By Mike Kelly
Daily Record
August 22 2010
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/kelly_082210.html
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| James Hanley, a former priest accused of molesting more than 20 boys in the Seventies and Eighties, in Paterson in 2006. |
RAY SKETTINI wasn’t supposed to die this soon. He was only 53. He was active and loved the outdoors, and he had no outward health problems, his family says.
But Skettini died recently of a sudden and massive heart attack. When his friends gather for a memorial service in a few days, they will surely mourn his all-too-early passing. They will also talk about a different attack on Skettini’s heart many years ago.
When Skettini was only 12, he was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest in Pompton Plains.
There is no doubt about that story. Skettini has openly spoken of his abuse and was on the winning side of a lawsuit against Catholic authorities. Likewise, his abuser — the defrocked priest, James Hanley – described in lengthy interviews with me when he was imprisoned at the Hudson County Jail on another charge how he had sexually abused Skettini and other boys in Passaic and Morris counties.
Hanley got out of jail two years ago and has since disappeared. But the emotional scars on Ray Skettini’s heart and soul never went away.
“It’s been a very painful journey,” said Skettini’s wife, Donna, in what surely must be an understatement.
A difficult subject
Sex abuse by priest is not easy to discuss – surely another understatement. Church authorities are justifiably uncomfortable – and not just because of their years of complicit and near-criminal see-no-evil silence in declining to tell police, parents and others when they learned that priests had abused children.
Another reason for the discomfort is because this scandal defies a clear and easy explanation. How could so many men who believed they were following God’s call to be Catholic priests abuse so many children – for so long?
The numbers that the church admits to are simply astounding. A 2004 study of church records, commissioned by Catholic bishops and conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, revealed that 10,667 Catholics had accused 4,392 priests of sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002.
Most of the victims were young boys when they were molested. And most of the abuse took place during the Seventies – when Skettini was abused at a rectory at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church in Pompton Plains. But here is the problem with those statistics: They don’t include Ray Skettini.
Researchers say that many victims, such as Skettini, did not come forward with official complaints until after 2002 when research was completed. Many stayed silent for years because they were ashamed and wanted to forget what had happened to them. And so the 10,667 victims may be only a fraction of the real number.
For the American Catholic church, this scandal is devastating. The church has paid more than $2 billion to settle legal claims by victims in recent years. Just as important, the church has lost some of its moral authority to speak about injustice and the downtrodden. Who wants to hear a bishop discuss the world’s problems when he can’t even clean up his own house?
That may seem harsh. But even some bishops are now conceding – finally – that they have much rebuilding to do within their own church.
Skettini spent most of his life trying to rebuild himself. He was silent for years, he told me once. He said he just couldn’t bring himself to admit to his teenage friends what had happened to him as a boy in that church rectory in Pompton Plains.
A matter of trust
He had gone there because he said he trusted the dynamic and friendly priest, James Hanley. For his part, Hanley said he encouraged boys to drop by. The visits seemed innocent. But as we learned later – notably at Hanley’s later parish, St. Joseph’s in Mendham – the visits to the rectory were a careful sexual grooming process that led to what authorities believe to be at least 20 cases of abuse.
Skettini was one of the first victims. As he grew to adulthood and married and became a father of a daughter named Sarah and a son named Robert, he tried to push those painful memories of abuse into a secret corner of his soul. And in what he called one of the mysterious ironies of his life, Skettini asked Hanley to preside at his wedding when he married his high school sweetheart, Donna.
But just as silence eventually failed the church, Ray Skettini’s silence failed him. He was in his mid-40s when he finally went public with his story. Other victims of James Hanley had come forward – notably Mark Serrano of Mendham. Skettini finally realized he wasn’t alone.
But what of Ray’s wife, Donna?
“For years, I thought there was some type of thorn in our marriage,” she said the other day. “There was something there, eating at it like cancer. Jim Hanley robbed so much from our marriage.”
But, as Donna also points out, her husband’s decision to go public also saved their marriage. Several years ago, Ray and Donna renewed their marriage vows – this time, with a far more honorable priest, Monsignor Kenneth Lasch.
It was Lasch, as a Mendham pastor after Hanley, who forced church authorities to deal with Hanley’s crimes. Lasch also set up a therapy group and allowed a memorial to sex abuse victims at the church – perhaps the only memorial to sexual abuse on Catholic property anywhere.
Lasch, who has been praised nationally for his work with victims, is scheduled to come to Skettini’s memorial service this week. So are others, including many victims.
They will remember a man who died of a heart attack. They will also remember a boy whose heart was broken long before.
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