THOROLD (ONTARIO, CANADA)
Niagara This Week
September 8, 2017
Two of three victims tell of broken lives in impact statements in sentencing hearing, judge’s ruling delayed to Oct. 24
By Melinda Cheevers
In May, Grecco pleaded guilty to sexually molesting the three young boys in the 1970s and 1980s while he was a parish priest; two of the victims were altar boys within the parish. On Thursday, he was to be sentenced, but after a long day spent in the courtroom hearing victim impact statements from two of the three victims (the third was filed as an exhibit but was not read aloud), and submissions from both sides about proposed sentences, Ontario Superior Court Justice Joseph Nadel agreed to push his actual sentencing decision back to Oct. 24 so Grecco, now 77, can undergo a colonoscopy.
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In his victim impact statement, O’Sullivan told the court that for him, as a young child during the years of his abuse, it was time spent living in secret, confusion and above all else, time spent protecting his mother.
“I was able to keep our little secret well past mom’s passing,” he said to Grecco, looking right at him from the witness stand.
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Assistant Crown attorney Pat Vadacchino read the second victim’s impact statement to the court while the man stood beside her. In his written statement, he said he walked into the church a very happy, healthy, confident, trusting, caring, respectful and self-secure young man with dreams of excelling in sports, graduating from school and perhaps even obtaining a scholarship.
“Your church, in my mind, was supposed to be one of the safest places to be. I was there to assist you and try to become a better person inside and out,” he wrote. “Instead, you took full advantage of your position to prey on young innocent boys and I was one of those boys. In a few short weeks, I walked out of your church for the last time, changed forever.”
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Throughout his time as a priest, Grecco served at St. Mary’s in Welland (1966-70), St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Niagara Falls (1970-78), St. Stephen’s in Cayuga (1978-179), St. Kevin’s in Welland (1979-85), St. Vincent de Paul in Niagara-on-the-Lake (1985-1996) and St. Alexander’s in Fonthill (1996-1998).
He left the priesthood in March 2001 after first obtaining a bachelor of science degree in pastoral counselling from Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore.
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