By Sam Hemingway
Burlington Free Press
May 21, 2006
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Michael Gay thought the waves of emotion rippling inside him would subside after he accepted $965,000 to settle his priest sex abuse lawsuit with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington last month.
He now knows he was wrong.
"I thought I would feel better, but I don't," he said in an interview last week. "I feel the same feelings I had before, the anger and hate and humiliation. I want to go on with my life, but I can't. Money can't heal the pains of the heart."
For that, in large measure, he blames Bishop Salvatore Matano.
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Michael Gay is interviewed at his lawyer's office in Burlington last week. Photo by GLENN RUSSELL/Free Press |
Gay, 38, said any hope he had of getting past his pain were dashed when he read Matano's letter to Catholics released last weekend.
He said he was particularly offended by a remark in the bishop's letter about putting the church's parishes into individual charitable trusts to protect them from "unbridled, unjust and terribly unreasonable assault."
"Those were just horrible words," Gay said of the remark. "How dare anyone say it was us, the victims, who assaulted them. How dare they do what they did to all of us kids and now they are trying to push us all back in a corner.
"That was a slap to our faces."
Gay is also angry that church lawyers, in a court motion last week, brought up painful information about Gay's past sexual history and marital issues as part of an argument to get Judge Ben Joseph, the judge in his now-settled case, removed from presiding over future priest sexual abuse cases.
Matano, told of Gay's comments, said he deeply regretted any hurt his remark had caused for Gay or other victims of priest sexual abuse, including the 19 with lawsuits pending in Chittenden County Superior Court. He declined comment on the diocese's legal actions.
"I have the greatest sympathy and sorrow for those who have suffered at the hands of those they trusted the most," Matano said. "There is not a day when I am not personally tortured by the tragic events of the past."
In the letter, the bishop disclosed he was placing the diocese's 128 parishes in individual charitable trusts to protect church assets from future settlements it may have to make in the pending lawsuits.
He said his comment about the "unbridled, unjust and terribly unreasonable assault" was a reference to his frustrations with the complexities of the legal system, not victims of priest sexual abuse. He said media reports took his remark out of context, adding to the misunderstanding.
"I do believe them," he said of Gay and other victims of priest sexual abuse. "I believe the victims when they say they don't want money, they want healing. They want reconciliation."
Gay said what he wants is to know what it would have been like if he had never been abused.
"I don't like who I am because I was abused," he said. "The person I could have been we will never know. I'm doing the best I can. But I know I look at life differently. I can't look at it the way I want to look at it."
Altar boy abuse
Gay has a stark memory of the first time he saw the Rev. Edward Paquette, the priest who the diocese now admits molested Gay when he was an altar boy at Christ the King Church in Burlington in 1977 and 1978.
"He was standing in a doorway downstairs at the church," Gay said. "He was fully exposed. His pants were down to his ankles."
Gay was just 9 years old at the time, proud to have the opportunity to be an altar boy and suddenly terribly confused about seeing a man of God standing naked in front of him and making no effort to cover himself.
In the weeks and months that followed, he said, Paquette began touching him without warning, first just by rubbing his shoulders, later by fondling him.
"I knew it was wrong," Gay said, speaking publicly for the first time about the molestation he suffered at the hands of Paquette. "I was so confused, so ashamed. Father Paquette told me what he was doing and what I was doing was OK in God's eyes."
A phone call to Paquette's home in Westfield, Mass., last week went unanswered. Peter Joslin, his Montpelier attorney, did not respond to a request for an interview for this story. Paquette, in a 2004 interview with the Free Press, denied abusing anyone and declared "I'm innocent."
Gay said he was afraid to tell his parents about Paquette. "They would never have believed me then," he said. "To our family, church was the best place in the world to go, next to heaven."
For Gay as a young altar boy, it was more like hell. He would attend Christ the King School next door, feeling more ill as the day progressed and the time grew closer to the moment he would have to go to church when school was over.
"Nine o'clock, the bell would ring and the day would start," Gay said, tugging his Red Sox hat lower over his forehead as he told the story. "Lunch bell would ring, and I would begin to feel sicker. Then I'd hear the 3 o'clock bell, and I'd know it was only a matter of time before I'd get abused again."
