Unholy Fathers Finale
Thanks to those who listened to all 17 podcast episodes about the bad Catholic priests of Springfield, Mass. - and their victims.
I began researching the criminal Catholic priests of western Massachusetts in January 2017, following the death of disgraced Bishop Thomas Dupre, who had escaped prosecution for raping at least two young boys before he’d become Bishop. In 2004, that bastard fled the Bishop’s Mansion in Springfield (pictured above) in the middle of the night, just before he was going to be exposed in the local media as a serial rapist of children. His story became Episodes 9 and 10 of Unholy Fathers.
In the dead Bishop’s obituary, I had read mention of the Bishop’s handling of allegations against a serial rapist priest I knew as a young teen. After tons of research, the man I’ve called “Father X” and his never-before-told story became the subject of Episodes 5 and 6.
I tracked this priest down in Dec. 2017 — living in bedbug-infested subsidized housing in a New England city — then door-knocked and secretly recorded our three-hour conversation while feeding him 100 proof bourbon to get him to confess his sins and crimes. Father X also revealed his tragic family history, explaining how over a dozen children (including he, his sisters, plus the priest’s nieces and nephews) had all been sexually abused by the family’s 7-foot patriarch, Father X’s father. My meeting with X became Episodes 6 and 7.
The most notorious of all the priests of Springfield, without a doubt, was Father Richard Lavigne, who murdered 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972. And was never punished for his crime.
That’s why Unholy Fathers has 8 episodes devoted to the evil clergyman. Episodes 1 2 and 3 tell the story of Danny’s murder and the diocesan coverup, plus multiple accounts of sick abuse by other victims of Lavigne. Those episodes clearly show how the Diocese of Springfield routinely transferred known pedophiles like Lavigne to unknowing parishes who welcomed the bad priests with open arms. And how church policy allowed Lavigne to continue to molest, assault and rape altar boys, until his arrest in 1991.
In Episode 11, I knocked on Lavigne’s door for an interview in 2019. And to my surprise, the then-78-year-old ex-priest invited me inside his house for an almost hour-long conversation for the ONLY media interview the disgraced priest ever gave.
In Episode 12, we hear from my friend Cat, Danny Croteau’s youngest sister, who describes how her brother’s murder destroyed her family. Then, in Episode 13, we visit the murder scene, under a bridge in Chicopee, Massachusetts, with flowers and ribbon to wrap around a tree in Danny’s memory.
Then, in the month after Lavigne’s death from Covid in May of 2021, we returned to the bastard’s evil tale, with two episodes: Episode 14 to discuss his actual demise and how the priest got away with murder with my colleague and fellow Lavigne expert, Hell’s Acres. And in Episode 15, we hear from the long-suffering wife of one of Lavigne’s victims, a 60-year-old computer programmer with a serious drinking problem and a life ruined by his childhood trauma.
In the final two episodes of Unholy Fathers, published this month, we focus on Father Charles Sullivan and his multiple sexual assaults of a 12-year-old girl in 1981. Sullivan, who I knew very well when I was an altar boy, was also the subject of Episode 4 of Unholy Fathers, during which the untold stories of the priest’s drunken mishaps are exposed.
Episode 4 includes accounts of the priest angrily leaving me in the middle of a lake after multiple failed attempts to drunkenly try teaching an 11-year-old Crash how to water ski. The episode also re-tells his drunken fundraising failures, a drunk driving accident and arrest (when he was busted with a loaded shotgun in front seat of his car and a plan to shoot the Bishop,) and his time squatting in a church rectory, until he left after being threatened by the church with criminal charges.
More insidious, though, were the multiple sexual assaults against my pal “Cee” whose story is told in Episodes 16 and 17.
And it is with Cee’s sad story that Unholy Fathers the podcast comes to an end. In the nine years since I started reporting on this issue, I’ve discovered so many disturbing patterns and sordid details about the Catholic church. From secret documents to never-before-revealed cases against priests, it’s clear that powerful institutions aren’t subject to the same laws — and scrutiny — of mere mortals. And to me, that’s sickening.
