by Pearl Solas
Veronica’s lips formed a tight line, avoiding a well-worn argument. Tom stood and paced. Sean opened his eyes and looked at his father, gazing at him with longing. His eyes held the despair of sudden rupture. He hungered to fix what had broken and return to the warmth of familiarity.
Tavis maneuvered the conversation into more productive territory. “Can you tell me what happened, Sean?”
When the boy remained silent, Veronica offered, “We’ve been trying to get him to talk to us since Dr. Selim explained what must have happened. Mostly, he’s been like this,” she gestured. “All we’ve gotten out of him is that something happened, that he didn’t want it to happen, and he can’t remember all of it.”
Tavis’s brow wrinkled. He considered a while before beginning hesitantly, “Veronica, Tom. I wonder whether Sean might feel more comfortable talking without the two of you in the room.”
“Not a fucking chance,” Veronica shot back. Tom resumed his seat with an air of finality.
“Okay,” Tavis began again. “Sean, I know this is the last place you want to be right now. I know it’s scary and embarrassing to talk about such personal things with your parents—not to mention with a stranger. Someone hurt you. Right?”
After a few seconds, eyes still squeezed shut, Sean nodded.
“All right. Can you tell me who hurt you?”
No reaction.
“Was it another student?”
A slight negative shake.
“You’re doing great, Sean. Was it an adult?”
An almost imperceptible nod.
“Okay, Sean. Was it a teacher at the school?”
Sean finally opened his eyes and fixed them on Tavis. He nodded once.
“I knew it!” muttered Veronica angrily. “That Mr. Ronan has always rubbed me the wrong way.”
“It wasn’t Mr. Ronan, Mom,” said Sean wearily, sitting up and hugging his knees to his chest.
“Well, then, who could possibly have done this to you?” asked Veronica, baffled.
Sean sighed deeply, more world-weary than any twelve-year-old should ever have reason to be. He faced his mother, his voice full of resignation. “Does it really matter, Mom? Will it change anything if you know? If I say, what happens then?”
Tavis fielded this one. “Sean,” he said gently, “it does matter who it was. If he’s a teacher, he could hurt other boys. Maybe he already has. If you tell us who it is, we’ll keep other kids safe and make sure he’s punished for what he did to you.”
Sean turned his ancient gaze to Tavis. “And then what happens to me? Is everybody gonna know? What if people don’t believe that I didn’t want it to happen? He said I did want it.” His voice broke and he looked at his father pleadingly, his mouth wide in a dry, silent sob. When he could speak again, he wailed, “Everyone will believe him instead of me!”
The dam burst and Sean shook with silent sobs. Uncertainly, Tom moved toward the bed and patted his son’s back with his large hand.
“Well, let’s start here, Sean,” offered Tavis. “I believe you. Your parents believe you.” Tavis handed Sean the box of tissues on the counter. “I can’t guarantee that nobody will know what happened to you, but we have a lot of tools to protect your privacy. We’ll do everything we can to keep what you’ve told us as confidential as possible. I can’t think of any reason the other kids at school would need to know about it. We’re asking you to do something big and scary. I know that. But you can help stop this from happening to other boys. Men who do this usually don’t stop with one victim. I know you’re brave, Sean. Your parents and I will be with you every step of the way.”
Sean searched his parents’ faces. They nodded at him encouragingly. In a voice so quiet the adults had to lean forward to hear him, Sean said, “It was Father Peña.”
“Paul?” exclaimed his parents in unison as Veronica’s hand beelined to her neck to grasp the crucifix there.
Chapter Three
Tavis knocked on the open door of Paul Peña’s beautifully appointed and carefully curated office. Father Peña looked up from the papers on his desk, his brief expression of annoyance quickly smoothed over with a mask of polite curiosity. “Yes?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Father Peña?” Tavis asked as he stepped into the room.
“That’s me. What can I do for you?” He stood up from his chair and came around the side of his desk with his hand outstretched. He was tall and dark with a languid, feline athleticism. Seeing him face to face, Tavis understood the surprise Tom and Veronica Matthews had expressed when their son had named his attacker. It seemed unthinkable that this man would have a sexual interest in adolescent boys. It was also surprising that a man who exuded such vigorous traditional masculinity should have chosen to join the celibate clergy.
The men shook hands and then Tavis introduced himself and showed his badge. “I was hoping I might ask you a few questions to help with an investigation.”
“Of course,” Paul said smoothly, without an ounce of hesitation or trepidation. He closed the door and invited Tavis to sit. “How can I help?”
“Well,” Tavis said, swallowing. There was a discomfort that always preceded informing someone that an accusation had been made against them. Tavis had been raised Catholic, and his own ingrained deference to the white collar around Paul’s neck heightened his discomfort. “I wanted to ask you about allegations of sexual assault made by one of your students.”
Paul barked out a short, harsh laugh. Tavis’s surprise at this reaction registered on his face, and Paul put his palm out placatingly and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pereira. It’s been a while since one of these has come up, but it’s not unheard of. What happens is that students get infatuated with the charisma of their teachers, and when those feelings aren’t reciprocated, and teachers try to let students down gently and explain why these kinds of things are not possible, students sometimes try to protect their egos by inventing physical encounters that never happened.” He delivered this explanation with convincing ease.
