Writer Tells Tale of Abuser Priest, Victims, by Emily Groves, The Bulletin, August 6, 2011

Writer Tells Tale of Abuser Priest, Victims

By Emily Groves
The Bulletin
August 6, 2011

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The Rev. Bernard Bissonnette, from the Norwich Bulletin on May 14, 1958

It’s a story that spans northeastern Connecticut, New Mexico and 50 years, and David Margolick said it’s one he’s wanted to tell since the early 1990s.

Margolick, a Putnam native and veteran journalist, said the story of North Grosvenordale native the Rev. Bernard Bissonnette and Putnam’s Deary family is one of “sheer drama,” but also “a story about family, about loyalty and love.”

“When I heard about the story of three younger brothers (the Dearys) walking down that road in New Mexico to confront the priest who molested their brother (Tommy) 30 years earlier, it just moved me so deeply,” Margolick said. “You know, three younger brothers going to bat for their late older brother, I just thought it was a profoundly moving story. I wanted to describe that scene to people.”

Margolick’s nearly 20,000-word piece, “A Predator Priest,” which he said is either “a very long article or a very short book,” became available at Amazon.com July 20. Margolick is a former New York Times reporter and contributing editor for Newsweek and Portfolio. He is now a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

The article follows Bissonnette from North Grosvenordale to his priesthood at All Hallows Church in Moosup, St. Mary Church of the Visitation in Putnam and finally to churches in New Mexico.

Margolick reports that in Bissonnette’s nearly 50 years behind the collar, “ ‘Father Barney’ molested or attempted to molest countless ... boys.” The Santa Fe Archdiocese paid out more than $2 million in settlements to Bissonnette’s victims, according to Margolick.

Committed suicide

But it is also a story of the Deary family. Tommy Deary, the second of the 13 Deary children, was molested by Bissonnette. He killed himself in 1991.

Margolick’s article chronicles Tommy Deary, but also his brothers’ quest for justice within the church, led by Tommy’s youngest brother, Gene Michael.

After years of efforts by the Dearys, Bissonnette was laicized, or removed from the priesthood, by a decree from Pope Benedict XVI on May 20, 2005. The Most Rev. Michael R. Cote, bishop of Norwich, spoke in favor of the action at the Vatican while there on other business in April 2005, Margolick reports.

It’s not a new story, Margolick admits, but he said only the “bare outlines are familiar to some people. ... The full scope of the story and the complexity and detail have never been published before.”

Margolick said he was inspired to write the story in the early 1990s, when his mother sent him clippings from The Bulletin while he was working for The New York Times.

He started working on the article last summer, tracing Bissonnette’s steps through Moosup, Putnam and New Mexico.

Margolick, who is not Catholic but Jewish, said it was an emotional journey for him. He lived in Putnam until he was 14, and saw the story as a chance to understand his hometown better.

His father, Dr. Moses Margolick, was well-known in the region and practiced at Day Kimball Hospital in Putnam for 47 years. While working on the story, he said he encountered many people who knew his parents or had been treated by his father, interviewing one man who said Margolick’s father removed his tonsils.

Church failure

Though drawn in by the Putnam connection, Margolick said it is the behaviors of the church that still intrigue him.

“Every boy of a certain age in Moosup knew all about (Bissonnette), and notwithstanding that, the church still just recycled him to Putnam. It’s just astonishing,” Margolick said. “I’m still trying to figure out why the church protected him in the way that it did.”

Within the article, Margolick said the Norwich Diocese refused to speak to him. Michael Strammiello, spokesman for the diocese, said the diocese was very willing to speak with Margolick on the child safety measures the Catholic Church has been dedicated to since the 2002 Charter for Protection of Young People.

Strammiello said he does not understand the purpose of looking backward, rather than forward.

“The church has learned, no one has learned better than the church,” Strammiello said.

Gene Michael Deary, now of Brooklyn, said he thinks Margolick did a “fantastic” job with the story, calling it “candid and honest and open, which isn’t easy to do in a story like that.”

“Just the fact that people are still talking about it and still bringing light to it makes everyone aware of what’s going on,” Deary said. “I can only be hopeful that at the diocesan level and higher up, that they’ve really made a change in the way they handle these things.”

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