In God's House (15 page)

“Before you were a priest?”

“Oh yes, before ordination. And another summer when I was a seminarian helping out in a New Orleans church parish, I got involved with an altar boy, a kid from a broken home. His mom told the pastor about it. My work was terminated in the parish. Again Monsignor Billadeaux questioned me and counseled me.”

“Twice before ordination, before you even became a priest?”

Dubois nodded.

“What did Monsignor Billadeaux ask you?”

“Well, I think he just said ‘Is it true?’ or something like that and I said ‘Yes’.”

“What was the monsignor’s counsel?”

“I don’t remember the first time because I was so nervous. I really liked the orphanage job and didn’t want to lose it. But the second time he talked to me about it, he advised that I consider having what he called a ‘particular friendship’ with another seminarian. That was the monsignor’s suggested solution.”

“A particular friendship?”

“I knew what he meant. It’s code in seminary. Means having a fuck buddy. You know, pairing off with another seminarian for sex. But I’m not gay, Renon, no matter what anyone thinks. I’m not queer. A lot of priests are queers, but I’m not. And I didn’t want a particular friendship with some faggot seminarian.”

I was at a loss for words. Dubois was summoned by a nurse to take his medication. I welcomed the break and racked pool balls, broke and started taking aim at the stripes. Dubois wandered in as I missed my fourth consecutive shot. We continued to talk and I continued to miss.

“Were there any other times in the seminary when your superiors became aware of your sexual activity with boys?”

“No. Not really. I was always having sex with boys, but not getting caught. But they knew how I was.”

“When was the next time your superiors or supervisors were confronted by your sexual conduct with children?”

“The first year I was a priest in the Diocese of Thiberville. In the first parish I was assigned to. A nice young couple came to the pastor and complained about me. Their son was seven. The funny thing is nothing much had really happened yet with their son. I had touched him through his clothes, I think. Maybe we took a shower together, but no real sex stuff had happened yet. But there were a lot of other boys there I was having sex with in that first parish, kids who never said anything to their parents. Just last year one of them asked me to go back to that parish and perform his wedding ceremony.”

I put the pool cue down. “What did the pastor do that first time?”

“He called the vicar general, a man named Darnell. He’s dead
now. Darnell must have told the bishop because I had to see the bishop that time.”

“Bishop Reynolds?”

“No. He wasn’t the bishop then.”

“Okay… and what happened with the bishop?”

“I knelt in front of him. He asked if I was sorry. I said yes. The bishop blessed me and told me to make a good act of contrition and remember my body is a temple.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s the way it was every time, except one time when Bishop Reynolds or Monsignor Moroux sent me to a psychologist in Thiberville, who I saw two times. The doctor told me that I did these things because of the stress and he said I should take up some hobbies like golf and tennis.”

“Every time? How many times were there?”

“Well, before Amalie I was in six… seven other parishes and each time I was transferred because some boy said something to his parents and they brought it to my pastor or to the chancery directly.”

“Every one of those complaints was known to the chancery?”

“Yeah, right. The vicar general, Jean-Paul, dealt with these things just like he did this time.”

“Were they recorded?”

“That’s what I was told once by Jean-Paul. He said all this was kept in something they call the secret archives.”

“You’re telling me that before you were assigned to the parish in Amalie there had been six, seven, or more occasions when you were in the seminary and later as a priest when pastors, the vicar general and the bishop would have been aware of complaints about you having sex with children, complaints you admitted were true each time?”

“Un-huh, they knew everything about me, how I was, what I had done.”

I was physically exhausted. A week with no sleep was taking its toll all at once. I knew I could not go back to the airport and fly
back to my life. I told Dubois I needed to make some phone calls. He brought me to the nurses’ station and a nurse showed me to an oversized telephone booth.

Fishing a card out of my pocket, I phoned the limo driver and asked him to buy a bag of ice and a bottle of vodka, and to sink the bottle in the ice.

Then I called my secretary, Monique, in Thiberville. I asked her to book me into the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan and to reschedule my return flight to Thiberville for Monday. I needed the weekend to myself, somewhere anonymous.

“Mo, if Kate calls you about me, tell her where I am,” I instructed Monique.

“You’re not going to call Kate yourself? Christ, you don’t pay me enough.”

After my conversation with Dubois, I didn’t want to talk to Kate or anyone else about anything for a long time. While Dubois appeared to be calm, I felt I was unraveling.

When I walked back to the room where Dubois was, he was staring out of a window with iron bars on the outside. “Do they have windows in prison?”

