Ten days ago, dozens of Porter’s former charges gathered to recall those early days-with mounting horror at memories they had for so long repressed. One after another, men and women alike recounted how the young priest had sexually molested them–in the rectory, at camp, in the confessional, on the basketball court, in the sacristy, alone in school corridors, in the town swimming pool, in Porter’s parents’ house and even in their own homes. “It looked like a school reunion,” said one participant, “except that everyone was crying.”
Massachusetts authorities are investigating these allegations. Separately, police in Oakdale, Minn., a St. Paul suburb where Porter has lived since the 1970s, spoke with him late last week about an alleged incident there. Since 1982 some 400 Catholic priests and brothers in the United States have been reported for child sexual abuse, according to Jason Berry, a journalist whose book on pedophilia and the Catholic clergy, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” will be published by Doubleday this fall. And, Berry estimates, the cost to the church for damages and legal and medical fees has already reached $400 million.
Of the cases reported, none more vividly illustrates the lifelong trauma that victims of pedophilia can suffer. Porter would not discuss the allegations with NEWSWEEK. But more than 50 adults now in their 40s have come forward with stories of sexual molestation that have haunted them since they were grade-school pupils. Many of the alleged victims never told their parents what had happened because, says Dan Lyons, who is now seeking counseling, “the nuns drummed into us in school that priests were handpicked by God.”
Porter had particular access to the parish altar boys. On outings with them, some say, he fondled them while playing blindman’s bluff or concluded a playful wrestling match by rubbing up against them to achieve orgasm. Paul Merry says Porter sexually abused him more than 100 times. Peter Calderone says that he was forced to masturbate Porter in Calderone’s own bedroom on occasions when his parents invited the priest home to dinner.
Judy White says Porter would summon girls from the classroom on the pretext of needing help in the church. Patty Wilson recalls one occasion in the rectory when, she says, the chain-smoking priest took off his collar, then thrust his fingers into her vagina and his tongue down her throat until he achieved orgasm. “I can still feel him wet and sweating, his breathing heavier and heavier,” she says. “I can still see his yellow fingers.” When another girl confessed to Porter that she had let a boy touch her, the priest motioned her into his side of the confessional to demonstrate what had happened. Then, the woman now says, he molested her himself.
Lyons’s father, Connie, says that after he complained to the pastor, the bishop of Fall River diocese transferred Porter to other parishes. But he continued to show up at grade-school sports events. In 1967, Porter reportedly was sent to a center for disturbed priests in New Mexico. Three years later he resigned from the priesthood.
Today, Porter is married and is a househusband raising four children while his wife works as an unemployment specialist for the state. The allegations of past sexual abuse might never have surfaced had he not been tracked down by one of his alleged victims, Frank Fitzpatrick, a private investigator from Rhode Island, who claims he was drugged with rum-laced mince pie and sexually molested. Beginning in 1990, Fitzpatrick says, he taped a series of phone conversations with Porter, parts of which were played over a Boston television station earlier this month. According to a WBZ reporter, the former priest acknowledged that he had molested “anywhere from 50 to 100” children but claimed that he was now cured. Since then, others have come forward.
Porter, 58, has received death threats over the phone since the story broke. His wife, Verlyne, whom he married in 1976, cannot believe the charges. “This is a good person,” she told NEWSWEEK, “and I’ve known him almost 18 years.” Acquaintances say Porter doesn’t drink or smoke, attends church regularly and until last year tutored his parish grade school. His wife says that he never told her specifically why he left the priesthood. “This is something that happened many, many years ago. If it happened, I don’t see that the whole world has to know about it. The hell they [their children] have been put through is just unbelievable. They’ll probably continue to hear it for the rest of their lives.”
So will the church. A lawyer for Fitzpatrick and many other townspeople contends that the church protected Porter and wants its cooperation in a criminal investigation-plus money to pay for his clients’ therapy. But therapy alone won’t help those who lost their faith and to this day are still afraid to be with priests.