“To make sure I’m clear, then, you haven’t had ‘physical encounters,’ as you call them, with any of your students?”
“Absolutely not,” Paul stated emphatically, looking directly into Tavis’s eyes.
Tavis nodded and closed his notebook as if his suspicions had been confirmed. Paul relaxed further into his seat. “I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions so directly. We have to follow these things up, you know, even though, for guys like you and me, the thought of doing something like that with a man, let alone a teen boy, is enough to make you nauseous.”
Paul’s smile remained firmly on his face, but his nose twitched as if he had smelled something foul. “It’s a common mistake. Most people misuse that word.”
Tavis plainly had no idea what Paul was talking about.
“‘Nauseous.’ Most people think it means feeling sick. It really means to make sick. The word you’re looking for is ‘nauseated.’”
After an awkward pause, Tavis stood and held out his hand for a parting handshake. Paul smiled as he rose, his even, white teeth gleaming.
“We shouldn’t need much more from you. The only other thing we’ll need to clear you from our investigation is a DNA sample. Assuming everything’s as you’ve said, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s a formality.”
“A DNA sample?” Paul’s Adam’s apple bobbed a few inches below his pearly teeth.
“Yes, we’ve recovered semen from the victim’s underwear,” Tavis said as he took out a sealed kit containing the cheek swab.
Chapter Four
More often than not, it’s impossible for any third party to know, absent a reliable and corroborated confession by a guilty perpetrator, exactly what happened between two people with conflicting accounts. There’s no perfect approach to investigation that unfailingly results in punishing the guilty and vindicating the rare defendant unjustly accused of sexually abusing children. Perfection’s not possible in a paradigm that relies so he
avily on the weight of one person’s word against another’s. Tavis and the Colberg Police Department’s Crimes Against Children unit did their best, and they usually felt reasonably confident they had gotten it right. They could never be absolutely certain. But with Father Paul Peña, Tavis was positive he had gotten the right guy. In his hubris, Paul had never expected pesky evidence like DNA to bring him down.
The media attention surrounding Paul Peña’s arrest caused other victims to come forward. Statistically, Tavis knew that the number of complainants likely was not even a drop in the bucket of the number of adolescents Paul had assaulted. The District Attorney decided not to prosecute a substantial percentage of the complaints because enough time had passed that statutes of limitation made those cases unwinnable. They had enough to go to trial on a handful of cases, including Sean Matthews’s.
The Church had pressured Paul to accept a plea bargain to minimize the media circus, but his inflated perception of his own charm had led him to opt for a trial, where he expected to influence the jury to decide in his favor. But amid the rising tide of clergy-abuse reports in the media, and the collective anger mounting around evidence of the Church’s failure to protect its flock from known predators, the jury proved immune to Paul’s most winning efforts. They found him guilty on all counts after the briefest possible period of deliberation, recommending a sentence designed to keep him in prison for the remainder of his life without the possibility of parole.
Paul’s choice of a public trial rather than a plea bargain and cooperating with the Church’s efforts to settle quietly with the victims sounded the death knell for his priestly vocation. The publicity associated with his trial and subsequent conviction made the Church’s decision straightforward and politically expedient: Paul was quickly removed from the priesthood, also known as defrocking, or laicizing. Because the process to laicize him had begun in earnest when Paul declined the State’s plea offer, it was reasonable to suspect that the disciplinary measure stemmed more from the Church’s embarrassment than from sorrow or remorse about the damage Paul had inflicted on vulnerable members of the Body of Christ.
Tavis knew he couldn’t change what had happened to Sean or to Paul’s other victims, but he felt that justice had been done. Tavis and the prosecutors were able to safeguard Sean’s privacy through the trial, ensuring he gave testimony in a closed courtroom and that the media never learned of his identity. In Tavis’s experience, families weren’t eager to sustain ties with the police officers who reminded them of dark times in their families’ lives, so he wished them well at the end of the trial, certain that Sean’s loving and conscientious parents would see him through the rough spots on his road to healing.
Chapter Five
“Good morning, sweetie,” Veronica murmured as she opened the blinds in Sean’s room.
Sean burrowed further into his blankets.
“Here’s some toast to munch while you wake up. Would you like a little coffee? Dad will drive you to school today—he needs to leave in about 45 minutes.”
Sean neither moved nor spoke. Veronica rubbed his back a little as she perched on the side of his bed. She looked at her watch.
“I’m going to have to leave, love, so I can take care of a few things at the office before I pick you up for your appointment.”
One of Sean’s eyes looked out at her from within his nest of pillows. His face held the mixture of dread and defeat that had become so familiar. School had become a place of foreboding to the boy whose remarkable academic prowess had always formed such a large part of his identity.
“Feeling like you can’t face it this morning?” she intuited.
He shook his head, ashamed. “I couldn’t get to sleep last night and I’m just really tired.”