I ignored his question, pushing on to finish my interview. “What was the assignment you had before being transferred to Amalie?”

“I was an associate pastor in Bayou Saint John under Monsignor Gaudet – Father Gaudet. I don’t think he had made monsignor then,” Dubois said.

“So, before Amalie, you were at Bayou Saint John?”

“I was also appointed chaplain to the Boy Scouts for our diocese.”

“Chaplain to the Boy Scouts?”

“Yes, and Cub Scouts. It seems stupid now, doesn’t it?”

“It should have seemed stupid then. How did you become chaplain?”

“Bishop Reynolds appointed me with a letter.”

“I guess you were caught with Scouts.”

“Only once, I think. A Cub Scout. But I had boys in Bayou Saint John too. With Monsignor Gaudet, I never knew what he knew. Monsignor Gaudet was a little whacko. He made me listen to opera on Sunday afternoons. He wanted to find someone who he could have conversations with in Latin. Nobody speaks Latin. He and I hated each other. He must have wanted me to go away, so I was given the church at Amalie as my own.”

“Did you meet with the bishop when the parents of the Cub Scout complained?”

“Yes.”

“Did the bishop bless you again?”

“No.”

“What did he do?”

“He only told me I was being assigned to Amalie as pastor.”

“Was there anyone else assigned to Amalie – any other priest, anyone you reported to, anyone who was supervising you – who would know what was going on there besides you?”

“No. I was alone. I was alone except when the boys came over to the house I lived in.”

“And the bishop and vicar general of the diocese were aware that you had had sexual relations with children in every place you were assigned to before Amalie? You sure?”

“The bishop and the vicar general knew I had been having sexual relations with children at every assignment, even before I was ordained as a priest. But every time there was a problem, you know, the bishop or Monsignor Moroux would send me somewhere else – to another church parish far away from the one where I got in trouble. Then there would be problems at the new place I was sent to, but nothing like this.”

“You had sex with boys at every assignment you had as a priest?”

“I had sex with boys almost every day I was a priest.”

Everyone called him “Little Will” and said it as one word, “Lilwill”. Little Will Courville would have won a contest for the cutest and most lovable boy in the diocese. His mom, Hattie, kept his dark black hair long so that it curled. His eyes were dark and his skin coloring was like that of an Egyptian. He was a beautiful boy.

Will was in Doctor Aaron Kennison’s office, sitting up straight against the back of a sofa. His feet barely reached the end of the seat cushion. Every time he came to this doctor’s office he felt sleepy.

Like most of the boys who were Dubois’s victims, Will did not open up much to child psychologist Doctor Aaron Kennison or social worker Sharon Cassidy. During five months of therapy, the closest Will had come to discussing his relationship with Father Dubois was to mumble “Unhuh” to leading questions posed by the doctor. When asked if he liked Father Nicky, he always said “Unhuh”, and when asked if he was afraid of Father Nicky, he also said “Unhuh”. He said “Unhuh” to everything.

In twenty appointments over five months, Doctor Kennison had failed to elicit any information, emotion, or expression of feeling from Will about his experience with Father Dubois. Two other boys, who cried through sessions and avoided eye contact, had told Doctor Kennison of the activities they, Will, and others had observed and participated in during their weekly sleepover at the Our Lady of the Seas rectory in Amalie. The boys had said
Will was Father Dubois’s favorite and got the most attention.

The boys were in the doctor’s office every week. And now they were also going to the offices of the District Attorney, and the office of their own attorney, Brent Thomas. The DA’s staff were preparing the boys to give grand jury testimony in the criminal case against Father Dubois. Their own lawyer, Brent Thomas, was worried that with Chaisson trying to make one lawsuit public all the other cases might end up going to trial in open court. So Thomas was trying to gently prepare the parents and children to be questioned under oath by Church insurance lawyers. The pressure on the kids was intensifying.

Sharon Cassidy had twice before tried leaving Will in the
primary-colored
playroom of the psychologist’s suite, retreating behind the one-way mirror to watch how he interacted with the toys. Both times Will had ignored all of the toys, curled up in a corner of the room in a fetal position, and slept until the session was over.

Today Ms. Cassidy brought Will into the playroom again, sat on the floor with him and tried to talk with him about what was going on in his life. He was not responsive. She asked him to please paint a picture or as many pictures as he wanted that showed how he felt today. She set out the water-based paints, brushes and a stack of blank canvases on the floor before Will. Then she demonstrated how to mix the paints if he wanted something other than red, yellow or blue.

