SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican - MassLive [Springfield MA]
December 10, 2023
By Larry Parnass
Over the past 14 years, a Northampton therapist has been helping a client, Nancy A. Dunn of Easthampton, contend with fallout from a year-long sexual relationship with a priest.
In 2020, wanting more answers, Dunn got back in touch with the Springfield diocese. She did so 23 years after a misconduct board upheld her claim that a parish priest, the Rev. Warren Savage, drew her into a sexual relationship.
Before 2020, therapy focused on the past.
Since then, according to Dunn and her therapist, Nancy Knudsen, a main topic in counseling has been anguish over the diocese’s response to her requests for information.
“There are two betrayals here, one by Warren Savage and the other by the church itself in its handling of this matter, both when it first happened and now,” said Knudsen, a psychotherapist who directs the Couple and Family Institute of New England.
The two women say Dunn faced delays, mixed messages and broken promises.
“This feels like 1997 all over again to me with what they’re doing,” Dunn said in an interview.
The diocese cites good-faith efforts to respond to Dunn’s requests.
Dunn, however, feels she ran into a bureaucracy that tested her emotionally. “I’ve been put through hell for three years,” she said. “The bishop could have said, ‘Nancy, here’s the committee’s recommendation from 1997. We’re meeting it now.’”
After the diocese agreed to reopen an investigation into Savage, Dunn said she was told by Jeffrey Trant, director of the Office of Safe Environment & Victim Assistance, and other diocesan officials that she would receive a copy of the findings.
Then she learned she would get only a redacted copy. Then, in April, Trant’s successor told her church policy restricted her from being given any report.
Another setback, for Dunn, came when she learned that despite two additional visits with the diocese’s review board, which hears cases of alleged misconduct, that panel declined to make any recommendation to the Most Rev. William D. Byrne on additional actions the bishop might take.
Dunn claims she was told, by Trant, that she could present her case to the review board, even though she had reached a financial settlement with the diocese, in May 2022. She later learned that after a settlement is reached with a survivor, the review board does not act.
She credits Trant with digging through church records to help her understand what actions had been taken after Savage was removed from active ministry in 1997. But in the course of that, she learned that a former bishop, the Most Rev. Thomas Dupre, had fabricated a memo stating that Dunn did not object to Savage returning to priestly duties.
At the time Savage was removed from North Adams, Dunn said she was told by the diocese that her approval was needed for the priest to return to church service.
“For 30 years, he’s been empowered to continue in ministry, thinking I gave him permission,” Dunn said. “I never gave him permission to return to ministry.”
According to emails reviewed by The Republican, the diocese appears to have responded to some but not all of Dunn’s requests in the last three years.
In early 2021, Trant provided detailed answers to a list of her questions. On May 13, at Byrne’s direction, the Rev. John G. Lessard, the diocese’s “promoter of justice,” provided an 11-point summary that addressed questions about Savage’s status.
Lessard’s email clarified that Savage’s current posting at the Westfield State University interfaith center would be his last, that he has been in therapy since 1999 and that he was not offering “one-on-one spiritual direction or counseling to any woman requesting these services.”
“I pray this information is helpful to you in bringing conclusion in mind and peace in soul,” he wrote.
Savage declined to speak on the record for this story.
In response to questions, Carolee McGrath, the diocese’s media relations manager, said that after Byrne joined the diocese in 2020, he was told that Dunn was “displeased” with how her case was resolved.
McGrath said the bishop asked Trant to conduct “a comprehensive review” and also alerted leaders at Westfield State. “The review board took up this matter once again and determined that all appropriate actions were taken and no additional recommendations made.”
One of Dunn’s first questions for the diocese had concerned a public disclosure about Savage’s misconduct. “I saw that his name wasn’t on the list of credibly accused priests,” she said.
The diocese lists only one former priest, Eugene Honan, who was determined to have drugged and sexually abused an adult man and was removed from the ministry in 2010. A separate list is kept for clergy found to have abused minors.
McGrath said the diocese does not believe Savage engaged in misconduct at a level that would place him on its list. “The issue of Eugene Honan involved a different set of circumstances in which the survivor was deemed vulnerable,” she said.
Of Dunn, McGrath said: “This individual was not deemed vulnerable.”