BishopAccountability.org
	Troubled, Tragic Life Followed Reported Abuse by Reardon By Hilda MuÑoz Hartford Courant July 2, 2011 http://www.courant.com/news/breaking/hc-finley-obit-0703-20110627,0,5708458.story Last fall, just a few months before he was beaten to death, Mark Finley offered his father an explanation for why he had gone from being a straight-A student to a high school dropout and a career criminal. Finley, who grew up in West Hartford and spent summers at the family beach house on the Connecticut shore as a young boy, told his father that he had been molested by Dr. George Reardon at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center when he was about 9 years old. "I walked around with a 200-pound sack of guilt on my heart, wondering what had happened to this sweet little child I had been raising," Thomas Finley said. Reardon, the chief endocrinologist at St. Francis, is believed to have abused as many as 500 children in his hospital office between the time he was hired in 1963 and into the 1980s. He died in 1998. Finley, according to family and friends, kept the abuse to himself for most of his life, but he began to talk about it more recently. In a letter to a longtime friend, Andrew Ustjanauskas, Finley mentioned a lawsuit against the hospital, parts of which he said he sent him. "Not too good, eh? Now you don't have to wonder why I'm so [expletive] up anymore," Finley wrote. His father said Finley, 53, received $60,000 in January as part of a settlement between the hospital and a group of plaintiffs who fell outside the statute of limitations. Under current law, victims have 30 years after their 18th birthdays to bring civil cases against their abusers. No one has confirmed those claims. Attorneys involved in civil litigation against St. Francis would not say if Finley was a plaintiff. Other attorneys declined to comment, citing the plaintiffs' confidentiality — in court documents they are referred to as Does — and a court order prohibiting them from talking about the case. But Finley's claims that he was molested are included in police documents and correspondence with friends — and for his father and friends, the disclosure explained why his life took the course that it did when he was an adolescent. Finley's troubles started early. He started abusing alcohol as a teenager, dropped out of school in the 10th grade and spent 30 years of his life in a prison cell. "It changed him forever. He started to drink, started skipping school. Nobody could get him to talk," said Henrietta Phibbs, Ustjanauskas' sister and Finley's friend. Finley was convicted more than 20 times over 25 years on charges including third-degree burglary, second-degree threatening, sixth-degree larceny, third-degree assault and second-degree breach of peace. His most serious conviction was for first-degree sexual assault in 1992. His last conviction was in January for breach of peace and criminal trespass. When he was released from prison in April, he had three criminal cases pending. In one, he is accused of sending a threatening letter to St. Francis Hospital, saying Reardon had molested him. But friends were hopeful that, with their help and with the money he received from the hospital, he could turn his life around. "He had a really positive, good attitude," said Ustjanauskas, who became friends with Finley 14 years ago after meeting at a bar. After Finley's release in April, Ustjanauskas and his sister planned to help him clean up. They enrolled him in a rehabilitation facility in Hartford. But the day before he was supposed to register, on May 27, Finley's body was found in Colt Park. He had been beaten to death. "I wanted to get him off the streets, but that never happened," said Ustjanauskas. Hartford police said the case remains under investigation. There have been no arrests. Mark Finley was born at St. Francis Hospital in 1958. He was raised in West Hartford, attended Beach Park Elementary School and then Plant Junior High School. He loved animals and often caught turtles at the pond in Elizabeth Park across the street from his house, Thomas Finley said. He spent summers at a house in Clinton and Groton Long Point. At age 11 he learned how to sail. "It was the ideal life for a kid that age," Thomas Finley said. When his parents divorced, he moved with his mother to a home on Whiting Lane. At age 9, he broke his leg skiing at Powder Ridge in Middlefield. "It was our first and last trip. As soon as we got there, Mark broke his leg, and we packed up and went home," said Finley's older brother, Jim. Finley, Phibbs said, told her he was taken to the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital where Reardon approached his mother and convinced her to enroll Finley in a growth study. Finley returned to the hospital more than a dozen times for the study. It was during that time that the abuse allegedly took place. Phibbs said Finley knew there was something wrong with the way he was being monitored, and he refused to complete the program. Finley told Phibbs that he started abusing alcohol when he was about 15 and starting spending time in juvenile detention. His lived off and on with his mother, Diane Bailey, until he was about 20. "One day, he returned from incarceration, and the house was gone," Phibbs said. Finely said he didn't know what had happened and he had no contact with his mom after that. Last year, he received a letter from his father that said she had died. Thomas Finley said he remembers when Finley broke his leg and when his ex-wife told him about Reardon's study. But he didn't know his son had been molested until the fall of 2010, when Mark called him and said he needed some paperwork for the lawsuit. "He went from a quiet, loving kid to a surly, nasty young man who dropped out of school and got into criminal scrapes," his father said. He said his ex-wife lost the house on Whiting Lane many years ago because of financial problems. Mark Finley mentions Reardon in criminal cases that were pending against him when he died. In the threatening letter