He said he suspected back then he was not the only altar boy Paquette was molesting, based on rumors he'd heard. But when he broached the subject with another altar boy who was his friend, the boy told him not to mention it to anyone if he wanted to stay out of trouble.
He remembers the day Paquette was suddenly no longer there as "the happiest day of my life." Unbeknownst to Gay at the time, Paquette was banished from Christ the King Church and the diocese in March 1978 after complaints from other families forced the church to act.
Court records from the Gay case, as well as from other cases awaiting court action, show the diocese knew Paquette had molested altar boys in Massachusetts and Indiana and at least at one parish in Vermont before transferring him to Christ the King Church.
Paquette, in a court deposition in the Gay case, has admitted to abusing boys in Massachusetts and Indiana and at parishes in Rutland, Montpelier and Burlington. He did not, however, admit to abusing Gay, court records released last week show.
The extent of Paquette's abuse of altar boys around Vermont is not fully known.
"I met a couple of friends for a round of golf last year at the Barre Country Club," Gay said. "I told one of them about my lawsuit, and he said 'Oh, my God!' He'd gone through the same terrible things with Paquette that I had. He called Paquette 'Father Pockets.' "
Alcohol abuse
Unable to speak to anyone back in 1978 about what Paquette was doing to him, Gay said as a child he comforted himself with secret swigs of alcohol, a dependency that continued through his teen years and nearly killed him one day in 2002.
"I remember it was a hot, sunny day," he said. "I was totally drunk, and I was in a parking lot in Williston. Somehow I ended up in a swampy area, stuck. I was trying to get out of a rut, and the driveshaft broke."
He isn't sure what happened next. He remembers the tumbleweeds and grass in the swamp catching fire. He remembers the truck being so engulfed in flames that all that was left afterward was the front license plate. He remembers people dragging him to safety.
"I realized right then I could have killed somebody," he said. "I might have killed myself and not been around for my wife and kids. I cried for three hours straight, and I'd never, ever cried before."
In the days that followed, Gay signed himself up for out-patient treatment for his alcoholism. He told his wife he felt different, that he would never drink alcohol again. But with the end of his alcohol abuse, memories of Paquette's abuse began to surface.
At first, he said, he could see Paquette's face in his mind, but couldn't remember his name. Soon, the flashbacks of the fondling became more vivid and, along with them, Paquette's identity.
"I'd be going about my business, and another memory would pop into my head," said Gay, a South Burlington landscaper. "I'd be driving, and I'd have to pull over to the side of the road, sick to my stomach. I didn't know what was happening to me."
Gay said he chose not to seek the help of a therapist at the time but, at the encouragement of his wife, Cristine, decided to talk to attorney Jerome O'Neill in 2004 after reading a newspaper account of a sexual abuse lawsuit O'Neill had handled involving a different priest.
"I had been beaten up about it for long enough," he said. "I decided maybe I should speak to somebody about this. I thought I could stick my head in the door and see what was going on."
Two years and a $965,000 settlement later, Gay said new memories of what happened to him as an altar boy continue to emerge. He said he has no big plans for the money, other than to "do right by my family." He said his marriage is strong, and that he has not had a drink in four years.
Gay also said he is determined to help other priest sexual abuse victims. He said Matano's comments have made him wish he had gone through with his trial rather than accept the settlement.
"I let down a bunch of victims, including myself. I should have just gone to trial and let the jury deal with it," he said.
A year ago, he said, he sat down with his parents and told them what Paquette had done to him. It was a difficult conversation, he said, but what he remembers most was his dad telling him "I'm sorry." Gay's father died of a heart attack three weeks later.
On Jan. 17, Gay said he got his first and only chance to confront Paquette since 1978. Paquette, elderly and living out of state, had not attended pre-trial court hearings on Gay's case in Burlington but was required to travel to a law office in Brattleboro for a deposition, or interview under oath, with O'Neill. Gay accompanied O'Neill to Brattleboro.
"I didn't sleep a wink the night before," Gay said. "At first, seeing him, I had that same old scared feeling, not knowing how much power he still had over me. But then I looked over at him, and I knew he couldn't look me in the eye. It was very empowering. I knew I had the upper edge now. He couldn't hurt me anymore."
Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
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