ST. CATHARINES (ONTARIO, CANADA)
St. Catharines Standard
September 8, 2017
By Grant LaFleche
The wolf in priest’s clothing: Part 3 of 3
[Note: See Part 1: Living with Echo of Clergy Abuse; and Part 2: The stench of rape in God’s house. See also the 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. He will be sentenced Oct. 24 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.
For those on the inside, prison can seem like a place that time has abandoned.
The immutable routine and the static surroundings make one day bleed into the next and into the next. Sometimes, the length of a man’s hair is his only reliable watch and calendar.
Still, in a sea of unchanging days, William O’Sullivan remembers when the wailing stopped. In the years following his sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priest Donald Grecco and his repeated rape by a Christian Brother at St. John’s Training School for Boys, O’Sullivan’s life spun out of control.
Drugs, booze and crime were staples for many years. Theft and break and enters earned him multiple prison terms, including stints in the maximum security prison in Millhaven.
It was there O’Sullivan began to see his own pain reflected the faces of the men he shared the prison with. While still years away from recovering his repressed memories of being abused by Grecco as a boy, O’Sullivan was keenly aware of what the Christians Brothers had done to him and how those experiences shaped his life.
“Look, it’s not an excuse, OK? I never use what happened to me as an excuse for my bad choices. Everyone has a choice, and I made bad ones,” says O’Sullivan, who now lives in a small house in St. Catharines and works full time as a painter. “But what you have to realize is that kind of experience changes you. It hurts you in ways you aren’t aware of for a long time.”
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.