BishopAccountability.org
	If Only the Church Would Cry Philly Burbs April 8, 2011 http://www.phillyburbs.com/blogs/news_columnists/kate_fratti/if-only-the-church-would-cry/article_2fccdd2c-a732-5bb0-8b84-1423acc5327c.html Benjamin DiStefano, just 5, is a stream of bright, warm light coming through a crack in the wall of his father's dark psyche. When his father speaks Ben's name, his face brightens. But the boy is a source of joy his dad can't always feel. No room. What crowds joy out of Greg DiStefano's heart and mind are roiling waves of anger, confusion and searing grief for his own lost childhood. Not lost so much as stolen. Greg, now 43 and a resident of Richboro, says he was repeatedly sexually abused by a parish priest who, on at least one occasion, passed him off to another priest in the rectory of the Northeast Philadelphia Roman Catholic church where Greg's single mother enrolled her only son in school. There are hours when Greg can manage his torment over the past. He tamps it down to work so he can support his family, to care for Ben, who has autism, to love his wife Traci, whom he credits for helping him find the courage to seek help. Help, because there are times when Greg's emotions won't be contained. They spill over into pools of anxiety and rage, drinking bouts and depression that threatens to swallow him. And there is grief - overwhelming grief. Last week, as newspapers detailed new court proceedings involving more sex abuse charges against Catholic priests, Greg asked me to hear his story. I agreed and met him at the office of his therapist. "I don't think people understand the depth of damage," says psychotherapist Michael Bradley of Feasterville. He confirmed he's being compensated by the Philadelphia archdiocese for Greg's treatment. Greg found Bradley in the phone book. I'd read all the ugly news stories, scanned the names of accused priests, but I didn't understand the depths of damage they'd inflicted until I looked into Greg's face. He is a handsome, polite, easy-to-like man filled with a pain that comes into his eyes even when he smiles from under a baseball cap. Pain for what was done to him, pain for how he's been treated since, and pain about what he's missing today. And that's the peace of mind needed to raise and protect Benjamin well. To tend to his marriage. To live day to day with some sense of personal power instead of terror that he might snap under the weight of what he's feeling. Greg knows there are Catholics who wish he'd cope more quietly. Go to therapy, take a pill, just don't keep repeating the words "raped by a pedophile priest" to the news media. Stop reminding the already shaken faithful about leaders who protected child rapists and questioned the character and truthfulness of victims. Greg can't suffer quietly. His life depends on him making noise. He was a compliant, trusting child once, and he paid for it. A less cooperative kid might not have been a target. Greg convinced diocese officials he was telling the truth about his ordeal, in part, by recalling in detail the appointments of the room where he was molested again and again. Drew the room on a pad of paper in an interview. Described the colors of bathroom fixtures. But he thinks they already knew. He believes somewhere there was a record of that woman removing him from the rectory that day. His abuse ended when a lay worker, he thinks perhaps a cleaning lady or secretary, heard commotion and a child's voice in the priest's quarters of the rectory, knocked on the door and demanded to be let in. She removed Greg from the room. The priest stopped coming to look for Greg after that, but nothing was ever said to Greg's mother about what had been done to her son. Nothing was said to Greg. And so, one day, he went looking for the priest whom he'd grown used to spending time with. Left the school yard and knocked on the rectory door. The priest who opened it scolded him. Never come here again, he said. Do, and they will take you away from your mother, he threatened. Greg didn't understand. "My mother was all I had," Greg said. Today, Greg's using his name because the shame of what happened isn't his shame. It belongs to the adults to whom he was entrusted. The church only acknowledged its disgrace because brave but similarly tormented voices cried out loudly about their pain. Greg didn't find his voice until his 20s, when he was plagued with nightmares about the molestation. Some days, he thought he was going crazy. But sane people only look crazy in an insane world where powerful people who could have protected kids moved pedophiles around from parish to parish. Even the letter from the Philadelphia archdiocese saying Greg was eligible for compensation for counseling burned his already blistered emotional skin. The church said it would pay his counseling costs out of charitable concern. Not out of guilt. Not out of remorse. He's still waiting for a personal apology like this: "I am so heartfully sorry for what was done to you, Greg. So many of us share the blame because we looked away." Instead, when he met Cardinal Rigali in public and told him he'd been raped by a priest, Rigali referred him to the victims' assistance office that "handles" that sort of thing. No questions from Rigali. No, "I'm so heartfully sorry." Greg said he came fully unglued not long after he opened a newspaper to find that Father Edward Avery, the priest who had married him and Traci, was charged with sexual abuse of kids. Avery's image appears throughout their wedding album and video. Greg read the news and dropped to the floor broken, shaking, weeping, overcome with anguish. Scared. That day, in a pool of sweat, Greg phoned the victim's assistance office to beg that the woman who answered the phone "handle this." "Handle it," Greg demanded. The woman who answered coolly insisted Greg calm down first. Greg felt his rage intensify. He hadn't thought it possible. Greg's mother, separated from his dad early in Greg's life, worked two jobs, in part, so he could attend Catholic grade school. "She believed it's where I would be safest." She died very recently, he said, still apologizing for not keeping him safe. "I'm so sorry," she said again and again. Tears fall from Greg's eyes as he recalls her tears and regret. I looked into his face and couldn't help but cry with him. If only the whole Catholic Church would cry, I think to myself, maybe he and so many others could heal. Kate Fratti's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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