It’s also became painfully apparent that the priests who abused children were serial offenders. And while the Catholic church likes to claim (via their lists of bad priests) that Father So-and-So only had one credible allegation made against him, the reality is that if a priest molested one kid, in all likelihood, he assaulted many more. The problem is, understandably, the victims of clergy sexual abuse rarely come forward.
Also during this time, I’ve delved deep into the details and realities of the constant trials and tribulations suffered by victims of priests, as well as their families. And while devastatingly sad, those investigations and conversations have showed me that humans have the ability to be strong and resilient. Especially if they’re able to find counseling for their trauma.
While Unholy Fathers the podcast is complete, I’m starting work on the book version of this saga, which will include even more sinister details and sad stories about the evil priests of Springfield, Massachusetts. Unholy Fathers the book spans the 50 years from the murder of Danny Croteau to the death of his killer, and recounts all sorts of priestly sins and crimes in between. Plus it chronicles my life as an Irish Catholic kid, serving as an altar boy for multiple bad Springfield priests. Not sure when the book will be published, but subscribers to The Crash Report will be among the first to know.
Until then, this finale will be the final word. And below is a human-proofed transcript of Episode 17 of Unholy Fathers that demonstrates how re-traumatizing it can be for victims to come forward with allegations against priests. Especially since the church investigative process is slow-moving.
Transcript: She Was Haunted by a Bloody Priest, Part 2
When we left off with my friend Cee’s story in Part 1, we heard how after decades of stress and anxiety caused by the four sexual assaults committed by Father Charles Sullivan — in 1981 — she decided to seek justice, and she retained the services of a law firm to deal with the Catholic Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts. If you haven’t listened (or read) to Part One, I recommend you do before you listen to the rest of this episode.
At the end of Part 1, it was September 2, 2020 and Cee had just emailed me for the first time:
“I was a student of Saint Matthew’s. I have contacted a lawyer about several issues involving myself and Father Sullivan. The lawyer is having issues finding information about Father Sullivan’s time at the school. I am hoping, if at all possible, you might be able to help.”
A couple of days later, we spoke for the first time, the first of many calls and the start of a two year journey to right the wrongs she experienced at the hands of the “Angry Drunkard Priest.” That’s what I call Father Charles Sullivan, who was the subject of episode four of Unholy Fathers.
Aside from her initial interview with the law firm, I was the first person she’d told what happened at the hands of the priest. During our recent conversation recorded last month, I asked her what it had been like to reveal such horrible details to a stranger like me. After all, she’d kept this secret to herself for decades.
Cee:
It was anxiety provoking, but it was also kind of liberating because I felt like even though I was telling people who were strangers, I thought they were going to help me with some end to this or resolution to this. I also felt like having you on my side was a way to, you know, validate everything I felt. I felt like I didn’t have to prove that he was bad, because somebody else knew he was bad. But then there were, you know, there were definitely times where I’d have to keep replaying what I said or what I thought I said, or what I thought I remembered. That’s time consuming. It’s like being at the dentist. When it’s over, you’re exhausted, because your brain is going, going, going, and you desperately want it to not be going.
Crash:
After Cee shared the details about Sullivan, I knew I could help. In my trove of “top-secret” documents that I harvested from a giant lawsuit between the Diocese of Springfield and their insurance companies, I have multiple damning pieces concerning Sullivan specifically. Including a copy of a letter from the now-dead priest asking the bishop to destroy earlier letters written by Sullivan. This letter and other documents, plus a couple photos of Father Sullivan, can be found in the show notes for this episode at crashbarry.com. It’s not a long letter, so I’ll read the whole thing now.
“Dear Bishop Dupre,
In response to your letter of December 26, 2002, concerning the copies of the letters to Attorney John J. Egan and Reverend Kevin McDonough, please destroy those letters. I merely sent them to you as a courtesy to let you know I followed through on our prior phone conversations. I now consider that matter closed.
I do hope you enjoy the holidays and were able to get some rest from your busy schedule. I spent Christmas Day with Dick long and his large extended family.
With kindest personal regards, I remain respectfully yours in Christ, Reverend Charles J. Sullivan.”
