By Tom Beyerlein
Dayton Daily News
June 16, 2002

Dallas - In February 1999, while Eric Patterson was hospitalized for depression, his sister asked him why he thought of God not as loving and forgiving, but as a "vengeful, vindictive God that you can never please."

Eric said he formed this view when he was a 12-year-old Roman Catholic altar boy in Kansas. Then he told his family for the first time that the Rev. Robert K. Larson had molested him.

Eight months later, Eric fatally shot himself in the head. He was 29. He left a suicide note: "To all who have loved me, I have tried to please god everyday, but I have always come up so short. . . ."

Five former altar boys abused by Larson committed suicide.

While Horace and Janet Patterson were grieving for their son, they learned something that compounded the tragedy: Church officials knew Larson was a sexual predator, but moved him from parish to parish, where he continued to molest boys.

"It was the deepest betrayal, the deepest betrayal," said Janet Patterson. "(The bishops' attitude was) protect the priesthood at any cost. It was like our son was collateral damage."

The Pattersons, lifelong Catholics, stopped going to church. They haven't returned. Instead, they have a Web site, www.we-are-alert.com , to spread the word about abuse by clergy.

The Pattersons came to Dallas last week, and Janet Patterson addressed the U.S. bishops' sex-abuse committee. She said Larson was responsible for her son's suicide and church leaders share a part of the blame.

"I don't remember much of what I said - basically, Eric spoke through me," said Janet Patterson of Conway Springs, Kan., near Wichita.

"I remember I said, 'Pagan religions were criticized for having human sacrifices, but if we allow this to happen to our children, this is human sacrifice.' "

The Pattersons blame church leaders not only for reassigning Larson, but for failing to seek out victims in the parishes Larson served.

Had Eric known that Larson had other victims, they said, he might have sought psychological treatment, treatment that might have saved his life.

They said church officials got complaints about Larson in the 1970s, when he was accused of molesting boys at a Vietnamese refugee relocation program.

Larson, now 72, is in a Kansas prison for abusing four other boys after he was moved from the Pattersons' parish. The other victims, abused in the 1980s as was Eric, pressed charges after reading newspaper accounts of Eric Patterson's abuse and suicide.

As part of a plea bargain, a prosecutor recommended 90 days in jail, but the judge gave Larson three to 10 years. He is eligible for parole later this year.

Larson spent most of the 1990s, after Kansas church officials finally suspended him from ministry, in Ohio, living in Willoughby and Lorain.

"I don't know that he doesn't have other victims in Ohio," Janet Patterson said.

The Pattersons said they have mixed feelings about the bishops' new national sex abuse policy.

"There's nothing in there about bishops, holding them accountable (for transferring abusive priests)," Horace Patterson said. "I think the rank-and-file Catholic thinks what they have done is just great. Janet and I are not rank-and-file Catholics."