SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican
By Buffy Spencer, The Republican
SPRINGFIELD – Andrew Nicastro said it wasn’t until 2008 that he realized continuing sexual assaults by former priest Alfred Graves more than two decades before in Williamstown had led him to become a person ruled by angry outbursts and unable to connect emotionally even with his own family.
He said The Rev. Mark Burke, a priest who became a friend of his, in 2008 helped him to see the role the sexual abuse had played in making him who he was.
“I felt like, ‘I get it,’” Nicastro said.
Nicastro was on the witness stand Wednesday in Hampden Superior Court in his civil suit against two former bishops.
He contends they should be held accountable for his several years of childhood abuse by the Rev. Andrew Graves because they were in supervisory positions in the Roman Catholic Diocese and knew Graves had assaulted two other boys before Nicastro.
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