CINCINNATI (OH)
WKRC-TV, CBS-12 [Cincinnati OH]
May 27, 2026
By James Pilcher
As a former Tri-State priest convicted of sexual abuse prepares to leave prison, a one-man play coming to Cincinnati examines clergy sexual abuse and the legal hurdles survivors can face when seeking justice years later.
“Unreconciled” is a one-man show about clergy sexual abuse and the challenges survivors may encounter when pursuing accountability later in life. Co-written and performed by Jay Sefton, the play is based on his own experiences. In the production, Sefton recounts being abused by a priest after being chosen to portray Jesus in an eighth-grade Passion Play.
Sefton is scheduled to perform the play five times this weekend as part of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. He said it will be the first of nearly 70 performances staged in a church.
“So, this has all been a kind of a wild adventure for the last three years, and it’s a passion,” Sefton said. “My wife and I started the Unreconciled Project because what we’ve learned over the years is the play is really a jumping-off place for conversations that need to be had.”
The production is being brought to the area with support from advocates for clergy abuse survivors who have also pushed for changes to laws and church protocols.
Teresa Dinwiddie-Herrmann said she became involved after former priest Geoff Drew, who was serving at her church, St. Ignatius in Monfort Heights, pleaded guilty in 2021 to raping a boy three decades earlier at another church.
“There was red-flag behavior in just the year that he was with us,” Dinwiddie-Herrmann said. “And we know that because of delayed disclosure, victims usually won’t report until much later in life, that we won’t know if specific things happened at St. Ignatius until decades later.”
The performances also come ahead of Drew’s scheduled release in August after serving five years in prison under a plea agreement.
“To me personally, I feel like it’s a God thing because it’s so timely,” Dinwiddie-Herrmann said. “Drew will be released in August, right? And we know that there was at least one other victim that came forward during his case, and that survivor is timed out.”
Ohio’s statute of limitations for such crimes is 43 years, and advocates say many survivors do not come forward until their 50s or later. Dinwiddie-Herrmann and Sefton are advocating for changes to laws across the country to create “look-back windows” allowing older survivors limited time to present new evidence.
Sefton said prosecutors’ inability to pursue older cases in his home state of Pennsylvania helped inspire him to write the play. Dinwiddie-Herrmann said the production helps explain cases like Drew’s.
“Drew is going to be living among us,” she said. “And I feel like people in this community need to see and understand why, and they need to understand the perspective of a survivor, a survivor’s parents.”
Dinwiddie-Herrmann and other advocates also helped push Ohio lawmakers to pass a law last year criminalizing grooming behavior. Sefton said that although the play addresses a difficult subject, it includes “quite a few funny moments.”
The Catholic Church officially laicized, or defrocked, Drew and removed him from the priesthood in 2023, according to a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
The Cincinnati Fringe Festival begins Friday and runs through June 13. Tickets and passes can be bought here.