DENVER (CO)
9 News
May 20, 2019
By Kevin Vaughan
Neil Hewitt was at 5 Colorado churches in the 1960s and ’70s. He answered 9Wants to Know’s questions about his past.
For nearly 50 years, Michael Smilanic told no one about a trip he took to Montreal in 1967 with two other boys and a Catholic priest – told no one about the night in a hotel room in Rochester, N.Y.
He was 14 that summer, and it was there, he told 9Wants to Know, that he was molested by a priest he had previously believed was “really cool,” a priest who drove a Pontiac G.T.O., flew airplanes, and took him skiing.
“He seemed more human, I think, than some of the other priests,” said Smilanic, who grew up attending St. Therese Catholic Church in Aurora.
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