ST. CATHARINES (ONTARIO, CANADA)
St. Catharines Standard
September 5, 2017
By Grant LaFleche
The wolf in priest’s clothing: Part 1 of 3
[Note: See the detailed page devoted to Rev. Donald Grecco on Sylvia’s Site, with links and chronology.]
A note to readers: For a more than a decade, Catholic priest Donald Grecco sexually abused children in Niagara. On Thursday, he will be sentenced for the abuse of three boys in the 1970s and 80s. This three part series is the story of one of his victims. Be advised this story contains language that might upset some readers.
Memory is a precarious construct. Though a storehouse of thoughts and experiences, it can keep secrets from conscious view, locking them behind doors never meant to be opened.
Find the right key, and those doors can be unlocked. Once opened, there is no hiding from what’s inside.
William O’Sullivan found such a key in a Thorold jail cell seven years ago on the front-page of a newspaper. Inside his memory he found a darkness long forgotten. Its rediscovery changed the course of his life.
“One of the guards asked me if I wanted to read the paper. I said yes. I saw it was two days old and I remember saying to him, ‘Oh, come on, this is ancient history,’” says O’Sullivan, known to his friends as Sully.
“Then I saw what was in it.”
It was Dec. 16, 2010, when O’Sullivan read the story on The Standard’s front page from his cell at Niagara Detention Centre.
“Jail for ex-priest Grecco,” the headline read over a Hamilton dateline.
O’Sullivan’s blood ran cold. The world tilted and spun.
“I got sick. Physically sick, vomiting, yeah,” O’Sullivan says. “I got dizzy. I had the sweats. My heart was racing. It was like the worst panic attack you can think of. That was when I remembered what he did.”
O’Sullivan’s life was anything but a storybook. In and out of jail since he was a teenager, a laundry list of poor choices led to five prison sentences — four in a federal penitentiary, one in a provincial prison.
As a young teen, O’Sullivan was sent to St. John’s Training School for Boys in Uxbridge, a factory of horror and abuse run by the De La Salle Brothers of the Christian Schools.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.