MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Martine Powers
Globe Staff
November 18, 2012

While watching the morning news recently, Jerry Sypek learned that the Boy Scouts of America had released its so-called perversion lists.

Then he heard one of the names on the list: Paul A. Hightower, accused in the documents of assaulting one scout and masturbating in front of others at troop meetings.

“I almost choked on my coffee,” said Sypek, 50. When Sypek was an orphan in a Jamaica Plain children’s home between 1968 and 1971, he was abused by a former seminary student by the same name. Decades later, he settled a claim with the Catholic Church. “I was horrified. I thought to myself, ‘This is not the same guy.’ ”

But it was. Hightower died in 1994.

“It brought back some really hard memories for me,” Sypek said. “When you have a name that’s so familiar…