After pressing a criminal case which led to the conviction of a Catholic cleric who admitted molesting him as a child, the son of an influential Louisiana politician is trying to convert his “pain into power” by building a physical and mental health fitness program for schoolchildren, the elderly and people recovering from substance abuse.

Mac McCall – whose father, John Young, once ran for lieutenant governor of Louisiana – recently publicly identified himself as the victim of the late Virgil Maxey “VM” Wheeler III, in one of the most contentious cases involving a decades-old clerical molestation scandal in his home town’s archdiocese.