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Pedophile Priest Robert Van Handel’s Multi-Page Sexual History Exposed in Therapy Papers

The 27-page “sexual history” written by Van Handel, recollects him as being accused of molesting at least 17 boys, including his own 5-year-old nephew, local children in his boys’ choir and students at the seminary boarding school where he taught.

The essay, penned for a therapy assignment and kept secret for years, provides a shockingly candid and detailed window into the troubled mind of a notorious pedophile priest., says Associated Press.

News reports through the AP also stated:

Van Handel’s narrative came to light as part of a $28-million settlement between the Franciscans and 25 clergy abuse victims six years ago that also called for disclosure of the religious order’s internal files. The accused priests fought unsuccessfully to keep their documents private in a battle that went all the way to the California Supreme Court.

The Associated Press obtained more than 4,000 pages, including Van Handel’s “sexual history,” from a plaintiff’s attorney last week.

Van Handel’s account, written between 1993 and 1994 during his treatment at Pacific Treatment Associates in Santa Cruz, is corroborated by letters, victim interviews, and court papers from his file.

In the essay, Van Handel – who was himself molested by a priest at age 15 – traces his perilous descent from a sexually repressed pre-teen terrified of puberty to a serial pedophile who handpicked his victims from the members of a prestigious boys’ choir that he founded.

The defrocked priest recollects this twisted moment with one victim:

“Once, or perhaps more than that, I took him up into the tower which was stark concrete with steel barred windows and he posed as a prisoner with few clothes on. I took some photos of him tied up with a big rope,” Van Handel recalls of the 7-year-old. “It was as though I could do anything with him that I wanted.”

The priest begins by describing a lonely childhood with an authoritarian father who moved the family five times before Van Handel turned seven. The family of seven finally settled in Orange County when Van Handel was 10.

At age 13, Van Handel’s father forced him to read a sex education book that terrified the young boy. He dreaded the onset of puberty, when he imagined sexual urges would be like “poison candy,” and prayed to remain a child.

The next year, he entered St. Anthony’s, the Franciscan junior seminary in Santa Barbara, to escape his father and his own sexual anxieties.

Instead, the young seminarian was molested by a priest as he lay in the infirmary. The priest told Van Handel that the molestation would draw out his fever by making him sweat. “While I don’t think it is of crucial importance in my life, it is curious that this is nearly the exact activity I would perform 10 to 15 years later,” Van Handel writes.

The former priest reveals much more and it can be read here.