Retiring to the alcove behind the one-way glass, she set up the video recorder and settled in to observe. Will picked up the largest brush and touched it to his face, smiling as the bristles tickled his cheek. Ms. Cassidy was relieved. The last time she had left one of the other boys from the group alone in the playroom, he had done nothing with the toys or paints, but rather had pulled down his short pants and attempted to masturbate while crying and praying half of the “Our Father”, before banging on the door to be let out.

Will wandered the perimeter of the room, its bright green shelves packed with toys. He fingered some of the action figures,
chose a racing car, wound it up and set it running. When a second car failed to work, Will picked it up and carefully set it back on the shelf.

On a bottom shelf, Will found three small, hand-carved wooden elf puppets. He carefully untangled the strings on two of them, and tried to make the figures move. Then he brought them to the center of the room and set them down on a blank canvas. Picking up a jar, he poured red paint over the wooden puppets and dripped the residue onto the canvas.

Will stood and put all three control sticks in his left hand. Ms. Cassidy glanced at Will’s file and noted he was right handed. She made a note that he was not using his dominant hand. As Will awkwardly jangled the controls, the strings became hopelessly entangled into a single cord, leaving the three puppets suspended and welded together. Will stood still with the puppets dangling from his grip. Then he violently shook his hand several times and the elves clacked against each other. Red paint dripped off the puppets and splattered across the canvas.

While some of the children were in Doctor Kennison’s office in Thiberville for their weekly appointments, five sets of parents sat around a conference-room table in Brent Thomas’s law office in Bayou Saint John. These parents had gotten along well as neighbors for years, but today the tension in the room was as strong as the silence of the ten people who sat quietly and stiffly. Most of these people had always felt it was a sin to sue their Church. All believed they were harming their children by dragging them through this legal process.

Kane Chaisson was turning into Brent Thomas’s worst nightmare. Wiley Arceneaux, owner of the Feed & Seed store, had stopped Brent Thomas on the street and told him, “If it wasn’t for my wife
Sissy being your relation, I’d be leaving you to go with Tommy Rachou to that Chaisson fella myself. You better start acting like some kinda lawyer and quit acting like the ugly girl at the dance.”

The Chaisson motion to break the seal on the Rachou case against the diocese, alleging negligent supervision against the bishop, was set for a court hearing on Monday. There was no question that Chaisson’s sole aim was to blow the lid off of things. Brent’s clients were scared their claims would become public too. Some were talking about forgetting the whole thing, rather than having what happened to their sons become public knowledge.

Earlier in the week, Brent Thomas had finally got through to Jon Bendel on the phone for the first time since the Rachou family had fired Thomas and brought in Kane Chaisson instead. Brent asked Jon Bendel directly, “What does Chaisson running the Rachou case out from under me mean for my other ten cases?”

“If Chaisson forces us to try the Rachou case, I am going to advise the diocese and insurance lawyers that we should go to public trial with all of your ten cases as well. If we have to go to trial against Chaisson, we’ll have nothing to lose by trying your cases. The damage would already be done by Chaisson.” Jon Bendel was lying, but he was convincing.

Brent Thomas believed him. As he listened to Bendel, he worried he might throw up on the handset. Thomas had tried to go it alone with this new batch of cases. He had not called Fort Lauderdale and advised Ricardo Ponce of the existence of this potential two million dollar fee. But Thomas had never tried a case in court. Once he had even lost an uncontested divorce because he did the paperwork wrong and the judge threw the case out.

He knew what he had to do, and he knew what it would cost him both maritally and financially, for his wife Cindy would find it hard to forgive him for bringing Ricardo Ponce back in for a full share of the fee. Brent knew she hated Ponce – and she loved money. After hanging up from the upsetting phone call with Jon Bendel, Brent had finally broken down and called Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Ricardo Ponce was in Thomas’s private office as the families waited in the conference room. Today, Ponce would meet these parents, tomorrow he would meet the other five sets of parents.

“This isn’t going to go like the first set of cases, Brent. You know this, don’t you? The diocese and its insurance companies are not going to keep handing out millions like candy. We are going to have to do some real work for the money this round. You let the Rachou family get away to Kane Chaisson. Chaisson put the district attorney and a criminal prosecution by the district attorney in the mix. It’s all changed. We are going to have to argue the law to stay in court and prove facts to win.”

Brent nodded his head repeatedly as if to say “I know, I know, I know already”.

Now for the first time since he arrived that morning, Ponce let anger flash in his face. “You filed these new cases without me. You thought you could go the distance alone. You were cutting me out of a million dollars in legal fees. But you couldn’t handle it. So, now here I am.”

