There was no one he could tell that Hiland was sexually abusing him. Today, he remembers it vividlyβthe abuse, where it took place, and how Hiland made him feel. The abuse started in the mids when Peter was in the seventh grade. He was an altar server at Saint Stephen in Streator, where he also attended school; his father had died when he was just 10 years old.
Hiland approached Peter and asked if he would be afraid to go out with him. Peter said no, so Hiland took him to a bonfire. A short time later, they went for a drive. Hiland let Peter sit in his lap and hold the steering wheel.
Later, Hiland would perform oral sex on Peter and then force Peter to reciprocate. The summer before eighth grade, Hiland took Peter to the woods near a local farm about twice a week.
He forced the boy to strip naked; then he sprayed him from head to toe with mosquito repellent and had sex with him. But the worst was when Hiland had sex with Peter in the cemetery. He gave me the money, and he would sit in the car while I would go in. I had every single model they came out with. The abuse finally stopped when Peter graduated from the eighth grade.
He was relieved he would never have to see Hiland again once he started high school in the fall. That summer, he got a job at a root beer stand just to get away from the priest. The Diocese of Peoria did not publicly acknowledge Hiland as having been credibly accused of child sex abuse until βa few months after the Attorney General began investigating.
