The state police came to our house one night to ask Dad if he had any idea who in the town might be involved in such vigilante justice. I was only 8 or 9 at the time but understood well that the state police were only doing their job and Dad wasn't going to tell them anything even if he did know.
Word got around quick in those days and I think it likely that Dad could have found out with a few discrete inquiries. But I think both he and the state police instinctively understood that even if they didn't condone vigilante justice, it was justified under those particular circumstances and we were a better society for it.
Needless to say the perp minus his family jewels left town shortly thereafter and was never heard from again.
What I find most remarkable in this Pedophile Priest story is not only how long it went on but how 99.9% of it involved boys and young men . . . and how the earliest cases date to the late 1960s and 1970s, when vigilante justice first went out of style.
When I was about 5, I had 2 older sisters who shared a paper route. They must have been about 12 or 13 years old.
One day an old man on their route invited them in while he got his payment together to be collected. He then touched one of my sisters inappropriately. They ran straight home and told my father.
My father went directly to the man’s house and walked right in the front door without knocking, and closed it behind him. No police were involved in any way.
The man cancelled his subscription to the paper. He left town a short time later.
I can only imagine what happened in that house.