Sean Kirst: For survivors of clergy abuse, upcoming service meant as solace for pain that never ends

Jim Boone has a message for survivors of sexual abuse by priests and other clergy.

He knows that in February, the Diocese of Syracuse formally emerged from bankruptcy. Chief Judge Wendy Kinsella, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York, approved an agreement that will distribute $176.1 million to hundreds of survivors of abuse by Catholic priests in the Syracuse area, with an arbiter deciding specific awards.

Boone realizes that to people unaffected in a direct way by the abuse or its consequences, that court decision might seem like the closing of a door on a long, sordid and painful episode in the history of the church in Central New York.

Yet as Boone cannot forget, based on harsh experience:

It never truly ends.

“Guilt. Shame. Horror. Embarrassment,” he said. “Broken trust. Total betrayal.”

As a survivor of an assault by a priest, that’s what he’s lived with for almost 60 years.

For those who understand because they’ve endured similar wounds, he offers this invitation for the coming weekend:

A group called Hope, Healing and Solidarity — an outgrowth of the Call to Action committee in Syracuse at St. Lucy’s Church — will host its second ecumenical healing service for survivors, their families and the larger community at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Panasci Family Chapel at Le Moyne College, a gathering that officially begins a two-day sequence of events.

“There are people out there suffering this trauma, and we need to embrace them and welcome them and work with them,” said Craig Polhamus, a committee member who echoes Boone’s central point:

So much still needs to be done to ease the pain of survivors, beyond these settlements.

Put simply, Polhamus said, survivors need to know they are loved and seen and welcomed by the community, which is why he hopes these weekend events are well-attended.

Boone describes Friday’s service as “a safe space for healing.” It will include survivor reflections, a candelight healing ritual and readings. Syracuse Bishop Douglas Lucia, who stepped into that role in 2019, has accepted an invitation to take part.

“I think he took the weight of the whole issue and recognized that he just needs to be with everyone who’s hurting,” said diocesan chancellor Danielle Cummings, a spokesperson for Lucia. She described the event as “a beautiful thing” that reinforces a major truth:

The need for “vigilance and healing,” Cummings said, will never end.

Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. at Panasci, there’ll be a series of workshops, reflections and a 1 p.m. presentation of a play, “The Silencers.” It’s the sequel to “Groomed,” a one-man play written and performed by Patrick Sandford, a playwright and actor who was abused as a young child by a teacher and is traveling from England to Le Moyne for the performance.

Joined by two other Central New York survivors, Boone is part of a group called the Men’s Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivor Program that’s a subcommittee within Hope, Healing and Solidarity. The members of the survivor group — Boone, Michael Koplinka-Loehr and Matt FitzGibbons — will all participate in this weekend’s reflections.

This, Boone said, is what he believes: The monetary payments, wherever and whenever they happen, are overdue and will always be inadequate. Survivors lived through many decades of silence in which the church hid evidence, shuttled criminal abusers from parish to parish and made those who were abused feel like liars if they dared to speak out.

The damage from all of that hardly goes away with a court settlement, and anyone involved in that process is welcome in the survivor’s group. Boone also has no doubt there are thousands of survivors throughout Upstate New York who’ve never come forward, who’ve lived with memories of clergy abuse since they were young and still return to vivid memories of those assaults when they try to sleep at night.

If and when they are ready, Boone said, his survivor group is there for them.

He appreciates all the factors behind why they remain silent. Boone talked to no one about his own abuse until the early 2010s. He said he finally decided to confide in his wife Sue after high-profile revelations about the criminal acts of Jerry Sandusky, a football coach at Penn State, and intensive coverage of allegations of abuse involving Bernie Fine, a longtime Syracuse University assistant basketball coach.

“I carried it for 50 years,” Boone said, of his own trauma.

On the day he finally told his wife, they both wept.

Boone chooses not to publicly identify the Upstate diocese where his abuse occurred — though it was not in Syracuse. He doesn’t want to publicly name the bishop he feels addressed his story with emotional distance and a lack of empathy, or reveal the name of the abusive priest, who’s dead now.

He’s not interested in having this column turn into a public back and forth. That’s not his central mission. But Boone did provide a file filled with documents that substantiate what happened, including letters from the diocese in question that acknowledges the priest exhibited “inappropriate behavior,” wording Boone still finds surreal.