he sent the president and CEO of St. Francis Hospital, Finley said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, alcoholism and rage disorder, the warrant states. Finley was angry that he could not be part of a civil lawsuit against the hospital because the statute of limitations for him had passed, according to a warrant for Finley's arrest. "I have nothing in life and if you only knew exactly how violent I can become, I don't think you would feel too good in your position as an administrator of St. Francis," he wrote. "Does being over 48 absolve me from any prosecution for getting some payback for what happened to me?" In another criminal case, Finley was accused of sending harassing letters to an ex-girlfriend and a male friend of hers. While speaking with a state police investigator, Finley said he would move on with his life and would stop writing his ex-girlfriend. He said he planned to move to Florida with money he received in a settlement from St. Francis Hospital, an arrest warrant states. Andrew Ustjanauskas said he met Finley 14 years ago at Peter Pan, a bar diagonally across the street from A.C. Petersen on Park Road in West Hartford. "He came up to me and said, 'Can you buy me a drink?' So I bought him a drink," Ustjanauskas said. "He looked like a normal person. I had no idea he had been in and out of jail." A few weeks later, Finley showed up at Cosmo's International, the Ustjanauskas family store on Farmington Avenue, and asked to borrow $20. Over the next 14 years, letters from whichever prison Finley was in would arrive regularly at the family store. Sometimes, Finley would show up after being released. Ustjanauskas, whose parents helped found the 100 Club of Connecticut and other charitable organizations, said he didn't think twice about helping his friend. "My father engraved that stuff into me. We help people. To me this was just another day in the life," he said. The letters arrived at the store about every two weeks. In them, he wrote about how he was doing or thanked Ustjanauskas for his help. "Andrew, thank you for being such a good person and friend. You are really the only person I trust or have any faith in," Finley wrote in one of his last letters to Ustjanauskas. Sometimes, he asked for money or wrote about getting out, changing, not drinking. If he was out of prison in the winter, Finley would purposely get caught stealing batteries from the Walgreens pharmacy so he could go back to a warm prison cell, Ustjaunaskas said. "The problem was, every time he got out, he's on the street, he's got no money, no job, no place to live. How can you change your life?" he said. Ustjanauskas said he knew about the crimes Finley had committed but didn't see a bad side of him. He replied to his letters, sent him money for the commissary or sent him books to read. "Whenever I met him, he was fine. He was a nice person. All these things I heard about him, I never saw. He was like my kid brother almost," he said. "When we were together it was just us guys. I didn't see him as a criminal." He and Finley went duck-pin bowling on Farmington Avenue in Hartford one night after he was last released. Ustjanauskas said Finley had been institutionalized for so long, he didn't know how to act around large groups of people and seemed uneasy at the bowling alley. Finley would talk about all the movies he had heard about, but hadn't seen. Ustjanauskas said they watched a lot of Blue-Rays at his home. They also went to a couple of movies. It was Finley's first time in a movie theater in 30 years. "He was astounded by the technology," Ustjanauskas said. Ustjanauskas helped Finley find temporary housing and developed a plan to help Finley clean up and support himself financially. He wanted to send him to the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute in Puerto Rico, where Finley could expel all the toxins from his body and get over his alcohol addiction. He also signed him up for food stamps, and Phibbs was going to help him apply for disability benefits. "I figured by the time he got back from Puerto Rico, he'd have enough money so he could start a new life," Ustjanauskas said. Phibbs said she talked to Finley for nearly three hours the Tuesday before he died in order to gather information for the disability benefits forms. He opened up to her about his dream of moving to Florida and buying a trailer and a German shepherd. He told her about his parents fighting when he was a kid, about their divorce, his father moving to Arizono and how his older brother, Jimmy, helped keep the family going. He spoke to her about Reardon and how his life changed after meeting him. He said he regretted having spent 30 years of his life in prison. He mentioned numerous visits to a psychiatric facility at the University of Connecticut and the Institute of Living. "He could have come in here like a tough guy, just out of prison. Instead the flood gates opened and he started talking," she said. Finley wasn't allowed to go to the program in Puerto Rico. The pending criminal cases prevented him from leaving the mainland. Plans to send him to a yoga camp in the Catskills fell through after Finley had his ribs broken in a fight. He was then scheduled to register at a rehabilitation program in Hartford. Phibbs said Finley left her a voicemail the day after the interview, thanking her for listening. She didn't hear from him again. She noticed a story in the newspaper about a man found dead in Colt Park. Police described him as a white or Latino male, 35 to 40 years old, with multiple tattoos on his arms. But she didn't think it was Finley. "In my mind he only had good things coming," she said. Then, Ustjanauskas called her to let her know Finley had been killed. Thomas Finley said his son was cremated and his ashes were scattered over Long Island Sound, where his son loved to sail as a kid. "He would have been something special. He was something special to me always and still is," Thomas Finley said. Contact: hmunoz@courant.com
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.