Crash:
This letter is just more proof of the secrecy practiced by the church, especially in connection to the child sexual abuse scandal. Also, this letter from Sullivan was addressed to Bishop Thomas Dupre, the child raping bishop that was the subject of Episodes 9 and 10 of Unholy Fathers called “The Lying, Depraved Bishop, Parts one and two.”
Dupre fled the Diocese of Springfield — under the cover of darkness — in February 2004, just before it was revealed that he’d raped at least two young men before becoming bishop. And Dupre was never prosecuted for his crimes or punished for the decades he spent orchestrating cover ups for other pedophile priests of Springfield. Dupre died in December of 2016, and it was his death that led me to start investigating the bad priest of Springfield.
One more thing about this letter from Father Sullivan, which you can read for yourself at crashbarry.com. The now-dead priest had asked for letters, plural, to be destroyed. Those letters didn’t end up in the court files, which meant the Bishop destroyed them, but he neglected to destroy the letter asking for the other letters to be destroyed.
All that to say, when the diocese heard from Cee’s lawyers, they already knew Sullivan had a history of assaulting kids. And yet it still took them more than two years to complete the investigation.
A quick aside: I’ve discussed the lawsuit between the insurance companies and the bishop a couple times during Unholy Fathers. That’s the lawsuit that’s been the source of lots of the evidence concerning the Catholic Church’s secret files regarding sexual abuse of minors.
In short, the Diocese of Springfield had argued that their insurance company should have to pay the tens of millions of dollars in settlements made with the victims of the criminal clerics from Springfield. The insurance companies countered and won with the argument that the diocese insurance did not include child molester coverage.
Anyways, that case file had several thousand pages and many, many boxes, which back in 2019, I went over with a fine tooth comb and a camera. Most of the paperwork was routine court filings and other judicial mumbo jumbo. However, there were several pieces of paper concerning Father Sullivan that would come in handy with Cee’s case.
In addition to Sullivan’s letter asking the Bishop to destroy previous correspondence, I’ve also found the priest’s name in several other pieces of court evidence, including a top-secret letter from a Springfield bishop to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who went on to become known as Pope Benedict XVI.
Sullivan’s name was also on other in-house diocesan records for bad priests. So church officials knew he was a bad dude, and yet it still took them more than two years to complete the investigation.
Soon after our initial phone call, I shared these smoking gun documents with Cee’s legal team. Then I had a couple hour conversation with her attorney, detailing the entire Sullivan narrative and contextualizing Cee’s situation. Then we waited. And waited and waited.
Cee:
The process was very slow.
Crash:
She’s being polite. The investigation moved at the pace of a dead snail, but life went on. January 2020 was momentous for Cee for multiple reasons. On January twentieth, she had an intake meeting via Zoom with a representative of the Diocese of Springfield. She’d been nervous the whole week before. Luckily, in my files, I had other diocesan intake forms that I had found in court records, and that enabled me to brief Cee on exactly what the diocese was going to ask her.
And Cee did a great job during the intake interview. She made it all the way through the call, which was tough enough, although telling the bloody shirt story was pretty damn triggering, especially considering the intake person was male.
I gotta say, it’s bullshit that the diocese doesn’t have an intake female to make it easier on the women who make allegations. This is just one of the many ways that I witnessed how the church treats female victims of clergy abuse in ways worse than male victims. And the church treats male victims horribly.
January was also a big month because Cee decided to tell her husband her darkest secret, and she was dreading it. In order to soften the blow of the news, she told me in an email written that morning, that she was cooking a big dinner, featuring “fresh pasta with homemade three meat sauce, salad, Italian star bread, pecan pie bars with a side of yellow bundt cake with chocolate frosting and a Miller High Life. Then I will tell him,” she wrote. “I am feeling positive.”
Even now, years later, just thinking about this emotion-filled night is tough. For me. It was a very stressful night, even at my house two hundred and fifty miles away. I was so aware and thinking of both of their perspectives. She with her big secret and he about to learn his beloved’s sad story that she’d kept from him for decades.
The following morning she emailed again.
“Last night was very rough for both of us. Yes, I feel some relief. But now, instead of me suffering alone, we’re both suffering. He was very, very quiet this morning. Hopefully when I get home tonight, it will be more normal between us. But just in case, I planned another favorite dinner. Breaded pork chops.”
