SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
KSL
November 29, 2020
By Annie Knox
What began as a routine visit to the deli aisle last year ended in a revelation for Guy Platt.
Platt spotted the Colosimo name on a pork sausage label and wondered if it belonged to a member of the family he recalled from childhood. But an online search turned up a series of mugshots and a more profound connection.
The man he said he remembers sexually abusing and threatening him five decades earlier hadn’t been a schoolmate’s father like he’d thought. Rather, he was a Roman Catholic priest later convicted of victimizing boys in Michigan and Oklahoma, and accused of similar conduct in Utah.
“I was having heart palpitations, those kind of feelings that you get when you’re angry and in shock and when you feel guilty,” Platt recalled in a recent interview.
As adults, Utah brothers Matthew and Ralph Colosimo came forward as victims of repeated abuse by James Rapp in the years following Platt’s own alleged encounters with the onetime cleric.
Platt is now suing the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City for damages of more than $300,000, contending the diocese knew Rapp was “wholly unfit to work around children” but allowed him to do so.
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.