ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Newsday [Melville NY]
December 8, 2024
By Bart Jones
Robert Levins felt a sense of relief at word that hundreds of Catholic clergy sex abuse survivors on Long Island, himself included, had finally reached a court settlement with the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
The agreement, approved Wednesday by a federal bankruptcy judge, closed a four-year court battle pitting 600 survivors against the diocese, the nation’s eighth largest. Payments from the $323 million settlement will likely start going out to survivors early next year.
Whatever money, or sense of empowerment, eventually comes to Levins, it won’t match the emotional price exacted since a trusted family friend, a Franciscan brother based in Port Jefferson, sexually molested him and his two brothers in the mid-1970s.
“This entire process in a way has also revictimized myself and probably others because we had to relive this so many times,” Levins, 63, told Newsday.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- A $323 million settlement between 600 clergy sex abuse survivors and the Diocese of Rockville Centre has left some survivors both relieved but anguished by reliving the abuse.
- One survivor, Robert Levins, has tried to use the nightmare to help others by counseling them as a Pentecostal minister.
- He said the court case made his trauma even worse because he learned his 6-year-old brother had also been molested.
Part of that process for Levins included a horrific discovery: The same Franciscan brother, Antonio Antonucci, who molested him and his teenage brother Thomas at their Shoreham home, had done the same to their 6-year-old brother, Sean.
“That revelation kind of changed me, because I was his protector, and he got hurt. I never knew that,” Levins said. “That revelation was heartbreaking and it’s been hard to live with that.”
In 2021, Antonucci, now deceased, was included on a list of credibly accused clergy released by the Diocese of Rockville Centre as part of the legal proceedings.
A way to cope
Long before there was a hint of a lawsuit, and a shocking family secret exposed, Levins had found a way to cope with such childhood trauma. By the time he turned 25, he was a full-time Pentecostal minister, a post he has used to counsel other sexual abuse survivors.
“I’ve kind of turned this nightmare in my life into something positive for somebody else,” said Levins, who lives in North Carolina with his wife but grew up in Shoreham.
[PHOTO: Robert Levins in an undated high school portrait. Credit: Photo Courtesy Robert Levins]
The settlement is another potentially healing step, said Adam Slater, a Melville-based attorney whose law firm represented 100 of the 600 survivors, the Levins brothers among them.
“It is always going to be difficult for people to recount childhood sexual abuse,” Slater said. But the agreement “also gives them some measure of closure and an acknowledgment that the abuse actually occurred … which can be very empowering to them.”
Jo Ponticello, a therapist based in New Jersey who has counseled clergy sex abuse survivors, said one of their biggest hurdles going through the settlement process is overcoming a deep sense of shame.
And “of course you carry shame because there are secrets,” said Ponticello, a licensed clinical social worker.
Coming forward with those secrets can be excruciating.
“If you’ve been carrying something for 20 years and you haven’t really talked to anybody about it and then you have this opportunity to go and disclose because there is legal action that you really support, that’s a pretty daunting task,” she said.
Levins said he never told anyone, even therapists, many of the details of his abuse until he confided in his lawyers during the recent Rockville Centre proceedings.
In an interview with Newsday last week, he recalled being 16 when he first met Antonucci, who had identified himself as a Franciscan monk, or brother.
From trust to turmoil
In the late 1970s, Antonucci was working at Infant Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Port Jefferson, according to a lawsuit the Levins brothers filed against the diocese and the parish in 2019 under the New York State Child Victims Act. That lawsuit and 600 others were transferred to U.S. bankruptcy court after the diocese declared bankruptcy in 2020, and were part of Wednesday’s settlement.
A few weeks before Christmas in 1977, the Levins brothers’ parents separated. At Infant Jesus, a priest suggested Antonucci could help the boys get through the turmoil, caused in part by their beloved father moving out of the family home in Shoreham, Levins said.
Antonucci quickly became a regular there.
“We would look forward to him because he was a very cool priest,” Levins said. “He was funny, charming.”
One night there was a big snowstorm, and the family expected Antonucci to cancel a dinner invitation.