In our phone call last month, five years after the big reveal, it’s clear that Cee is still troubled by having to explain to her husband that she’d been assaulted by a priest, and that she kept it from her soulmate for so long.
Cee:
Like all good conversations, it starts out with, “I have something to tell you that you don’t know.” I mean, he immediately thought it had something to do with the kids. It was surreal. And his reaction, you know, I shouldn’t have been surprised because there’s anger and sadness and anger and sadness and anger and sadness and anger and anger and anger and sadness.
I think that’s the worst part about anxiety is that it’s in your head, but it comes out. I was physically ill for a couple of days after that, even though it was over.
And even though he told me he loved me no matter what, I mean, again, you say the right thing, but his mind was working just as hard as mine was in the days and the weeks and months after that. You know, not to the same degree and in a completely different way. But it still was, because you can’t help thinking that part of your life wasn’t the truth. It’s hard to describe that.
Crash:
Even though telling her husband the secret offered her some stress relief, she didn’t get her husband involved in the intricacies of the slow moving investigation by the diocese, and her husband wasn’t aware of the multiple times she had to tell and retell the sordid details to various church employees.
Cee:
I made sure that I was home by myself, and I told you before, part of the reason why this happened when it did is I had nobody at home. I had no children at home. My husband was still working, so he wasn’t at home all the time. So I picked a time when I knew I was going to be by myself, and I didn’t have to deal with that. Sometimes I would tell him after the fact because it was what was safest for me. You know, I did what was right for me at that time, and I really wasn’t considering that he needed to know any of that.
Crash:
Here’s a timeline. Cee initially retained,the lawyer of August of 2020 and emailed me in September 2020. It wasn’t until January of 2021 that the diocese interviewed her for the first time.
The whole thing wasn’t settled until December 2022, over two years from the start. The entire process was burdened with excuses.
According to the bishop’s rules, the case had to be presented to the Hampden County DA before the church could even begin their independent investigation. That didn’t make sense to me, especially considering that Sullivan had been dead for five years at this point. Was the DA going to do dig up the drunkard priest’s grave to ask questions of a corpse?
The slowness was especially infuriating because at the same time, my brave friend was going through this drawn out re-triggering torture. The Springfield Diocese had embarked on a PR campaign to convince locals that the church was taking action in dealing with the abuse scandal.
One spring day in 2021, while picking up her mother’s mail, she found a form letter from the Bishop sent to all Western Massachusetts Catholics, letting them know that the diocese was serious about helping the victims of priestly sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, around the same time, Cee’s lawyer warned her not to expect too much from the diocese if she ended up having to sue the church because Massachusetts law protects so-called charitable institutions with what’s called a “charitable immunity cap.”
The Massachusetts law passed as emergency legislation in nineteen seventy one to protect non-profit hospitals from lawsuits. That law says that the financial liability of charitable organizations like the Catholic Church is limited to twenty thousand dollars for, and I quote, any cause of action stemming from an act committed in the course of an activity done to directly accomplish the charitable purpose of the corporation. Which is bullshit, of course. Why does state law protect the diocese from civil lawsuits stemming from criminal acts committed by the church’s priestly representatives? Currently, there are efforts to address this issue legislatively, but that didn’t help Cee in using the threat of a lawsuit against the diocese. The church knew the liability cap protected them from huge payouts.
A brief aside about Cee’s legal representation: they weren’t very aggressive, and that’s putting it mildly. Part of the problem was that the law firm was located in Maryland. That’s because, as mentioned in part one, Cee answered an online ad asking “Have you been sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest?”
Secondly, despite knowing tons of lawyers in Western Mass, she didn’t want a local firm because she did not want co-workers, friends, the general public and especially her family to know about her trauma. I think it was unfortunate that she had to retain an out of state law firm, because I believe a Western Mass attorney probably could have gotten a faster resolution due to institutional knowledge and knowing the history of local previous settlements.
That said, I totally understand Cee’s desire to protect her mom and her husband and her kids from the ordeal.
