by Tony Lembo  March 30, 2007

     Seven days ago, I was a working-class son of Connecticut's Naugatuck Valley with a dark secret that had been tormenting me for three decades. Today I am the author of the book “The Hopeville Fire Department,” which set in motion this past week's blizzard of developments surrounding Stephen C. Foley, the Bloomfield Catholic priest with the now-infamous faux police car.

     My book tells the story of how Foley used his position as a police and fire chaplain in 1976, when I was 14, to trick me into a sexual assault. Two years ago, the church settled the lawsuit I brought as part of a larger settlement of claims against Foley and other priests, and I decided to use a big chunk of the money to hire the help I needed to write and produce a book about my experience.

     The process was painful. I wanted to be honest. I had to relive the experience over and over. Most of all, I wanted to show just how devastating an act of betrayal can be to a teenager, his family and his life. It was a soul-scorching experience to live it, and just as soul-scorching to tell it.

     Nothing prepared me for the outpouring of support, good wishes and shared outrage expressed in numerous e-mails and hundreds of comments on news and other blogs. In my wildest imagination, I could not have foreseen the chain of events that led in a matter of days from the first revelations in The Courant about Foley's car to his being expelled from the shelter of St. Thomas Seminary.

     On Monday, I stood in front of a bank of television cameras with state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor and let the world know that behind the headlines and the many “John Doe” plaintiffs, there are real people like myself who, 30 years later, are still trying to make sense of the psychic wounds inflicted by people like Foley.

     On Tuesday, I was invited to appear on a television interview program and a local live radio show, where I ended up spending more than an hour talking about it.

     By Wednesday, the Hartford archbishop had announced that he was evicting Foley from St. Thomas Seminary, where the priest had been living for years with free room and board, medical insurance, plus $1,000 a month. This in spite of the fact that 11 men have sued claiming Foley lured them as youths with his car and his position of trust as a State Police and local fire chaplain.

     Foley was also ordered this past week to get rid of the black Crown Victoria that he'd tricked out with emergency lights, a scanner and other equipment you'd expect to find in a police car. The car and his “Hopeville Fire Department” truck were the candy Foley used to draw in youths. Hopeville was a made-up fire house–a club for kids–that Foley and others set up in the 1970s in a garage in Waterbury.

     It makes this ex-Marine proud when people say I have shown courage in telling my tale. But I wish I could feel happier. Nothing will ever undo the decades of pain. My goal was never about revenge or even justice. In telling my story, I wanted to provoke the church into owning up to the truth.

     I could have taken the church's money and kept my mouth shut. But that would have perpetuated the lousy feelings I had carried around all those years. I would have become an accomplice in the church's pattern of burying its secrets, exchanging cash for silence, and stashing the perpetrators out of sight in church facilities.

     I do feel good that, in some small way, the children of Connecticut are safer this Sunday than they were a week ago. I also feel good to have been able to speak out for all those who couldn't come forward.

     I feel the best when I remember that everything has changed since seven days ago, when Stephen C. Foley was just an obscure priest enjoying a serene retirement funded by the donations of the faithful, cruising around Connecticut in the same kind of car he used for decades to attract untold numbers of boys into his private hell.