“It’s okay,” she said brightly. “Get a little more rest and I’ll pick you up here for your appointment. Then we’ll see how you feel about making it to this afternoon’s classes. I’ll call the school.”
“Thanks, Momma.”
Veronica leaned over and kissed her son’s still-smooth cheek and tickled the whiskers that had sprouted on his chin. She would have to remind Tom to teach Sean to do a more thorough shaving job.
“We’re due at Dr. Amerson’s at eleven, so please be ready to go when I get here at ten-thirty.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you too.” She closed the door.
* * *
At 10:00 a.m., Veronica left the office, rushing out the door as she gave her secretary last-minute instructions about finalizing briefing and exhibits before filing that afternoon.
“I should be back here no later than one, so if you can get everything pulled together by then, I’ll make sure it’s perfect before we send it out the door.”
“Got it.”
“Thanks, Sal.”
Flexing her talent for efficiency, Veronica decided to stop at the grocery store on the way home. It would be well-stocked and nearly empty at this time of day. Rather than the hour the trip would take during the post-work rush on her way home in the evening, she could buy everything on her list and be back in her car in 15 minutes.
As she drove toward home after the grocery-shopping whirlwind, Veronica thought about the morning’s setback. In the more than three years since they had learned about the trauma Sean had suffered, navigating his mental health had been a roller coaster ride. At first, it seemed that changing schools had helped him move past the anxiety he had felt around the Sacred Heart building, but eventually the idea of attending classes, regardless of the physical location, the teacher, or the subject, had become overwhelming. Veronica and Tom had disagreed about how to respond to Sean’s reluctance.
In Tom’s opinion, the sooner Sean learned that life is about forcing ourselves to do things we don’t want to do, the better. Veronica didn’t disagree with his pragmatism, but she couldn’t bear to force Sean to go to school when the prospect inspired such obvious dread. She called to excuse his absences on the many days he just couldn’t face it. Each year, he had failed several classes, but had managed to pass just enough for promotion to the next grade. Now a senior at just over sixteen years old, Sean was on the final downhill slide of what had proved to be a miserable high school experience.
Veronica couldn’t even imagine how things would have been if not for the army of mental health professionals, whose appointments accounted for a fair number of the excused absences she called in. After Sean’s revelation about Father Paul, there had been cognitive behavioral therapy with trauma specialists and with other specialists focused on helping Father Paul’s victims get through both testifying at trial and their reactions to Paul’s conviction and sentencing.
When one of the specialists suggested the possibility that organic comorbidities of generalized anxiety disorder and clinical depression were exacerbated, but not caused by, Sean’s trauma, Veronica sought out the best psychologists in Colberg specializing in treating these issues in adolescents. Semi-weekly sessions were added to talk therapy, and eventually, one of the psychologists suggested adding pharmacological treatment into the mix. Tom took the laboring oar and found the only psychiatrist in the tri-state area with the relevant experience and a waiting list shorter than two years, and when Dr. Amerson’s schedule finally permitted, he began seeing Sean. The long process of tapering medications up and down led to the terrifying-sounding diagnosis of “treatment resistant depression.” Sean, Veronica, and Tom were relieved to learn this diagnosis did not mean treatment was hopeless, but instead that Sean did not have the expected response to the drugs traditionally used to treat depression. So Dr. Amerson moved on to drugs used primarily to treat other conditions, such as psychosis or thyroid irregularities, but that also had proven effective with more stubborn cases of depression.
Sean had been tapering up on the most recent drug for the past six weeks, and Veronica was cautiously optimistic. Aside from this morning’s hiccup, Sean had recently seemed more like his sunny childhood self than he had been since
Sacred Heart. In fact, the evening before, he had been excited about family dinner. The girls had made their weekly sojourn from their college dorms across town, and Sean had taken out his old drawing materials and made silly caricature place cards for all of them. He had joined in the mealtime banter, at one point making Meg laugh so aggressively that the rest of the table thought she had choked.
As she and Tom cleared away the plates and washed the dishes, Veronica found herself closing her eyes by the sink in a silent prayer of gratitude. Coming up behind her, Tom set the dirty plates on the counter and slipped his arms around her waist. She turned to face him.
“Good dinner, huh?” he said, smiling down at her.
She beamed back up at him. “Are we finally getting our boy back?”
She leaned down and knocked on the wooden cabinet below the counter, and then twined her arms around her husband’s neck, pulling him in for a kiss that surprised both of them with its sweetness and renewed novelty.
Turning onto their street, Veronica colored at the memory of that kiss. She resolved to look for a weekend when she and Tom could book themselves into the B&B that had become their haven when they needed some uninterrupted couple time.
Veronica looked at the clock on her dash as she pulled into the garage. 10:40. Accounting for the five minutes she set it ahead to trick herself into punctuality, it was actually 10:35. The drop-dead time she and Sean needed to leave to make it to the appointment on time was 10:45.
She grabbed a load of groceries and hurried into the house, yelling as she entered, “Sean, I’m here! T-minus ten minutes, buddy!” Veronica dropped the bags on the counter and hustled out to the garage for another load. If she played her cards right, she could at least put the cold stuff in the refrigerator or freezer before she had to leave.