While the early winter of 2021 was tough for Cee, the spring and summer were even worse. Not only was she anxiously awaiting some sort of response from the bishop, her beloved mother — who’d been working down in Florida on a short term job — had a heart attack, then a stroke. So she was back and forth to take care of her and figure out a way to get her mom home. By August 2021, she was exhausted from everything, especially after the thirty hour ambulance ride with her mom from Florida back to Massachusetts.
Around the same time, she had a couple more interviews with diocesan investigators, and during our phone calls, I could hear the angst in her voice further increased each and every time she had contact with any of the church representatives. Recalling what had happened and retelling the impact of the priest’s actions on her life was taking its toll.
Also bothersome were some of the techniques used by the church investigators, such as testing Cee with class photos from the seventh and eighth grade and asking her to identify each classmate by name. My pal passed with flying colors, of course, but the whole ordeal was taking a toll and that stress manifested both physically and mentally. She came down with a painful case of shingles and began to experience hair loss. Plus she was besought with sadness, anger, anxiety and fear. She was worried about unknowns like how deep would church investigators look into her personal life? Because except for her husband and me, no one knew she was taking on the diocese.
The church didn’t interview me until mid-December twenty twenty one. That’s a year after she originally contacted them. My conversation with the investigators went well. It became quickly apparent that I knew more about Father Sullivan than they did, so I shared all I knew about the priest’s history. Also, it seemed obvious that they believed Cee’s story, but I knew they were just diocesan underlings. It was up to the bishop to make the final decision.
Cee:
I think the worst of it was not the two women so much. I mean, that was taxing. But the little investigator guy that they sent that I had to talk to, that was hard because I felt like he was condescending.
Crash:
On February 3, 2022, Cee received notification that the investigation was complete and had been forwarded to the Springfield Church’s Bad Priest Review Board on February 9th. The review board made a recommendation and then sent the investigative report to the Bishop’s office.
On February 26, 2022, eighteen months after initially filing a complaint, the news came via fax. That’s right, via fax. In 2022. And the church announced that the bishop found Cee’s allegations against Father Sullivan to be credible.
While the fax was three pages long, the bishop’s apology was only one page. I’ve put a redacted copy of the fax over in the show notes at crashbarry.com, but I’m going to read part of it here.
“We can never erase the harm that was done to you. However, acknowledging your allegation to be credible brings the truth of your horrific experience into the light. As a bishop and representative of the church, please accept my apology for what happened to you. I would very much welcome an opportunity to meet or speak with you and to learn if there’s anything I can do to support you in your healing process.”
Needless to say, Cee had zero interest in meeting with the Bishop.
Then, on March 2, 2022, the diocese announced publicly that the record for Charles Sullivan was updated to include that there was more than one credible allegation of sexual abuse of a minor. Which the local media dutifully repeated as if the Bishop was taking the issue seriously. That’s it. No other details about the abuse or the impact it had on Cee were ever released. And soon the news would be forgotten by almost everyone except for Cee and her husband and me.
Then, in mid-March, the diocese asked Cee for a victim’s impact statement that came as a surprise. She hadn’t known she was going to have to revisit the whole sordid tale again. Hadn’t her multiple retellings of the assault been enough? And writing the victim’s impact statement was even more exhausting and more stressful.
In emails at the time, she lamented the whole ordeal. For a year and a half, she felt like she was the one under investigation. And now, once again, she was being forced to justify and explain her pain. But this time in writing. Putting the words of the abuse to paper was excruciating. Being forced yet again to share the trauma experienced at the hands of Sullivan was debilitating. But ever the trooper, by the end of March, my friend submitted her statement to the Bishop. Then waited for the next step and the slow, slow process.
Almost four months passed before she heard back from the diocese, on July 22. Her lawyer told Cee that a financial settlement was being offered by the Bishop. The amount: ten thousand dollars.
Cee:
I know I mentioned this to you before, I really did not want to be treated as if I was some kind of fender bender. I believe that is what happened.
Crash:
The church, of course, knew that state law protected them from any judicial judgment over twenty thousand dollars. That’s the reason for the lowball offer. For 10K, they’d get off cheap, no extra legal fees and not having to even pay the capped limit.
