AP
Former priest and convicted sex offender Robert Van Handel
It’s a journey to the center of a sick, perverted mind.
A 27-page “sexual history” of a defrocked Franciscan cleric accused of molesting 17 boys, including his 5-year-old nephew, is a rare and revolting window into the twisted thinking of a notorious pedophile priest.
It describes in sickening detail how former reverend Robert Van Handel violated underage choir boys by playing tickling games and staging wrestling matches and photo shoots.
He said the fact they could not stop him turned him on.
“It was as though I could do anything with him that I wanted,” Van Handel wrote of one 7-year-old boy with whom he was particularly smitten.
Van Handel, who is now 65 and was himself molested by a priest, wrote the tract in 1993 and 1994 as part of his therapy.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about the fallen friar’s confession is his inability to grasp that he was destroying his victims’ childhoods.
“There is something about me that is happier when accompanied by a small boy,” he wrote. “Perhaps besides the sexual element, the child in me wants a playmate.”
The choir director never intended for his writings, which were obtained by The Associated Press, to become public.
In fact, Van Handel told his shrink his biggest fear was anybody finding out about his predilection for little boys.
The church fought fiercely and unsuccessfully all the way up to the California Supreme Court to keep Van Handel’s documents under wraps.
They came to light, the AP reported, as part of a $28 million settlement between the Franciscans and 25 clergy-abuse victims that was reached six years ago.
In the tract, Van Handel described how he became a monster.
He blamed his hard-driving dad for forcing him to read a sex-education book that terrified him. He became convinced that sexual urges were like “poison candy.” He said he enrolled at age 13 at a Franciscan junior seminary to escape his dad — and his own sexual hangups.
Instead of finding sanctuary, Van Handel fell into the hands of a seminarian who molested him while he was fighting a fever in the infirmary.
“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 wrote.
While at the seminary, Van Handel began buying kiddie porn and started taking photos of children using a telephoto lens. He began worrying about getting caught.
“I thought that as long as it was just a fantasy, there was no reason to panic,” he wrote.