The Unholy Trinity: How Three Priests Uniquely Embodied the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis Pt. 2

December 16, 2017

            Considered by some to be “by far the most notorious” priest accused, and convicted, of sexual abuse, Fr. James R. Porter simultaneously personified the nature of the crisis while exhibiting traits exclusive and unique among predator priests.[i]  Much of Fr. Porter’s youth, despite his notoriety, remains shrouded in mystery.  Little information aside from his date and location of birth exists before the early 1950’s.  While the absence of detailed accounts of Porter’s life remains both startling and frustrating, it does highlight and reinforce the importance of consolidating his story into the larger narrative.

            Born on January 2nd, 1935, James Porter grew up in Revere, Massachusetts.  He attended Boston College High School where he graduated in 1952.  Afterwards, Porter graduated with a mathematics degree from Boston College in 1956.  On April 2nd, 1960, after four years of seminary education in Baltimore, Maryland, James R. Porter received his ordination as a priest in the Fall River diocese in Massachusetts and reported to his first assignment at St. Mary’s Church and parochial school shortly thereafter.[ii]  Almost immediately, families of young children who attended St. Mary’s began to bring forth accusations of molestation and sexual abuse by Fr. Porter to his superiors.  Boston lawyer and former representative of some of Porter’s accusers, Roderick MacLeish, once claimed that “at least ten individuals had informed two priests in St. Mary’s parish in North Attleboro that Porter, who was their assistant, was molesting young children.”[iii]  From the beginning of his career and continuing across three decades, nearly every parish, town, and rehabilitation center that housed Porter experienced similar circumstances.

            For years, Fr. Porter remained an active priest amongst the Fall River diocese in Massachusetts, all the while continuing to abuse the children of the three parishes that he served in Fall River, St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart Parish, and St. James Parish.  In his book Pedophiles and Priests, Phillip Jenkins claims that “it has been plausibly estimated that the number of children of both sexes molested in those years [1960-1967] might have totaled two or three hundred.”[iv]  Only four years after his ordination, Porter entered his first in-patient treatment program at Wiswall Hospital, worked his way into out-patient treatment, and received a reassignment to St. James Parish after accusations arose again from the laity at Sacred Heart in 1965.[v]  Sometime between his assignment at St. James in 1965 and early 1967, Bishop James L. Connolly transferred Porter to St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland for further psychiatric treatment where further accusations of Porter’s abuses emerged.  Finally, after seven years of being shuffled from parish to parish amid a flurry of complaints and accusations, Bishop Connolly suspended Fr. James Porter from regular ministry and coordinated for his evaluation at the Servants of the Paraclete facility in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.

            A distinct religious order founded by Father Gerald Fitzgerald exclusively to aid in the treatment and rehabilitation of priests with disorders ranging from alcoholism to sexual abuse and pedophilia, the Servants of the Paraclete wound up housing Porter four separate times in three of their facilities over three years, from 1967 to 1970, after Porter’s initial removal from regular ministry.  Initially sent for evaluation in April of 1967, James Porter received a recommendation for assignment in 1968, worked at St. Christopher’s in Nevada, and received a temporary assignment at Immaculate Conception in Houston, Texas, before a relapse sent him back to New Mexico for further treatment.[vi]  After a few months, Porter began receiving weekend assignments at local parishes surrounding the Servants of the Paraclete facility; further relapses and abuses warranted a transfer to the Servants’ facility in Minnesota in 1969 where accusations of Porter abusing a student at St. Phillip’s School.[vii]  Not long after Fr. James Porter’s transfer to the Servants of the Paraclete’s facility in Missouri, Bishop Connolly, after a full ten years of repeated sexual abuse allegations, recommended Fr. Porter for laicization. 

            While Gilbert Gauthe might have set the precedent regarding sexual abuse accusations and litigations against priests, and James Porter might have been the most prolific and notorious, the most publicized and vilified predator priest was Fr. John J. Geoghan.  The life and career of John Geoghan remains a story of deceit and abuse.  A convicted sexual abuser, “more than 130 people have come forward” with accusations against Geoghan throughout his thirty years of ministry and nearly forty years as a priest.[viii]  Despite the numerous investigative articles, reports, books, and even an award-winning feature-length film adaptation of the Boston Globe’s investigative team’s work to expose the heinous actions of Geoghan and the ensuing purported cover-up, little is known about John Geoghan prior to his ministry.