Inappropriate? It was criminal sexual assault. Boone said that kind of watered-down response is all too indicative of how many church leaders reacted, for all too long.

“He was a predator,” Boone said of the priest.

Boone gave this account: In 1967, he was a freshman at a small Upstate college. A faithful Catholic, he became an altar server during Mass at the campus Newman Center, a ministry that welcomed Catholic students. The priest assigned to those duties started paying particular attention to Boone, which at first Boone saw with appreciation, not alarm.

“We put priests on a pedestal,” he said, though he began to feel vaguely uncomfortable at the way the priest was often in close physical proximity.

One day, the priest invited him to a place he owned in the nearby countryside. The priest said it would provide a low-key, one-night break from the pressures of school and they would return the next day. At 18, Boone — grateful for the attention and still homesick — agreed to go.

This was 59 years ago. Boone said at that time, at that age, he was “totally naive.” And there was also the simple unspoken rule that you didn’t casually say no to a priest.

Once they arrived at the cabin, they spent some time riding a trail bike, and then the priest pulled out some beer. Before long, he offered Boone a cigar. Then he said it was time to go to sleep. When they went upstairs, the priest told him one bedroom was in disrepair and they needed to sleep in the same room.

Within minutes, Boone said: “He was on me.”

Boone fiercely pushed the priest back, and pulled away. He still recalls all of it vividly, particularly the “cigar breath” of the priest, close against his face. The priest acted surprised and upset. He told Boone he thought the teen would want to “have a little fun,” then said to him:

You can never tell anyone about this.

Boone didn’t. The priest opened the door to the other room — which suddenly was not in disrepair at all — and Boone spent the night listening for footsteps. The next day, they drove back in near-silence. Boone was humiliated and horrified and sure he wouldn’t be believed if he reported the assault.

The priest, from that day on, acted as if Boone didn’t exist. The memory was entrenched in Boone’s mind, and there were times as a young man when he saw hard drinking as the best way to bury it. He eventually served in the Navy and married Sue when he returned.

Boone built a career in the health and safety industry that took the couple to Albany, Buffalo, St. Louis and finally to Syracuse. They raised their children and are now proud grandparents.

For years, appreciative of his family and the trajectory of his life, he tried to push away the memory of the attack. It never worked. The images didn’t fade. Boone finally had enough when the high-profile abuse cases he mentioned were in the news, every day. He talked to Sue and he described his ordeal to his parish priest, whom he said was rigidly polite, but hardly welcoming. The priest set up a meeting between Boone and the bishop of the diocese where it happened.

Once the two men sat down in the same room, Boone broke into tears recalling the event. The bishop offered no sympathy, not even a tissue. He simply said the priest in question had a drinking problem, Boone recalls — as if that somehow explained the well-planned attempt to isolate a college freshman, give him alcohol and then assault him.

Boone will share the entire story this weekend — how he felt dismissed and diminished, how the bishop of that Upstate diocese sent him a $5,000 check as what was described as a way of paying for counseling — but how he was also told that because he was 18 when the assault occurred, he wasn’t eligible to seek a larger settlement in court.

The Boones, stunned and sickened, fell away from the church. It was only when they took a chance on Mass at St. Lucy’s in Syracuse — a last stop for many Catholics on the brink — that they felt welcomed and at home again.

As for FitzGibbons and Koplinka-Loehr, Boone said it’s difficult to describe how grateful he is for their strength, warmth and enduring friendship. Their group hopes to welcome more survivors, Boone said — and anyone who shared their experience, but cannot make it this weekend, can contact the three men by using the emails found in this link or reaching out to Boone at jboone13066@gmail.com.

Their outreach, he emphasized, is not limited to Central New York, and the group welcomes participants from other Upstate communities.

Sue Boone will be at Le Moyne to support her husband, as she always is. “He was never one to complain,” she said, “but I know this ate at him. My sadness is that he pushed it down for so many years.”

Boone believes the court proceedings have only scratched the surface of the pain. He knows there are countless people out there, burdened with similar wounds, who didn’t take part in the formal process. “They’re living with the same agony,” Sue Boone said, which is why the couple hopes any survivors reading this column contemplate this promise:

This weekend, at the chapel, they will find an open door.