I wrote two articles this week about people saying they were abused as children by Glen Shrimplin, a former Toledo Catholic deacon and dentist who is now 73 years old and living in Florida.
Since those articles ran, I've gotten several calls from people saying they, too, were abused by Dr. Shrimplin.
One woman said she was a young girl when he abused her in the dentist chair. She said he also was grabbing his assistant while working on her teeth and one time accidentally drilled into his own finger, he was so distracted.
A man who called said his grandfather had told the parish priest, Fr. Joseph O'Brien, numerous times as far back as 1969 that Dr. Shrimplin was a child abuser. He said his grandfather warned him about Dr. Shrimplin when the caller was going to the dentist's house for a party. The caller said that when he went into the bathroom, the dentist walked in behind him and started grabbing him, then put a tennis ball inside the boy's pants and said he wanted to try to find it. The kid ran out and called his grandfather who came to pick him up.
This caller said there was another dentist who confronted Shrimplin and called him "the tooth fairy" to his face.
Another caller said he was a high school student at a spiritual retreat in Carey, Ohio, when Dr. Shrimplin molested him, telling him that "we all wear masks" and trying to get the boy to "take his mask off."
One woman called to say she was always suspicious of him because he would never let her in the room when he worked on her children's teeth.
It is always so sad to hear about such cases. This dentist appears to have had numerous victims. I've heard of at least 14 but judging from the calls I got this week, it appears there were many, many more people who were victimized.
Many of these people are still hurting. The one woman who was molested as a child said she is 50 years old and her teeth are in terrible shape but she is scared to death to go to a dentist.
These kinds of cases make me wish they would revise the statute of limitations law. This was not a one-time lapse of judgment; it appears to be the case of a serial predator. He should be facing justice, not skating because of outdated, ineffective statute of limitations laws.
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P.S. My book comes out in paperback today. Hip hip hooray!

Toledo, Ohio
Feb. 15, 2008.