By Peggy Fletcher Stack
Salt Lake Tribune
April 24, 2008
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_9041021
A new book by first-time author Paul McGill tells a disturbing tale of alcohol abuse and predatory priests at a Salt Lake City Catholic high school in 1969.
Written as fiction "inspired by real events," McGill's book, published by small Salt Lake City publisher Juniper Press, molds traits of several real people into single characters and condenses events the author says occurred over time into a single weekend as a means of exposing clergy abuse.
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| First-time author Paul McGill Photo by Juniper Press |
McGill's approach in Finding the Lost Weekend is not unique. More survivors of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal are writing books, plays or films, according to David Clohessy, national director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). "They realize that the truth isn't going to come out in court and public attention is waning. Exposing and discussing the scandal globally doesn't negate the importance of doing so personally."
But artistic approaches such as McGill's also raise ethical issues because fiction enables writers to blur the line between fantasy and reality. Is it fair to allege priestly misconduct in fiction that most people will read as fact?
Most books based on real events include a preface cautioning readers that characters' resemblance to real people is coincidental. McGill's preface does the opposite, asserting that the story took place at Salt Lake City's
Judge Memorial Catholic High School, which was then an all-boys school McGill attended.
In the book, the school's principal announces a compulsory two-day religious retreat for seniors, then he and other priests provide a seemingly endless supply of beer to the underage students.
McGill then goes on to describe the drunken escapades of various boys and priests and the sometimes tense, sometimes twisted relationship between the two. His story details some sexual abuse, including a purported rape. It concludes by tracking the career of two of the priests, one of whom was later convicted of sexual abuse and is serving time in an Oklahoma prison.
Here's where art follows reality: McGill clearly modelled one priest after the Rev. James Rapp, who taught at Judge and later was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse in another state. Nearly every detail of the fictional priest's story parallels accounts in the civil lawsuit filed by two Utah brothers, Ralph and Charles Colosimo, who sued Judge and the diocese for doing nothing about Rapp's abuse of them. In 2007, a judge dismissed the case after determining it hadn't been filed early enough to comply with a statute of limitations. Neither Colosimo is a character in Lost Weekend, McGill said.
But because many readers will recognize Rapp's case, they will presume all the rest is true, too. But is it?
McGill said he was not a victim of sexual abuse. His story is based on his experience, conversations with other participants and widespread speculation as well as some invented aspects.
"I'm not going to say this is true and this isn't," McGill said.
Mike Razzeca, McGill's brother-in-law, was at Judge the same year and confirms many of the book's details, although he reiterated McGill's point that disparate events were condensed into one weekend for purposes of the story.
Lost Weekend is "eye-opening and really powerful. It really hits home," said Razzeca, who now lives in California. "Over the years, I always thought of the retreat as a big party but Paul gave me a different perspective."
University of Utah ethicist Bruce Landesman wonders, though, about McGill's motives.
"If you tell a story and it's fundamentally the truth about things that really happened, you should call it that," Landesman said. "To call it fiction, you are misleading your readers. If you think you're avoiding somehow hurting the people in the book, you are not going to succeed. . .It is dishonest."
Monsignor Terrence Fitzgerald, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, knows nothing about McGill's book, nor had he heard of any abuse allegations at Judge, he said, until the Colosimo suit.
"After that, there were little rumors about the principal but nothing like rape," said Fitzgerald, who was head of Salt Lake's Catholic Community Services in 1969.
Writing the book may help McGill cope with some troubling experiences, Fitzgerald said, but he wishes the former Judge student had come forth sooner if he had abuse to report.
McGill said he didn't fully understand what had happened during the senior retreat until he learned of Rapp's conviction but the experience had haunted him for decades. He's discussed it with friends who were there and several suggested he write about it. When his business took a temporary downturn in 2004, the story began to pour out of him. Within months, he had more than 400 pages.
"The lost weekend still smolders in me. I feel we were all victimized," McGill said. "Maybe for 79 other kids, it was just a drunken party. But I think it was more than that. I still resent it. I want to get past it. I would like to put some closure on this thing."
The 2002 priest abuse crisis helped crystallize his thinking.
"These priests weren't just our friends. They were plying us with alcohol to hopefully encounter the opportunity to strike. It wasn't like a kid in the candy store; it was more like carnivores in a butcher shop," he said. "These guys faked me out, they lied to us, they were talking out of both sides of their mouth."
He hopes his book will help today's Catholics recognize the widespread pain the abuse caused to a whole generation, not just individual victims.
"There has to be some real, real healing and I just don't see it," said McGill, who no longer goes to church. "I know there are situations out there that have never become public. They were handled under the table. How many billions of dollars have been shoved in these poor victims' pockets to keep their mouths shut?"
SNAP's Clohessy applauds McGill's effort.
"The most tempting thing to do with horror is to walk away from it and pray that your wounds will heal," he said. "If more Catholic Church members and employees did what [McGill] is doing, we'd be a lot closer to healing."
Contact: pstack@sltrib.com
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