from my kids) and he said something along the lines of  “I don’t know what I would do if someone did that to my little sister.”

On a much happier note, my best friend from college just posted on my FB page and said “Do you remember being pregnant with [your son] when we vacationed at Red Fish Lake Lodge?”  We hiked to 10,000 feet, had a lot of laughs, there was an amazing view, and a few short months later we all welcomed my son to the world.  So in spite of all of the sadness and horror of 1976-1977, lots of good prevailed.  So there.

WordPress is a free blogging tool and obviously the platform for my blog.  It has some cool web software.  As I mentioned, it shows number of views by country.  It also shows “referrers,” such as FaceBook and search engines used to access the blog.  Most of the views are via FaceBook, because I simultaneously post blog entries to my FB newsfeed.  Thirty-four people have subscribed to this blog via email.

When a viewer is referred to my blog via a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, WordPress software shows the words and phrases users find me with when they search.  A handful of readers accessed my blog via search terms as opposed to a direct link.  The five search phrases used so far are:

catherine broad word press (Makes sense someone would find my blog this way.) (1 search)

catherine broad oakland county child killer blog (Same deal.) (3 searches)

oakland county child killer barry king favorite memories of Tim (What the hell?) (1 search)

occk chris flynn (earlier this week) (4 searches)

christopher flynn berkley pd suicide 1978 (this afternoon) (1 search)

The last two search phrases kind of stand out, especially if you reread my blog entry called Predatory Crime.  Weird, huh?