Thing is, Cee is a strong woman. Sensitive and strong and righteous. She wasn’t going to settle for 10K. It’s not like Sullivan was involved in a slight automobile accident. A grown man, a representative of the church, had sexually assaulted a twelve year old four times. The bishop’s offer, both she and I agreed, was a frigging joke. So she told her lawyer to tell the Bishop’s lawyer no deal. And that she wanted eighty thousand dollars. After all, the assaults haunted her for decades. Not to mention, she had a bloody reminder every month until menopause, and the church’s investigation reopened old wounds and further traumatized her.
Cee:
There were a few times during that negotiation process where I was reduced to tears, and I was furious, and I had said, ‘maybe I should just write an article to the newspaper telling them everything about what they’re doing.’ And the lawyer said, ‘well, you can do that if you want to, but I don’t know that it will help.’
I mean, in the end, they were very matter of fact and far more than they had been in the beginning when I was telling them everything that happened. And I guess that’s their job. And in my detached way, I have to let go of that.
Crash:
In December, 2022, the church came back with a counteroffer of forty thousand dollars to avoid being publicly outed in the media and to avoid the civil lawsuit. Just for context, 40K is way below the settlements often offered to male victims of clergy sexual abuse.
In February 2026, for instance, a new Jersey diocese agreed to pay one hundred and eighty million dollars to settle with three hundred victims of credibly accused priests. For an average of six hundred thousand dollars to each victim. In December 2025, the Diocese of New York started selling assets in order to come up with a three hundred million dollars to settle with the thirteen hundred priestly victims. That came to about two hundred and thirty thousand dollars each. Or the biggest recent settlement in Los Angeles, where in 2024, the church agreed to pay $880 million dollars to 1,353 victims. That’s about six hundred and fifty thousand dollars each.
Less legal fees, of course.
That’s almost a billion and a half dollars via three settlements. And that’s just since 2024. Add all the prior Catholic Church settlements, it’s way over the five billion dollars mark. Maybe even getting close to six billion bucks.
A real number will never be known because of all the settlements we’ll never hear about, due to the secretive nature of the church.
I’m going to say that again. The Catholic Church has paid over five billion dollars to victims of their so-called holy men.
But the Springfield bishop only offered forty thousand dollars to Cee. Which, by my estimates, based upon the settlements I’m familiar with, that’s less than a third of the average Springfield payout. And a mere eight percent of the largest settlement.
By this point, though, Cee was exhausted and had zero energy left to continue the fight with the church. So she agreed to the forty grand.
Cee:
The lawyer had a bigger split. And I said, ‘well, I think I’m entitled to thirty thousand. And he said, yes, okay, that’s fine. So they took whatever they were taking and I got twenty nine, not thirty, because there were some other expense in there. I don’t know, some other bullshit. I think we got that money like fourteen days before Christmas.
Crash:
After a couple of years of painful interactions with the Diocese of Springfield, it was finally over. Almost.
Cee:
I can remember taking that check to the bank and depositing it. I sat in the parking lot for a good twenty minutes and I cried. And then I drove home. I cried all the way home, which is not far, in fairness. And we waited two or three days for the money to be in there.
And then I made a donation. I made two, actually. I donated money to the battered women’s shelter for my mother. So there was a house at the time it was called Grey House, and they took in women and children. So I sent them some money. And I donated money to the Springfield Rescue Mission because I had been there several times. You know, we’d had family parties. There’s food left over. You know, you’d drive it down there and you bring the food and you drop it off. At the time I felt like feeding the poor was as close as I wanted to get to charity work. I wasn’t ready to face anybody who’d been in a similar situation as I was.
Crash:
As for the remainder of the settlement… she decided to split it between her two daughters.
Cee:
I withdrew money and I put it in envelopes for the kids at Christmas time. They had no idea why. I just did it because. Because I did. It took about twenty minutes to spend that money. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Maybe it took an hour for me to say, this is going here. This is going there, this is going here, this is going here. And then it was done. It was effortless. That was the end of that. And like I said, we don’t really talk about that so much.
Crash:
Obviously for Cee, it wasn’t about the money. It was about holding the church accountable for the actions of one of their bad men.
