Survivor who ignited US Catholic church's reckoning with abuse killed in Louisiana
The clergy abuse survivor who effectively ignited the US Catholic church’s reckoning with clerical molestation when – at age 11 – he testified in the 1980s that his priest had raped him was recently beaten to death in south-west Louisiana.
Scott Anthony Gastal, whose later life was marked by legal struggles after enduring child sexual abuse at the hands of notorious clergy predator Gilbert Gauthe, was 50.
“Like all other sexual abuse victims, Scott surely lived a tortured, troubled and difficult life, having been robbed of his youthful innocence,” said a statement from attorney Cle Simon, whose late father, J Minos Simon, represented Gastal’s family in civil litigation involving Gauthe.
Simon said that his own involvement in other Catholic church-related sexual abuse cases has convinced him “that there is probably no end in sight to the number of innocent children that were subjected to clergy sexual abuse and horrible consequences resulting therefrom”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/14/church-abuse-survivor-louisiana-killed
I can't help wondering....