Finding bishop's porn an 'out of body experience'

[lemonbeam]

The man who alleged seeing child pornography in the home of former Roman Catholic bishop Raymond Lahey 20 years ago says the experience made him feel like his world was starting to “to spin out of control,” feelings he says he has been dealing with for the past two decades.

In the early 1980s, when Shane Earle was living at the infamous Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, he would visit Lahey, who was not yet a bishop, at his home outside the city.

In 1989, Earle told church officials of seeing images of child pornography in Lahey’s home four years before. By 1989, Lahey was Bishop of St. George’s, in western Newfoundland.

“I tell you it gave me an out of body experience I would never wish upon anybody,” Earle told CTV News’ Todd Battis on Wednesday in his first television interview. “And you’re forced to deal with something that you never thought you’d ever see in your life. It’s the first time that I’d ever seen anything like it. So the world around you as you thought you knew it starts to spin out of control.”

Nothing came of Earle’s allegations 20 years ago. Father Kevin Molloy told CTV News earlier this week that he knew of Earle’s allegations, which he discussed with then-Archbishop Alphonsus Penney.

Video at source.

More: ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091007/bishop_folo_091007/20091007?hub=TopStoriesV2