Cee:
I think the lesson that I would say that I learned is something that I think I learned a long time ago, which is nothing and no one is completely what they seem. And it is our job to sort out, no matter who you are or where you come from, who you let have rule over your life and your children. Because I know it’s a broad stroke, but in this day and age, it’s even more so, I think true because people online, people talking to you about all kinds of things. They’re not as together as they seem, which is really who the church is.
They seek, or sought out to be, these great redeemers, great healers, great miracle workers, doing the acts of someone who was better than them, asking you to be better tomorrow than you were today. But they’re just people. They’re not God. So anybody that you come in contact with, it’s your job to figure out who they are, where they come from, before you trust them completely or trust them with your kids completely. And even then, you can still be wrong.
Crash:
Would you call yourself religious still?
Cee:
Yes, I guess I would call myself religious in the sense that I pray to God. I don’t worship or idolize anyone in religious life, because I’ve come to realize that they’re just men and women, and while they may do good things, they may come from a place where they are broken, somewhere that you can’t see.
You know, it’s so hard because I think it makes me less likely to have close relationships because I’m mistrusting of people. I’ve lived my whole life working in corrections, pretty much from the time I was eighteen years old until now, which makes me mistrust people. Even within my own family. I mean, my mother was betrayed by someone in her own family.
I’m very careful about a lot of things, and I think it stops you from being able to do good things in the world because you’re afraid of doing good things for people who have ended up being bad. And that is part of a lesson too, because sometimes you have to do things just for the sake of doing them, not because you think that you’re doing it for good people or bad people. You do them because it’s the right thing to do.
I don’t know that I can recount everything as a lesson, but it has shaped me. It one hundred percent has shaped me. If that helped in that explanation, maybe it does not. Maybe I haven’t even answered the question.
Crash:
So what’s your relationship with Saint Anthony?
Cee:
My grandmother was a great believer in Saint Anthony. My grandmother did not have an easy life. She had five children that challenged her in multiple ways. She always felt that when she prayed to Saint Anthony, she was answered. I, like her, praise Saint Anthony often and I do at times feel like I have been answered. Um, sometimes. Not right away, sometimes not in the way I would want. But I do feel a closeness and a comfort in praying to someone who is the finder of lost things. Not so much even like looking for your lost pair of scissors. But when things seem lost, he has a way of putting them back together.
I grapple with religion. I mean, I’m not one hundred percent saying that I have faith all the time, I don’t. My faith for sure has been tested and probably will be continued to be tested till the day I die. I do feel as though when I’m praying to Saint Anthony, I feel as though I take a lot of comfort in it.
Crash:
And that’s good because I want Cee to find comfort wherever she can find it, even if it requires praying to a Catholic saint.
Crash to Cee:
You know, we’ve been talking for three hours and forty minutes. Is there anything that I’ve missed that you want to bring up?
Cee:
Just to tell you how therapeutic this has been for me. Just knowing that you are a phone call away in support of me. And it has been tremendous. Whether you realize it or not, it is tremendous just to know that I have that. I can’t tell you how comforting and healing that has been for me.
Crash:
Oh, well, you’re making me cry. So enough of that, alright? I really, really appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me the story so well. Keep me abreast of what’s going on, okay? Especially in terms of your mom, of course.
Cee:
Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.
Crash:
I’ll let you know. All right, pal, I’m sending you hugs right now. Big hugs here digitally.
Cee:
All right, my darling.
Crash:
Bye bye.
Crash:
I’ve included that last little bit of tape for context. Not to brag about how I assisted Cee, because I should be thanking her, for allowing me to be of service and giving me the opportunity to help her find some semblance of justice and relief. Because I gotta say, in this, the finale of Unholy Fathers, her appreciation felt good for a little bit.
I’ve been in this fight to tell the story of the victims of the bad priest for a while. I started to research this project in January 2017. And while I’ve taken a couple of short breaks from the topic, the plight of the many victims of priestly abuse is almost always on my mind. Which means, despite what Cee suffered through for decades and the pittance of a financial settlement, I view her story as a rare victory in this saga. A saga that’s filled with sadness and sorrow. Because Cee is a brave woman and strong, who took on one of the most powerful institutions in the world and didn’t back down. And her words were heard by those in command. And to me, that is quite an achievement.
