Ex-Priest Gets 18-Year Term for Sex Abuse at 5 Parishes

One victim read from Dante, recalling that the final circle of Hell was reserved for perpetrators of the most heinous sin of all, betrayal.

Another called his abuser “a useless piece of human excrement” and insisted that only public castration could suitably punish the onetime priest who molested him as a child.

After hearing 22 men and women describe their pain and anger in similarly impassioned statements Monday, Superior Court Judge Robert L. Steadman sentenced former Roman Catholic priest James Porter to concurrent sentences of 18 to 20 years at a Massachusetts state prison.

Porter pleaded guilty on Oct. 4 to 41 counts of sexual abuse between 1961 and 1967 at five parishes in southeastern Massachusetts. He is expected to serve at least 12 years.

More than 100 victims of the former priest reached a civil agreement with the local archdiocese in 1992.

Porter’s case offers the largest example of clerical sexual abuse--or abuse by any individual--in American judicial history.

In the courtroom Monday, his accusers confronted Porter with glowers, sneers and memories of sexual molestation that occurred three decades ago.

“We were pals, we were buddies,” 42-year-old Peter Calderone remembered of his days as one of then-Father Porter’s altar boys--and also, as one of his sexual abuse victims.

“And you, James Porter, you made me promise I wouldn’t tell. But I lied. I’ve told everybody. And you need to be punished.”

In the same courtroom where, a century earlier, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of murdering her parents, the 58-year-old former priest sat impassively through the unusually long parade of victims’ impact statements.

Alternately sinking his head in his hands and twiddling his thumbs, Porter displayed emotion only when the prospect of being separated from his own four children was raised by his attorney, Peter DeGelleke, in a plea for leniency.

“There is no dispute that this defendant caused terrible harm by his actions in the 1960s,” DeGelleke acknowledged.

But DeGelleke wanted the court to know that in the ensuing 30 years, Porter had raised “a functional, productive and loving family,” with one daughter scoring particularly high on recent scholastic aptitude tests.

“That has got to count for something,” DeGelleke said.

Porter himself rose and tearfully gestured to his wife, Verlyne, sitting nearby. “I fear for my family,” he said. “I really believe they need me near them.”

He added: “I deserve to be punished, but they don’t.”

Steadman, however, lambasted Porter for his “outrageous conduct and “complete disregard of the physical, spiritual and psychological impact” he had on his victims. He called Porter “an effigy, representing all the other named and unnamed child abusers.”

As part of his 10-year probation, Steadman also ordered Porter to “participate in and follow through programs designed to treat and control his pedophilia.”

Porter’s case was avidly pursued by victims who for many years had repressed memories of their abuse.

Frank Fitzpatrick, now 43, said that he was 39 years old before he was able to trace a lifetime of “depression and lack of self-esteem” to the occasion on which he was drugged and raped by then-Father Porter.

Fitzpatrick, a private investigator in Cranston, R.I., made it a mission to track down the man he once admired as “a secondary father figure.”

Fitzpatrick also sought out parochial school classmates who might have had similar encounters with Porter. In time he learned that his three sisters had also been molested by Porter--but that all the siblings had hidden their trauma as a deep and shameful secret.

Like Fitzpatrick, victim after victim stood up in court to describe symptoms that are widely recognized as signs of childhood sexual abuse.

There was Mary Kennedy, 37, describing a descent down the paths of alcoholism and drug abuse. Thomas Kennedy, her older brother, displayed the golden teardrop he wears around his neck--a symbol of his failed marriage that he made by melting down his wedding ring.

Steven Johnson said he had 14 employers in 21 years, and that he moved “to 21 cities and countries” in the same number of years. He said he attempted suicide three times. Because of Porter’s abuse, Johnson said, “shame and guilt became the foundation of my being.”

Remembering that “we were taught that the priest was God’s hand-picked representative on Earth,” Edward Connor lamented that his abuse by Porter had destroyed his spiritual life.

Paul Merry wondered publicly if he would ever regain his ability to trust someone in authority. John Robitaille mourned the loss of his youthful innocence, explaining that “I still feel as if I am carrying a dead child within me.”

No sentence he could impose would “restore peace” to Porter’s victims, Steadman conceded after considering their remarks.

But Mary Kennedy, for one, applauded any prison time served by Porter as “like the closing of a chapter in my life.”

Besides, said Kennedy, wearing a large silver cross around her neck, a higher reckoning still awaits Porter.

“And no one,” she said, “makes a fool of a God.”