ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
March 2, 2019
By David Andreatta
Christina Grana can’t forget the principal she and her classmates at St. Margaret Mary School in Irondequoit called “Hawk.”
“She was the monster in my dreams,” Grana recalled the other day. “She was the monster in my closet. She was the monster under my bed.”
She was Sister Janice Nadeau, a nun described by those who worked and lived with her as a “harsh,” “stern,” “aggressive,” and “heavy-handed” school administrator who was known to “pick on” children.
To Grana, she was a “predator” who forever altered the trajectory of Grana’s life with an outburst that culminated in a violent sexual assault in February 1977, when Grana was 12 years old and in the seventh grade.
“That single incident defined who I am as a person,” said Grana, now 54 and a mother of two living in Webster.
The alleged assault could not be corroborated by an investigator commissioned by the Diocese of Rochester, whose 33-page report on the matter Grana provided to the Democrat and Chronicle.
Even those who worked closely with Nadeau and described her in unflattering terms expressed astonishment at the allegation against her, according to the report.
But the administrator of the diocese’s abuse victims’ reconciliation program found Grana’s description of the events “completely credible,” and offered her a five-figure settlement intended to compensate for “pain and suffering” by which the diocese has agreed to abide.
The payout would be the first in the diocese known to involve an allegation of sexual abuse against a nun.
Nadeau arrived at St. Margaret Mary School in 1976. In her forties at the time, she had held a previous teaching post at McQuaid Jesuit High School, and set out to make an impression on her new students.
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