            Born in 1935 in Boston, John J. Geoghan spent his life in and around the church.  He attended parochial schools during his youth, his uncle Monsignor Mark Keohane founded St. Bartholomew’s parish in 1952, and he entered seminary at Cardinal O’Connell in Jamaica Plain near Boston in the early 1950’s.  The death of his father in 1940, when Geoghan was only five years old, left tremendous marks on Geoghan psychologically.[ix]  The resulting unresolved trauma might be the cause for such things as Geoghan’s preferred young age of his victims and his reported immaturity by the faculty of Cardinal O’Connell’s.[x]  Whatever the origin, John Geoghan struggled with his clerical career from his entrance into seminary in 1953 to his laicization in 1998.

            From the beginning of his clerical career, controversy surrounded Fr. Geoghan.  During the summer between his first and second years in seminary, the rector at Cardinal O’Connell’s “reviewed Geoghan’s performance” and “was not impressed.”[xi]  Nearly the entire faculty “considered the nineteen-year-old seminarian decidedly immature” and questioned whether Geoghan would be a good fit within the priesthood.[xii]  Despite their misgivings, Geoghan’s superiors at Cardinal O’Connell’s recommended his attendance at St. John’s Seminary where, upon completion, John Geoghan would receive his ordination.  However, in a trend that repeated itself in various forms throughout his career, Geoghan needed from higher church officials even before he achieved the priestly title.

            While attending seminary in the mid-1950’s, Geoghan required his monsignor uncle’s umbrella authority, a foreshadow of Geoghan’s reliance on the institutional authority and protection of the church itself throughout the following decades.  His failure to attend “mandatory seminary summer camp” in 1955 nearly cost Geoghan his opportunity for ordination.[xiii]  However, the founding pastor of St. Bartholomew’s parish, and Geoghan’s uncle, “went to bat for his sister’s boy” and wrote the rector of St. John’s seminary directly excusing Geoghan’s absence.[xiv]  After a few years’ break from seminary to attend the liberal arts college Holy Cross, John Geoghan reentered seminary and received his ordination in 1962.[xv]  Little did the faculty at St. John’s know that they had released a predator amongst the church’s flock.

            Shortly after his ordination, the newly frocked Father John Geoghan received his first assignment at Blessed Sacrament.  According to the Boston Globe’s timeline of John Geoghan, the pastor at Blessed Sacrament, Reverend Anthony Benzevich “reportedly [told] church officials that Geoghan brings boys into his bedroom,” a claim admitted by Geoghan in 1995.[xvi]  In 1966, four years after his initial appointment to Blessed Sacrament parish, Cardinal Richard Cushing, the archbishop of the Boston diocese, transferred Geoghan to St. Paul’s parish in Hingham, Massachusetts.  Within a year of his appointment at St. Paul’s, Fr. Geoghan received his first of many accusations during his seven-year stay.  Additionally, the Boston Globe claims that Fr. Geoghan also received his first psychiatric analysis and care in 1968 at the Seton Institute in Boston.[xvii]  Even with his admissions of being “caught up in [children’s] acts of affection” and further accusations of abuse by Joanne Mueller, a mother of four from the neighboring St. Mary’s parish, church officials allowed Geoghan to continue ministry at St. Paul’s until 1974 before merely shuffling him to another parish unaware of his troublesome history.[xviii]

            At every parish the church assigned him, Fr. John Geoghan amassed a slew of victims from the local families.  While his “earliest assaults were sketchy, they acquired a sharp and stunning focus as he gained more experience as a priest,” and Geoghan began focusing his attention exclusively on victims from poor, single-parent homes.[xix]  Unfortunately for the family of Maryetta Dussourd’s family, they fit perfectly into his preferred archetypical victim profiles.  Geoghan met the Dussourd family after his reassignment to St. Andrew’s parish in Jamaica Plain in 1974.  For roughly two years, Geoghan helped at the Dussourd’s household, took the children out for ice cream regularly, tucked them in at night, and “regularly molested the seven boys in their bedrooms.”[xx]  When Maryetta Dussourd finally learned what had been happening in her household for years, she immediately informed the pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas nearby, Rev. John E. Thomas.  When confronted by Rev. Thomas about the accusations of abuse by the Dussourd’s, Fr. Geoghan merely responded, “Yes, that’s all true,”[xxi] echoing Brian Flatley’s note, in his 1994 chronology of Geoghan’s pedophilic history, that “Fr. Geoghan ‘admits the activity [abuse] but does not feel it serious or a pastoral problem.’”[xxii]

            After Geoghan’s curt confession about abusing the Dussourd children, Rev. Thomas immediately notified Bishop Thomas Daily.  Daily, administrator of the archdiocese in Brighton, Massachusetts, promptly placed Fr. Geoghan on sick leave and said the 4:00 mass that evening.[xxiii]  During his sick leave, Geoghan spent his time at his family home in West Roxbury while simultaneously undergoing his second bout with psychiatric counseling.[xxiv]  The institution of the archdiocese of Boston soon let Geoghan continue his ministry, however, and eventually reassigned him to St. Brendan parish in Dorchester in February of 1981.  However, roughly a year later, Maryetta Dussourd once again saw Fr. Geoghan prowling the local ice cream parlor near St. Mary’s parish.  Dussourd, understandably upset, wrote Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, archbishop of the Boston diocese, demanding to know why Geoghan was “still functioning.”[xxv]  Geoghan had received numerous complaints of sexually abusing children thus far in his career, admitted guilt for some of his accusations, and was still allowed to conduct his ministry.

