Anderson Cooper will speak with openly gay fellow CNN newsman Thomas Roberts on Monday, March 12th at 10:30 in an AC360 piece entitled "Sins of the Father," Towleroad.com reports. Roberts will discuss the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest between 1987 and 1989 when he was a student at Calvert Hall College High School, a Catholic school for boys.
Roberts, who was then anchoring an afternoon block of CNN Headline News but has since lost that gig, caused a stir when he publicly came out of the closet last year during a panel discussion at a National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association conference in Miami. He expressed disappointment in December about a judge's decision to give Roman Catholic priest Jerome F. Toohey Jr., a more lenient sentence. Here are a few excerpts from the show obtained by Towleroad:
Roberts on the abuse: "It's probably the worst place you can be in your life. Because there's so much shame that goes along with this. There's secrecy. There's shame. There's self-hatred, self-doubt. Uh, every mixed up emotion you can have that you don't feel you can talk to anybody. It was the most twisted and turned-around environment that I could have ever have been in and coming from a place of struggle as a child and into a young boy. It was a prison. I mean it was like backing me into a corner with nowhere to go. I was robbed here. Of my self-respect, of my own image. You know part of my soul even. This place paralyzed me thinking I would die with this secret. I would die with this secret."

Andy Towle notes: No word on whether or not Anderson will ask him the question no doubt many would like to hear: how has coming out of the closet affected your news anchor career?