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  Powerful HBO Film Shows How Toledoan Copes with His Sexual Abuse by a Priest

By Mike Kelly
Toledo Blade [Toledo OH]
June 26, 2005

For almost 20 years, Toledo fireman Tony Comes carried around a painful secret from his past: Starting at the age of 14, he says, he had been repeatedly molested by a Catholic priest — a religion teacher at Central Catholic High School and a friend, someone he'd known and trusted.

Comes' shame, anger, and embarrassment had been bottled up inside ever since, even as he grew into a seemingly well-adjusted, gregarious adult, got married, and had two children of his own with wife Wendy. He still had occasional nightmares about his teenage abuse, which he'd confided in his wife, but no one else.

Then, three years ago, as reports of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church were becoming headline news in Boston and elsewhere, Comes' unsettling memories resurfaced and began to eat away at him anew.

But what really shattered his attempts to keep his painful past buried was his family's move into a new neighborhood, and the horrifying discovery that the man who he says molested him — Dennis Gray, by then no longer a priest — lived just five houses away.

Comes' story is the subject of a powerful and troubling documentary called Twist of Faith, scheduled to premiere on HBO Tuesday at 10 p.m. The 90-minute film features candid interviews with Comes and his wife, as well as scenes the couple taped of themselves when they were alone, with cameras provided by director Kirby Dick.

Also included in the Oscar-nominated documentary are chilling portions of a videotaped legal deposition in which Gray, the accused molester, seems eerily emotionless as he refuses - on the advice of his off-screen attorney - to answer specific questions regarding Comes' accusations.

After much soul-searching, Comes decides to take his allegations to Bishop James Hoffman, then head of the Toledo Catholic Diocese. Hoffman expresses his deep regret, and assures Comes that he has heard no similar reports about Gray, who had left the priesthood some 15 years earlier.

It later comes out, however, that at least half a dozen other men - all former Central Catholic students, some of whom were classmates of Comes - had also reported abuse at the hands of Gray.

The documentary points out that a portion of the church's canon law called "mental reservation" actually allows priests to lie as long as it's done to protect the church.

Frustrated and angry, Comes joins a lawsuit against Gray and the diocese, first as a "John Doe" to protect his anonymity, but later adding his name to the suit and going public, hoping the publicity might help other victims who were still suffering in silence.

He even contacts The Blade, which prints several stories about the diocese's burgeoning sex scandal. The newspaper's reporters - two of whom are interviewed briefly in the film - discover that the diocese and its lawyers have been quietly settling sexual abuse cases for years, effectively silencing a number of victims.

Meanwhile, the diocese is trying to have Comes' case dismissed because the alleged offenses were said to have had occurred so many years earlier.

In the documentary, Comes appears to be a level-headed, likable guy, but someone who has been deeply wounded. As a lifelong Catholic, he has trouble separating the religion he was raised with from the callous response he gets from local church officials, who seem more interested in denying and covering up any scandals than helping a victim deal with his pain.

And Comes' wife, Wendy, a convert to Catholicism, wonders what kind of church she's gotten herself into.

"The lies and the deceit and betrayal, it wasn't just from Dennis Gray any more," she says. "It was from the Catholic Church, the Catholic Diocese of Toledo, the bishop, everyone who knew what was going on."

As the case drags on, it takes a heavy toll on Comes. He loses 27 pounds, he can't sleep, he has no appetite, and he admits that he's "wound-up and angry all the time."

And as courageous and supportive as Wendy tries to be, the ordeal affects the couple's marriage as well. "Even in my most intimate times with my wife," Comes says, "somehow or another Denny Gray either sprints or walks slowly through my head."

There is even talk of divorce.

"If she came home and said, 'I just can't get by it, we're done,' I wouldn't blame her [but] it would kill me," Comes says at one point.

Of course, stories of sexual abuse of young victims by priests in the Catholic Church are nothing new - there have been thousands of accusations over the years - but Twist of Faith reduces the newspaper headlines and grim statistics to one man's very personal story, putting a name and a face to it.

The documentary is also a damning look at the cold-hearted efforts of church officials to escape accountability for the actions of the serial predators among the ranks of its priests.

Jeff Anderson, a Minneapolis lawyer who has been representing abuse victims for several years, comments on Comes' case: "I'm sad to say that the bishop here and the officials of this diocese have operated above the law."

Bishop Hoffman died in 2003, before Comes' lawyers could question him, and last year Comes and several other abuse victims agreed to settlements with the diocese. Comes was offered $55,000, which the film says he "reluctantly accepted," presumably to try to put the ordeal behind him and move on with his life.

It seems a paltry sum to make up for the loss of a person's innocence - and a big part of his life - but it was at least a significant gesture from the diocese, right? Hardly, since a few weeks later it was revealed that the diocese controlled a stock portfolio worth $117 million.

And what about Dennis Gray? Though the Toledo Diocese paid off his accusers to settle their lawsuits, Gray himself has never publicly admitted any wrongdoing in the Comes case. In perhaps the most telling excerpt from his deposition, however, Gray is asked at one point, "When did you stop believing in heaven and hell?"

After a slight pause, he replies in a measured voice, "Oh, I don't think I ever believed in hell."

Tony Comes could probably tell him a thing or two about hell.