It was his secret.

Fifteen months ago, he received a call from his brother Joe.

"Did he molest you, too?" Joe asked his older brother.

"No, why," Raymond J. Gouin Jr. replied much too quickly.

"I knew he wasn't telling the truth," Joseph E. Gouin said yesterday. "Just the way he said it."

Two days later, Raymond J. Gouin Jr. told his brother: He, too, was molested by the Rev. Richard R. Lavigne, a family friend and their former priest at St. Catherine of Siena Church in 16 Acres.

He then gave a detailed statement to the state police investigators attached to the Northwest District Attorney's office a year ago last fall.

Yesterday, Raymond J. Gouin, Jr., 38, father of two, field specialist for a major corporation, stood unblinking in front of media from throughout New England in a crowded Holiday Inn suite and told the world his childhood secret.

He wasn't alone.

Gouin was joined by his brother, Joe, Kenneth R. Chevalier and Joseph Shattuck, who also detailed their alleged abuse at the hands of Lavigne. Four more letters from alleged victims listing allegations against the Catholic priest were read.

Details varied, but each told the same story of betrayal.

Lavigne would come to the Gouin house in 16 Acres for supper, regale the family with stories. He let the boys ride in his maroon Mustang with the black bucket seats. He encouraged 12-year-old Raymond to be an altar boy.

"He'd take me on fishing trips, scavenger and treasure hunts," Raymond Gouin recalled. "Then he invited to stay over at the rectory at St. Catherine of Siena. That's when the molesting started."

It didn't stop.

Lavigne brought Gouin to Canada and Vermont for special field trips.

"We would go to motel rooms. He would drop me off into a parking lot and wait until he got his room. He'd signal me from the woods with a flashlight or open a window," Gouin said. "I'd scale a wall and go in. I was molested there, also."

Lavigne, Gouin said, also encouraged him to steal antiques from barns on these field trips.

"He told me they were abandoned, but now as I think back they were filled with tractors," Gouin said. "I was chased by people I now believe were the owners of those barns."

The alleged abuse continued when Lavigne was transferred to St. Mary's in East Springfield in the late 1960s.

"It was humiliating, disgusting and not easy to talk about," Raymond Gouin said, groping for the right word. "He was a family friend. I was a kid."

Raymond Gouin said when Lavigne left St. Catherine there were whispers about the priest, about possible molestation. "I always denied it when asked if I knew anything," he said.

"We were kids," Joe Gouin said shaking his head. "Kids. That's why we didn't come forward. This was late 1960s. Priests didn't do things like this."

The younger Gouin is 37 now, the father of three.

He was molested twice one night on an altar boy field trip in a house in a town he never knew the name of.

"Father Lavigne was a prominent man in the community, admired by most. If an 11-year-old came forward then, he would not have had much of a voice. Who would believe me?" Joe Gouin said. "It was scary. It was easier to stay quiet."

For 26 years, Joe Gouin said he has been awakened most nights by what he describes as frightening, violent nightmares.

"My brother and I are coming forward in the hopes in doing so, we can stop something like this from happening again," Joe Gouin said.

Michael A. McMahon, writing from Los Angeles where he is an educational television director, said he was an altar boy at St. Catherine of Siena from 1965 to 1969.

"When Father Richard Lavigne arrived the altar boys felt that this new priest was very special," Michael McMahon wrote.

"He gave us extra attention, played with us, took us on excursions and made us feel like he was one of us," McMahon wrote. "He was someone we confided in about almost anything and someone that I trusted unconditionally."

McMahon said it was during the late 1960s Lavigne organized a camping weekend in Goshen. "It was not uncommon for parents to let him take their sons on overnight excursions," McMahon wrote. "Everyone trusted him so much."

McMahon recalls a great time in Goshen: swimming, wrestling, boys-will-be-boys kind of activity.

"At one point, I pushed Danny Croteau to the floor of the cabin," McMahon wrote. "Father Lavigne saw this and struck me in the face so hard it knocked me down. I was shocked, hurt, embarrassed, and confused for I had never seen him exhibit such behavior. He seemed enraged with me. I went to sleep that night without really saying anything to him. I was awakened in the middle of the night by Father Lavigne, who had gotten into bed with me. He molested me that night."

In 1972, Croteau was found dead, floating in the Chicopee River. His murder remains unsolved. The Croteau family were told by police Lavigne was the prime suspect in the case. The priest was never charged in connection with the Croteau case.

McMahon said he was confused, ashamed and frightened by the events of that weekend. He said he never told anyone.

"I buried the memory of this humiliating event," he wrote. "At that time in my life I began to look at things much differently. I looked at the church differently. I looked at authority figures differently. I looked at my parents differently and my respect for them changed. I began abusing drugs and alcohol and indulged in violence and vandalism on a weekly basis. I found that I could not trust anyone. I felt that I really wasn't a good person."

Brian T. McMahon, Michael's 36-year-old brother, an insurance agent in California, echoed his brother's letter.

He wrote that his mother, in particular, had a great deal of trust and respect for Lavigne.

"She would allow him to take us on weekend and overnight field trips," Brian McMahon wrote. "It was on one of these field trips to his parent's home when I awoke to being molested by Father Lavigne. The shock and confusion over this experience caused me to say nothing to anyone. Not my parents. Not my brothers. No one.

"This recollection was suppressed until the fall of 1991 when I became aware of recent charges of child abuse against Father Lavigne. The suppression of this experience has impacted my life in many ways. From outright rebellion and drug abuse as an adolescent to the inability of maintaining trusting relationships as an adult."

Raymond J. Chelte II also wrote of shattered relationships.

"I've been through two marriages and lost the affection of two children because I could not get close to people," he wrote. "I was scared of affection or letting anyone get close to me. I turned to drugs to hide the hurt and attempted suicide because I did not care to live."

The 37-year-old, now living in Little Rock, Ark., wrote of the wonder of meeting Lavigne as a 10 or 11-year-old altar boy at St. Catherine's.

"At first he expressed a lot of interest in me as a person, always asking me to go places. Then the molestations began," Chelte wrote. "It was always in private. It occurred at both the rectory and the church. There was no one I could talk to about it, I felt dirty, used and damned. Father Lavigne intimidate me by telling me he was God's worker and if I ever told anyone God would send me to hell."

Aaron D. DeCato's story is not much different. Writing from Biloxi, Miss. where the 20-year-old is stationed in the U.S. Air Force, DeCato details in a hand-written letter being taken under Lavigne's wing in 1986.

"My family moved to Colrain and Richard Lavigne befriended my family and basically became an extended member of the family," DeCato wrote. "Myself and my two brothers started to visit without Richard Lavigne and do work for him around the rectory. We (my brothers and I) ended up staying over one night and at that time I was sexually assaulted by Richard Lavigne."

DeCato wrote that the incident had a profound effect on his life. "My grades in school dropped dramatically," he wrote. "I went into a state of completely drawing myself away from others."

DeCato said he has been in counseling for a year "and have a long way to go."

Nineteen-year-old Joseph Shattuck said he sees no end in sight for his therapy. Shattuck's father Charles said his 10-year-old son is also undergoing long-term therapy.

When Kenneth R. Chevalier took the podium to tell his story of 18 months of alleged molestation by Lavigne, he couldn't. He broke down in tears.

Later, he said what happened to him was "unspeakable."