Letter alleging Colorado Catholic priest’s abuse found a decade after the author took his own life

DENVER (CO)
9News

May 21, 2019

By Kevin Vaughan

Neil Hewitt, a Catholic priest who was assigned to Leadville’s Church of Annunciation, is accused of sexually abusing at two teenage boys in the 1960s.

Donna Ballentine was sorting through a box of her late mother’s papers when she came upon a two-page, handwritten letter.

She recognized the handwriting immediately – it was that of a cousin, Stuart Saucke, who’d taken his own life a decade earlier.

“Dear Neil,” the letter began. “It’s been 24 years since you sexually molested me. I also have been an alcoholic for 24 years.”

The letter wasn’t dated or signed, but Donna immediately knew it was meant for Neil Hewitt, a Catholic priest who married her and baptized two of her children at Leadville’s Church of the Annunciation.

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