When Jennifer S. Wortham was a teenager, her younger brother Patrick started acting out and getting in trouble at school.
Their stepfather had recently died and their mother was struggling. If anyone could help get Patrick back on track, she thought, it was the Catholic priest who had become a close family friend.
The priest was no longer living near their home in California, so that summer, she and her mother sent Patrick to stay with him in Texas.
At the time, Patrick begged not to go. More than a decade later, the family found out why. The priest had been molesting both Patrick and his younger brother, Michael, since they were about 10 years old.
The discovery “completely destroyed my family,” said Dr. Wortham, who is now a researcher at the Human Flourishing program at Harvard.