Pedophile Victims' Dad: “Give Me 30 Minutes … And a Baseball Bat”

The father of two boys who say they were sexually abused by the now defrocked Jesuit priest, Donald McGuire, told a courtroom on Wednesday, that he would like a chance to have "30 minutes in a locked room with (McGuire) and a baseball bat -- with no reprercussions in this or the next life -- and I'm ready to call it a day." 

The former Roman Catholic priest convicted of taking a boy on religious retreats to have sex with him was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison -- a sentence more than three years longer than prosecutors asked for.

Donald McGuire of Oak Lawn displayed no emotion as U.S District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer imposed a 300-month sentence that assures the 78-year-old former priest will die in prison.

Pallmeyer appeared visibly angry when she addressed McGuire, telling him that he took advantage of his victims over the course of decades. She said he used his stature, his international reputation that included being a spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa, and the trust parents had in him that he would care for "the finest gifts God ever gave them: their children."

She said that the boys' confidence, their faith, innocence and their sexual desire were all destroyed by the former priest.

"You robbed them of all these things," she said after a lengthy hearing that included statements from victims -- at least one was baptized by McGuire and was his godson.

During the hearing, the victims, their parents and the prosecutor in the case portrayed McGuire as a calculating predator who used his position as a priest and the boys faith to both molest his victims and then conceal what he'd done.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Ruder said a man testified during the trial that McGuire sexually molested him when he was a boy and told him if he did not do as he said, "He would go to hell."

You made every one of these boys believe there was something terribly wrong with them," she said.

"It was a horrific and monstrous crime," she told the judge.

McGuire was convicted in October to charges of traveling outside the U.S. and across state lines to have sex with a teenager between 2000 and 2003.

In 2006, McGuire was convicted in Wisconsin for child molestation and sentenced to seven years in prison. He has appealed that conviction. McGuire has also been indicted in Arizona for child molestation and he faces lawsuits on a string of new child molestation accusations.

The Vatican ordered McGuire out of the priesthood last year.

Wednesday's hearing included testimony from men who say McGuire molested them as long ago as the 1960s.

McGuire sat without any expression as, one after another, they talked about years of shame, severe depression, thoughts of suicide, profound guilt and loss of faith. They told the judge about becoming alcoholics, how they lost jobs, that they could not trust anyone.

Parents told of their own pain, their own guilt that they were the ones who brought McGuire into their lives, with one father telling the judge that he wanted to beat McGuire with a baseball bat.

"You assaulted my little boy in my son's bedroom, my 9-year-old son," shouted the man as he pointed at McGuire. "This bastard assaulted my son."

And, he said, "You told (the son) that my wife and I couldn't love him if (we) knew about his psychosexual disorder that you imposed on him."

Time after time, those who testified asked McGuire, some almost pleading, to apologize to them. They also asked for forgiveness.

"I apologize to the other victims," said one man who told the judge he was abused by McGuire for six years beginning in the late 1970s. "I apologize that I didn't come forward."

At least one parent's comments illustrated the kind of hold that the charismatic McGuire had. If, he said, his own two sons had not been molested by McGuire, "I'm not sure I wouldn't be over there with them," he said, motioning to the former priest's supporters in the courtroom.

One of those supporters, Anthony Mockus of Evanston, called McGuire, "saintly and, I believe, an innocent servant of God."

McGuire did not apologize, something Pallmeyer noted and seemed to lament when she handed down her sentence -- the vast majority of which McGuire will have to serve before he is eligible for release.

McGuire, who has maintained his innocence, did not explicitly do so during the hearing. Instead, he talked about being near the end of his life.

"I see that horizon, it's heaven, where every tear will be wiped away," he said.

He told the judge that he will continue to pray for everyone connected to the trial.