In the last episode we mentioned the young fella that almost got hit by the drunk driving Father Sullivan. I’m going to call him “J.” I was able to track him down and we had a very good phone call. Not only did he confirm Cee’s account of the incident, he went on to explain that there had actually been two occasions when Father Sullivan almost hit J. on his bike, once in downtown Indian Orchard, right near the church, and the second time in the schoolyard, which is the incident that Cee was referring to in episode one.
J. and I also reminisced about our respective careers as altar boys at Saint Matthews, serving mass with Father Sullivan and the priest’s propensity for drinking altar wine straight with just the tiniest drop of holy water.
Gotta say, it was nice catching up with J., who I knew back when we were kids. And to learn what he’s currently doing, because the fellow works as a brain surgeon at a major medical center and is a professor of surgery at a training hospital in a Mid-Atlantic state.
That’s after a long and distinguished career as a naval officer serving as a neurosurgeon during multiple wartime deployments to combat zones, and performing countless surgeries that often saved lives and repaired the ravages of war, all while conducting research on traumatic brain injuries. Because, as he explained to me, you can’t serve in the military as a doctor in this era and not be concerned about traumatic brain injuries.”
J. is dismissive of his record, though, calling himself a mere “brain plumber” who now spends his days in the operating room dealing with blood vessel problems in the head and procedures connected to aneurysms and strokes. And he’s an expert in arteriovenous malformation surgery, which is basically one of the most complicated types of brain fixing surgery there is.
Gotta say, I’m pretty damn proud of this silent hero from Indian Orchard, who overcame many personal hurdles and ended up saving lives and brains.
Also, I can’t help but ponder an alternate reality where Father Sullivan had drunkenly crashed into the twelve year old version of J. and killing or maiming him and how life would be different for so many. Including the unknown numbers of soldiers and sailors saved by his steady hands.
I’m tempted to end Unholy Fathers on that positive sentiment, but my forever Irish nihilist brain won’t let me. Because J.’s survival and thriving life also reminds me of the countless victims of the criminal priests of Springfield, Massachusetts, and beyond.
So many young lives were destroyed by these evil bastards, most of whom never faced any sort of accountability for their sinful acts and crimes.
What great things would those vulnerable and damaged souls have accomplished? What love would they have found? What goals achieved? What hope would they have held if not shattered by the abuse of an unholy father? Multiply that Springfield number by thousands, due to the sheer multitudes of crimes committed against children worldwide by pastors and priests, alleged holy folk of all denominations and creeds. Because this spiritual and sexual abuse obviously is not just limited to the Catholic Church.
And while some wounded by these sinful predators may have received help and were able to live some semblance of a fruitful life, the unfortunate majority never found relief or solace. Plagued for life with heartache caused by the sins of perverted so-called holy men who use their position and perceived power to destroy the psyches of so many.
This is the end of the Unholy Fathers podcast. I appreciate you listening to these terrible tales of abuse and crimes. This has not been an easy topic to absorb. So my sincere thanks to you, dear listener, for tuning in and for rating and reviewing wherever you get your podcasts. I have multiple other projects in the works, including a book version of Unholy Fathers.
For listeners of true crime podcasts, make sure you’re subscribed, because coming soon is my new investigation called Fake Shaman, that tells the true tale of a thirty-seven-year old white woman from Connecticut claiming to be an indigenously trained shaman who moved to Maine with dollar signs in her eyes and psychedelic mushrooms in her coach bag. Fake Shaman details the implosion of her shamanic mentorship due to a creepy sex magic ritual that went wrong, targeting vulnerable people in Maine and beyond. Fake Shaman is also a how-to primer in detecting fraudsters and charlatans, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
In closing, if you or someone you care about was abused by a clergy member, please try to get a good lawyer and a good therapist in order to attempt to find closure and possible healing from the trauma experienced. And for those injured folks, I’m sending you positive vibes right now through the sound waves of this podcast and those positive vibes, plus your inner strength that I know you have might be just enough to help find some bit of peace in these trying times. Even if just for a moment. Long enough for you to catch your breath and reset your brain. Then persevere onwards.
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