Local San Francisco woman abused by Oakland priest

Local San Francisco woman abused by Oakland priest

OAKLAND, Calif. — "He told me the devil was inside me," says Melinda Costello. Costello was sexually abused when she was just 7 years old by an Oakland priest, whom Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not want to punish.

Costello is currently 48 years old and is fighting arthritis. Now debilitated enough to be on disability, Costello remembers well how Rev. Stephen Kiesle touched her chest and genitals when she was just a seven year old girl back in 1969, and lived in Fremont, Ca.

“I always knew that I was uncomfortable and that it wasn’t right," says Costello.

The same Rev. Stephen Kiesle was later convicted, in 1978, of molesting two young boys after he tied them up in the rectory of another California church.

He was not defrocked, however, for another 9 years, until 1987. He was finally sentenced to prison in 2004, 35 years after sexually molesting young Costello and giving her memories she will never forget.

In 2004, Kiesle was put away for another sex crime he committed--this one carried out in 1995--when he molested a young girl in Truckee, Ca.

Kiesle is now living in upscale and exclusive Walnut Creek, Ca, where he is a registered sex offender.

"He admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims when he interviewed the former priest in prison.

"When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"

Pope Benedict XVI has found himself at the center of this sex abuse scandal as his signature is in a 1985 letter saying he needs more time to consider defrocking Kiesle.  The Pope had said he must consider the "good of the universal church."

Costello's account of her experience came on the same day a Massachusetts priest used his church sermon to denounce the church’s handling of the world-wide church sex abuse scandal, saying that some in the clergy are “felons”. He has suggested that Pope Benedict XVI resign.

“We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the Pope and those of church authority who are defending him or even falling on the sword on his behalf,” said the priest, the Rev. James J. Scahill of St. Michael’s Parish in East Longmeadow.

“It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood.”

Many are asking for the current Pope to resign in light of the current sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church and the coverup.

What do YOU think of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? Do you think, as many local San Franciscans do, that this is totally ironic and hypocritical, considering these are the people we look up to and these are the people who tell us how to live our lives? What was the "good of the universal church?" What did that mean and where did that leave the "good of the people", the very people the church was supposed to be serving?"

Leave a comment below.

Below is a video of one of Kiesle's victims.

Here's a record of accountability on Rev. Kiesle

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