By Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff, April 18, 2017<\/p>\n
No one taught me more about the incalculable damage of sexual abuse, and the surprising resiliency of the human spirit, than Joe Crowley.<\/p>\n
I met Joe in the fall of 2001, when my Spotlight Team colleagues and I were searching for people who had been molested by Catholic priests. Through a network of lawyers and advocates, I contacted Joe, then 42. He was smart, funny, and articulate, but also nervous, insecure, and still trying to recover emotionally from what had happened to him decades earlier.<\/p>\n
Joe grew up in Dorchester in the 1960s and \u201970s in an extremely unstable family: his mother struggled with mental illness, his father was mostly out of the picture, and he and his four siblings spent years living in a children\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
As a teenager, Joe suspected he was gay, which is why he wound up being \u201ccounseled\u201d by Father Paul Shanley, a long-haired, denim-clad Boston priest who created a \u201cministry to alienated youth\u2019\u2019 for runaways, drug abusers, and adolescents confused about their sexual identity.<\/p>\n
Of all the abusive priests I covered, Shanley was the most insidious, because he deliberately surrounded himself with vulnerable, troubled teenage boys. For 15-year-old Joe and many others, the \u201ccounseling\u201d they received culminated in coerced sex, often in Shanley\u2019s private apartment in the Back Bay.<\/p>\n
There were games of strip poker meant, Shanley explained to his victims, to put them \u201cat ease\u201d with their bodies. There were Shanley\u2019s offers to give them \u201caccess to his body\u201d to help them get over difficult break-ups. There were overnight trips to cabins that ended in rape.<\/p>\n
They were the first sexual experiences many of these young men ever had, and often left them humiliated, ashamed, and afraid to tell anyone what had happened.<\/p>\n
Joe\u2019s life followed a familiar trajectory for sex abuse victims: alcoholism, depression, anger, unemployment. He dabbled in prostitution because, he told me, \u201cI began to think sex was my worth because . . . that was [Shanley\u2019s] interest in me.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Yet Joe was one of the first survivors brave enough to come forward publicly, paving the way for other victims to tell their stories without risk of social ostracism. And he never lost his acid wit or ability to laugh.<\/p>\n
A bond of sorts sometimes develops between reporters and people who share with them these kinds of intimate, traumatic stories. That\u2019s probably why Joe and I never fell out of touch.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I checked in with him periodically to make sure he was reasonably stable, and he called and wrote regularly with chatty updates, comments on stories I\u2019d written, and critiques of plays he\u2019d seen. He was entertaining and loquacious; it wasn\u2019t uncommon for me to glance at my phone and find two dozen new text messages, all from Joe.<\/p>\n
I also heard from him faithfully on the annual date marking when he had given up drinking. \u201cThanks for all your encouragement over the last fifteen years,\u201d he texted me on Feb. 7, his 21st \u201csober anniversary,\u201d as he called it.<\/p>\n
In the fall of 2015, I attended a private screening of the \u201cSpotlight\u201d movie along with Joe and a small group of other people depicted in the film. I hadn\u2019t seen Joe in months, and he looked terrible \u2014 overweight, bloated, wheezing, tethered to an oxygen tank.<\/p>\n
He had recently suffered heart and respiratory failure and was in cardiac rehab, his illnesses worsened by years of heavy smoking and drinking. Listening to him rasp, I thought: the toll of the abuse he suffered as a teenager is still unfolding decades later.<\/p>\n
But the movie had a powerful positive effect on Joe. It made him feel important and valued, perhaps for the first time. He adored the actor who played him, Michael Cyril Creighton, nicknaming him \u201cJC2.\u201d They became texting pen pals and phone buddies, just as Joe and I were.<\/p>\n
Because of the film, Joe was asked to speak on panels, was interviewed by national publications, and became an eloquent voice for sex abuse survivors everywhere.<\/p>\n
He loved the attention. \u201cThis is fun!\u201d he wrote to me in November, noting that the Globe\u2019s \u201cNames\u201d column that day had mentioned him for a third time.<\/p>\n
Over the years, Joe often contacted me when he was distressed \u2014 feeling down, upset with his housing situation, frustrated that his poor health had left him financially destitute and unable to work. But since the movie, his mood had lifted.<\/p>\n
\u201cSacha, I\u2019m loving my life these days,\u201d he wrote in September. \u201cIt\u2019s imperfect, but . . . I have enormous gratitude for being alive. . . . I\u2019m in a much better mindset these days. My attitude is so much better and my energy is much more hopeful and positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October came this text: \u201cUnlike the majority of my life, I\u2019m finally very comfortable in my skin. I\u2019ve come to like and respect myself, which is 180 [degrees] from a lifetime of self-loathing. I have done a lot of work on myself and I actually like myself and have self-respect, at long last. And that\u2019s a wonderful feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joe Crowley died at age 58 on Easter Sunday, a date that can\u2019t help but feel symbolic, his body finally surrendering to his illnesses. He passed away in an apartment he had recently moved into in Brookline, a private residence run by the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter.<\/p>\n
\u201cSacha, I\u2019m so loving my new place,\u201d he wrote in August. \u201cIt\u2019s so quiet. Such a beautiful street . . . and completely refurbished. One can still smell the fresh paint on the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter what situation he found himself in, he was determined to persevere.<\/p>\n
It was an honor to know you, Joe Crowley. You made me laugh. You helped me understand the lasting trauma of sex abuse and the power of human will. And you emboldened countless other survivors to release their painful secrets and reclaim their lives.<\/p>\n
That is a life well-lived.<\/p>\n