“When the doorbell rang and he was there,” Levins said, “we were just overwhelmed that this guy cared enough to come out in a snowstorm.”
Over dinner, Antonucci told the Levinses he ran a home for boys and needed money to cover operating expenses. Levins’ mother, who could barely support the family, quickly wrote out a check for $600 — a lot of money in 1977, Levins said.
Antonucci “put that check in his pocket, then proceeded to assault her three sons,” Levins said.
By around 9 p.m., Antonucci was talking to Levins’ 15-year-old brother, Thomas, as he was lifting weights in the living room. Robert, then 16, went to bed.
Levins remembers being awakened at 4 a.m. Antonucci had one hand on Robert Levins’ face and held a candle with the other. The trusted family friend from the Catholic parish then molested him, Levins said.
The next morning over breakfast, the two older brothers quietly talked about that night — and Thomas confirmed that he too was sexually abused.
“He was a pro” at grooming the brothers for abuse, Thomas Levins told Newsday. Of abusers, he added: “They are masters of manipulation.”
The Levinses and their mother reported the abuse to the parish staff in Port Jefferson. As far as the Levinses know, nothing ever happened. The Diocese of Rockville Centre did not respond to a request for comment.
A third brother abused
Decades later, Robert Levins learned the abuse was not limited to him and Thomas. In 2019, Levins told his brother Sean that he was filing the lawsuit. Sean Levins in turn said he too had been molested by Antonucci.
“I was floored that he would do this to a child,” Robert Levins said. “How evil can you be to hurt a 6-year-old?”
Sean Levins died last year of a brain aneurysm at age 54.
The damage done to Robert and Thomas Levins as teenagers sent their lives into a tailspin. Robert Levins started drinking heavily and also taking drugs. With plummeting grades, Robert Levins said he barely graduated from high school. He didn’t bother applying to college.
Levins hit rock bottom when Sean, who he still refers to as his “baby brother,” and saw him as a role model, also saw him intoxicated.
“I could see the disappointment in his eyes,” Levins said. “When I sobered up, I finally broke and for the first time in years cried out to God. I needed help and I knew it. I was throwing my life away.”
A concerned friend of his mother’s connected Levins with a pastor at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in East Setauket who counseled him for a year and eventually told him he had a calling to ministry. The pastor suggested Levins attend a Bible college in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Levins did, and by the age of 25, and disillusioned by the Catholic Church, he had become an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination.
“I’ve kind of turned this nightmare in my life into something positive for somebody else,” said Robert Levins, now a Pentecostal minister who counsels other survivors of clergy sex abuse. Credit: Photo courtesy Robert Levins
He said praying and becoming an ordained minister and spiritual leader to others changed, and most likely saved, his life.
“Without God I would have lost my mind or become an alcoholic,” Levins said. “I was just sliding downhill so quickly. I decided that this is the way that I can help people.”
He also had a gnawing sense that the pain of his past remained unresolved. So, several years ago, with the help of a private detective, Levins said he tracked down Antonucci and got him on the telephone. He needed to confront Antonucci and also make sure the man that had molested him and his brothers was far away from children.
Antonucci’s response was chilling, Levins said. He didn’t deny the abuse but defended it, telling him he had done good work in his ministry.
Thomas Levins said Antonucci’s sexual abuse left him depressed and his life in turmoil. His grades dropped in high school. A standout pitcher growing up, he had visions of playing baseball in college. His senior year in high school, Thomas Levins said, he didn’t try out for the team.
“Your whole world gets shattered,” he said.
Now 62 and a carpenter in Pennsylvania, the middle Levins brother is married for the third time. He has trouble trusting people as he and his older brother continue to heal.
Robert Levins over the decades has also helped other survivors of clergy abuse heal through his ministry in Pennsylvania, Florida, New Jersey and North Carolina, where he now is based near Raleigh. He has counseled hundreds of survivors.
“I tell them all, we are not going to wipe clean the memory. This is never going to go away,” he said. But you must “manage it so it doesn’t hold you prisoner for the rest of your life.”
By Bart Jones
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”