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	Witness Says Sex Offender Filled Role of a Father By Bruce Lambert New York Times April 26, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/nyregion/26church.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Garden City, N.Y., April 25 — The witness recalled his troubles as a shy teenager with an alcoholic father and few friends, who cut classes and drank. Then a church youth director, Matthew Maiello, came into his life and steered him on a righteous path, he testified, transforming him with a sense of purpose, achievement and self-worth. "This was the guy that was kind of replacing my dad and guiding me through things," the witness said in State Supreme Court here on Wednesday. "It was just overwhelmingly good. It was incredible." But when the witness resumes his testimony in a civil trial here on Monday, he is expected to tell the dark side of their relationship: sexual abuse. The young man and a young woman have said that Mr. Maiello induced them in the late 1990s to have sex with each other and with him, often videotaping their activities, and they are suing him, the Roman Catholic parish that employed him, its pastor and the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Mr. Maiello, 33, served two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2003 to statutory rape of four teenagers, including the two victims now suing him, when he was youth ministry director at St. Raphael's Roman Catholic Church in East Meadow. In court, the young man, now 22, testified that he had slept just two hours the night before, because "I couldn't stop thinking about what's been happening." He described a nightmare he had, saying he was in "a giant field and a bull is coming at me, and the head of the bull is Matt Maiello's body, and then I woke up completely drenched in sweat." The witness said he was a "very shy" 14-year-old parishioner when Mr. Maiello became the director of St. Raphael's rock music Mass and youth ministry. At the time, the young man recalled, he had recently transferred to a new school where he had no friends, and was hanging out with "the wrong crowd." His mother urged him to join the youth program at the church, he said. There, the man testified, Mr. Maiello took him under his wing, teaching him the technical work of setting up and operating the sound system, since he lacked musical talent. As the youth took on more production duties in the music programs, Mr. Maiello praised him at the end of one performance as the "cornerstone of everything we've done." In a videotape of the performance, which was played at the trial, Mr. Maiello suggested the youth might someday become youth director himself. "I loved it," the young man testified about those days. "It gave me something to do that made me feel good. It meant a lot to me." Mr. Maiello was "paying attention and helping me," he said, adding, "I took what he said to me as gold." Mr. Maiello discouraged his drinking and fostered his spiritual and religious growth, he said. The young man became friends with a 15-year-old girl in the youth group — now his co-plaintiff — who was also a victim, though he said he did not know that at first. When Mr. Maiello confided to the young man that he was in a special relationship with the girl and showed a bracelet he planned to give her, the young man felt happy for both of them, he testified. Earlier in the court session, Mr. Maiello finished his own testimony under tough questioning from a lawyer for the victims and a lawyer for the other church defendants. Mr. Maiello has little money and is not contesting the suit. The victims accuse church officials of neglecting to check Mr. Maiello's background, failing to supervise him and ignoring complaints about him. "How could you have taken advantage of him the way you did?" the lawyer for the church, Brian R. Davey, asked Mr. Maiello. "Can you explain that at all?" Mr. Maiello, who had appeared self-assured through most of his testimony, looked down and said, "No." He acknowledged that his conduct was "inappropriate," but objected to the notion that it was abusive. "I don't consider myself the model boyfriend by any means," he said. "In retrospect, the degree of harm had become much clearer." Seeking to show that church officials were unaware of the crimes and not responsible for Mr. Maiello's behavior, Mr. Davey asked him how he kept his actions secret from everyone, including the female victim's family, whom he befriended and vacationed with. "You did everything you could to hide your relationship," Mr. Davey said.
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