BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff | June 28, 2005
There's something ordinary and familiar about the sexual abuse scenario in the HBO documentary ''Twist of Faith." A Toledo priest takes boys to his lakeside cottage for weekends of spiritual guidance, plies them with booze and adult freedoms, and inflicts himself on them at night. The next day, and the next month, and the next year, the boys block out the pain and the shame; decades later, of course, the pain and the shame erupt.
It's the classic story we've been hearing in the news for years now, and, from sheer repetition, it has taken on an almost boilerplate quality. It's so commonplace, it has begun to lose its emotional resonance in the telling. That's one of the valuable gifts of ''Twist of Faith," which premieres tonight at 10. It once again personalizes the priest abuse scandal, particularizing the tragedy so vividly that you can't forget just how profoundly it lays siege on its victims' lives.
As the movie follows Tony Comes, a 30-something Toledo firefighter burning with rage about his early molestation, it doesn't let you vague out on the cruelty and long-term harm of the crime. It is too fiercely specific to shake off.