            St. Julia’s parish, in Weston, Massachusetts, became home for Fr. John Geoghan after his reassignment from St. Brendan’s in late 1984.  Throughout his nearly ten-year stay at St. Julia’s, Geoghan accumulated a slew of fresh accusations of abusing local boys.  Although he had been “treated several times and hospitalized at least once for molesting boys . . . and he had been removed from at least two parishes for sexual abuse,” Monsignor Francis Rossiter placed youth groups and altar boys under Geoghan’s charge.[xxvi]  Additionally, Fr. Geoghan “made a name for himself at the nearby Waltham Boys and Girls Club because of his penchant for strutting around without clothes” and for “[swimming] up to children in the pool and [fondling] them.”[xxvii]  Still, it took nearly five years before Geoghan was forced back into psychiatric care, this time at St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland.  Even then, “Church officials’ patience had yet to be exhausted” and “[Geoghan] was quietly shipped off again for inpatient psychiatric evaluation.”[xxviii]  Even after his stay at St. Luke’s, where Geoghan’s diagnosis “was far less optimistic than earlier judgments,” Fr. John Geoghan returned to regular ministry at St. Julia’s parish.[xxix]

            Shortly after his grim diagnosis at St. Luke’s, Geoghan “spent three months at the Institute of Living, a Harford, Connecticut, facility,” but Bishop Robert J. Banks, one of Cardinal Bernard Law’s deputies, “negotiated a diagnosis more favorable to Geoghan and allowed the priest to return to St. Julia’s.”[xxx]  It did not take long for accusations of abuse to warrant the church’s removal of Geoghan from regular ministry and place him in Regina Cleri’s residence for retired priests, and finally behind a desk at a personnel office before Geoghan’s exponentially growing list of accusations and pending legal suits forced the church’s hand.  In 1998, after thirty-six years of abuse, psychiatric evaluations, and relocations, Father John J. Geoghan was involuntarily laicized and permanently removed from the priesthood.  Estimates place Geoghan’s victims, the victims of “by far the most prolific sexual predator,” at “about 200.”[xxxi]

[i] Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) ,14.

[ii] Brian Fraga, “Fall River Predator-Priest Father James Porter: a Timeline,
Wicked Local Somerset, June 25, 2013, accessed Dec 16, 2017, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2013/05_06/2013_06_25_Fraga_FallRiver.htm.

[iii] Investigative Staff, Betrayal, 44.

[iv] Jenkins, Pedophiles, 46.

[v] Fraga, “Fall River.” [vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Michael Rezendes, “Church Allowed Abuse for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, 2002, accessed Dec 16, 2017, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news/2002_01_06_Globe_ChurchAllowed.htm.

[ix] Investigative Staff, Betrayal, 16.

[x]Ibid., 15.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Ibid., 16.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid., 17.

[xvi] “Geoghan’s Troubled History,” Boston Globe, Jan 7, 2002, accessed Dec 16, 2017, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/assign/Geoghan-John-J-History.htm.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Investigative Staff, Betrayal, 19.

[xix] Ibid., 19.

[xx] Rezendes, “Church Allowed Abuse.”

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Brian M. Flatly, “Rev. John J. Geoghan,” Aug 22, 1994, accessed Dec 16, 2017, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/docs/boston/geoghan/1994_08_22_Flatley_GeoghanChrono_version2a_R.pdf.

[xxiii] Investigative Staff, Betrayal, 22.

[xxiv] Rezendes, “Church Allowed Abuse.”

[xxv] Flatly, “Rev. John J. Geoghan.”

[xxvi] Rezendes, “Church Allowed Abuse.”

[xxvii] Kristen Lombardi, “Cardinal Sin,” Boston Phoenix, March 23, 2001, accessed Dec 16, 2017, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news/2001_03_23_Lombardi_CardinalSin.htm.

[xxviii] Investigative Staff, Betrayal, 27.

[xxix] Ibid.

[xxx] Ibid., 35.

[xxxi] Paul R. Dokecki, The Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis: Reform and Renewal in the Catholic Community (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 72.