Thomas thought Ponce was going to hit him. Instead, Ponce pulled a thick legal document from his tan leather valise and continued. “Before I do one thing more, you are going to sign this contract giving me 65 per cent of the first million in fees, and 60 per cent of everything above that. And full control of the cases.”

“I don’t think—”

Ponce stood. “Sign it, Brent, or I’m leaving. You tried to fuck me over. We both know that. After all the money I made you last round, you tried to fuck me. You can’t go it alone. We both know that too. Don’t even try to run a bluff by me.”

Affixing his signature to the document, Brent said, “Ricardo, be delicate with these people in the conference room. They’re as good as the people we represented last time, fine people. None of them has ever been in a lawsuit before. Some of them feel guilty about suing the Church. None of them like the idea that their kids
may have to give testimony before a grand jury or give sworn testimony to Church lawyers in depositions, and they are all terrified that their children may have to testify in court at public trials in the civil cases and criminal prosecutions. The boys are shutting down all around, cooperating with no one, not even Doctor Kennison, and with most of them their behavior at home is out of control. All of these parents thought these cases would be like the cases their neighbors or cousins had where the kids went to see a doctor, we did some legal work, and the checks cleared. You are going to have to explain what is different this time. You’re going to have to keep them from leaving our representation for another lawyer, or keep them from picking up their marbles and going home.”

After Ricardo was introduced to the parents, he went through his usual production of removing his coat, exposing his expensive tie, cufflinks and braces.

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Ponce said, addressing the group of parents.

A man wearing a baseball cap with the John Deere tractor company logo on it spoke up in a gruff voice, pushing his cap onto the crown of his head. “I’m saying we should forget the whole thing. Our boy is gonna be all right. If he didn’t have to come here or go to the doctor’s or the district attorney’s office, he’d be fine, is what I think. The kind of person I am is… I believe bad things happen sometimes and we gotta just get through the bad times, and I don’t think I’m helping my boy by putting him through all this. He cries for no reason. He’s scared of everything, he won’t sleep in the dark unless the overhead light is on in his room. And I don’t think it’s ’cause of what happened with that priest fellow but ’cause of what’s happening to him now, what we’re putting him through. If he was old enough, he might sue all of us too.”

The mood in the room seemed to signal a silent assent, an agreement by the other parents that the fellow in the cap was right in all he said.

When Ponce looked at the faces of these people, he did not see the suffering. All he saw was the millions of dollars in legal fees these five families represented, of which 65 per cent was to be his.

“Yes, sir,” Ponce began. “What your sons have been asked to endure is unconscionable. What you, as parents, have been asked to endure is beyond my comprehension.”

Ricardo Ponce stood and began to pace. “When I was a boy we lived in a really poor barrio in Mexico. My aunt lived next door and she had a cold-water drip and that was our only water source. My parents always had two jobs and sometimes I had to help them at their jobs, and I had to go to school. My father stole books from the houses of the rich people whose gardens he worked in. He couldn’t read, so he never knew what he was stealing. He made me read the books out loud to him. I resented my parents. I think I hated the things they made me do. I don’t think I ever noticed what my mother and father did for me – not until later, a lot later.”

Ponce stopped pacing and stared at the floor for a long time, beginning the close with his eyes downcast, his voice cracking. “Today my parents are my heroes. Before they died, they got to see how all the reading helped me, and for the last years of their lives I was able to make it so they had no jobs at all. They had the strength to do what was right for me when I was a boy. Now I know this.”

Ponce paused for a long time, looked away, bit his lip and pushed back on emotions that seemed to be rising within him. “I know when your sons look back on what you did for them, how you supported them through such a hard time, how you gave them the strength to put this maniac priest in prison forever, how you forced the Church to change its policies and procedures… when your sons realize how many little boys you saved from this Father Dubois and from other priests like him, you will be their heroes forever.”

Ponce sat down at the head of the table again. Remaining emotional, he said, “What you are doing today is something only God could ask you to do, not something I could ask you to do. I
ask you to pray about this. Remember, it is your Church that has abandoned you, not your God. Remember that if we quit, what we are saying is that Father Dubois is more important than your sons; that Bishop Reynolds is more important than your sons. We must never forget that there is no one on this earth more important than your sons.”

A lady asked, “Will my Stevie ever have to talk or give testimony or whatever in public?”

“I give you my solemn word on this – on my father’s grave. None of the boys will ever have to appear in open court in either a criminal or civil proceeding. And they will not have to go to see a doctor anymore either after the cases are settled.”