couldn't dislike him.”
During one visit to the camp, Paquin began talking about massage therapy, and then began massaging the boy's back and legs. “Next thing you know he's fondling me,” the man said, “then physically bringing me to ejaculation. He was very gentle about it, and if he noticed me getting tense he'd back off. He'd say, ‘Are you okay? This is completely normal.’ He said it was just a good feeling. And that's how he pitched it: it's good to have an ejaculation, it's good to be comfortable with him.” It was the man's first sexual experience.
Eventually, Paquin was regularly performing oral sex on him, often in a car in a Haverhill cemetery. Their sexual encounters also took place on numerous trips to Vermont, Maine, and other states, as well as Canada. Years later, when the man visited Paquin at Baldpate — a psychiatric facility in Georgetown, a rural community north of Boston — Paquin also tried to fondle him there. And the sexual activity continued when Paquin was sent to Our Lady's Hall, a well-maintained, sprawling brick mansion in Milton (an affluent suburb south of Boston) used by the Boston archdiocese to house depressed, alcoholic, and abusive priests. While claiming to offer treatment and rehabilitation, the facility provided Paquin with additional opportunities to continue his abuse, giving him a private, unsupervised place to spend time with the young man.
The man estimated he visited the facility several dozen times during the two to three years Paquin lived there, sometimes entering through the front door, sometimes through a less visible side or basement door. Once they were in Paquin's room, Paquin often masturbated him and performed oral sex on him there, the man said. On two occasions, the man spent the night.
On one of the mornings after he slept over, he said, Paquin offered to make him breakfast — but asked him to stay in the bedroom while he prepared food downstairs, The facility did not require visitors to check in or out, or have any apparent supervision, the man said, and his presence there was never challenged by other priests. “No one questioned me,” he said. “No one said, ‘Who are you?’” The man was not aware at the time why Paquin was staying at either Baldpate or Our Lady's Hall because the priest told him only that he was living there until he received a new assignment.
It wasn't until he turned seventeen and began dating that he became “increasingly, increasingly uncomfortable” with Paquin's sexual interest in him. Before that point, he said of the sexual activity, “I was made to believe it was normal and natural, so it seemed normal and natural.”
“I remember driving down 95 from a ski trip one time, and I flipped out, basically,” the man recalled. “I said, ‘Either you and I are going to stop doing this or I'm out of here.’ He said, ‘You're right, it will stop, give me time.’ But a little while later, maybe a few months down the line, he said, ‘Let's go away again.’ And I had developed a trust in him, and I thought it was over, but somehow it ended up happening again.” Finally, after meeting the woman who would eventually become his wife, “That's when I told him, ‘I can't do this anymore,’” he said.
In January 2002 stories in the
Globe
and other papers disclosed Paquin's long history of sexual abuse. “I was just in shock,” said the man, who said he was unaware that Paquin had molested other children. He confronted Paquin, who said he could not recall the number of children he had abused. “That was the turning point for me,” the man said, and he retained a lawyer.
Looking back, he says he is embarrassed and ashamed that he lacked the emotional maturity to end the relationship sooner. He struggles to explain — to those who struggle to understand — why he maintained contact with a priest who initiated a sexual relationship with him. Paquin, he said, steered the relationship in a sexual direction
During one visit to the camp, Paquin began talking about massage therapy, and then began massaging the boy's back and legs. “Next thing you know he's fondling me,” the man said, “then physically bringing me to ejaculation. He was very gentle about it, and if he noticed me getting tense he'd back off. He'd say, ‘Are you okay? This is completely normal.’ He said it was just a good feeling. And that's how he pitched it: it's good to have an ejaculation, it's good to be comfortable with him.” It was the man's first sexual experience.
Eventually, Paquin was regularly performing oral sex on him, often in a car in a Haverhill cemetery. Their sexual encounters also took place on numerous trips to Vermont, Maine, and other states, as well as Canada. Years later, when the man visited Paquin at Baldpate — a psychiatric facility in Georgetown, a rural community north of Boston — Paquin also tried to fondle him there. And the sexual activity continued when Paquin was sent to Our Lady's Hall, a well-maintained, sprawling brick mansion in Milton (an affluent suburb south of Boston) used by the Boston archdiocese to house depressed, alcoholic, and abusive priests. While claiming to offer treatment and rehabilitation, the facility provided Paquin with additional opportunities to continue his abuse, giving him a private, unsupervised place to spend time with the young man.
The man estimated he visited the facility several dozen times during the two to three years Paquin lived there, sometimes entering through the front door, sometimes through a less visible side or basement door. Once they were in Paquin's room, Paquin often masturbated him and performed oral sex on him there, the man said. On two occasions, the man spent the night.
On one of the mornings after he slept over, he said, Paquin offered to make him breakfast — but asked him to stay in the bedroom while he prepared food downstairs, The facility did not require visitors to check in or out, or have any apparent supervision, the man said, and his presence there was never challenged by other priests. “No one questioned me,” he said. “No one said, ‘Who are you?’” The man was not aware at the time why Paquin was staying at either Baldpate or Our Lady's Hall because the priest told him only that he was living there until he received a new assignment.
It wasn't until he turned seventeen and began dating that he became “increasingly, increasingly uncomfortable” with Paquin's sexual interest in him. Before that point, he said of the sexual activity, “I was made to believe it was normal and natural, so it seemed normal and natural.”
“I remember driving down 95 from a ski trip one time, and I flipped out, basically,” the man recalled. “I said, ‘Either you and I are going to stop doing this or I'm out of here.’ He said, ‘You're right, it will stop, give me time.’ But a little while later, maybe a few months down the line, he said, ‘Let's go away again.’ And I had developed a trust in him, and I thought it was over, but somehow it ended up happening again.” Finally, after meeting the woman who would eventually become his wife, “That's when I told him, ‘I can't do this anymore,’” he said.
In January 2002 stories in the
Globe
and other papers disclosed Paquin's long history of sexual abuse. “I was just in shock,” said the man, who said he was unaware that Paquin had molested other children. He confronted Paquin, who said he could not recall the number of children he had abused. “That was the turning point for me,” the man said, and he retained a lawyer.
Looking back, he says he is embarrassed and ashamed that he lacked the emotional maturity to end the relationship sooner. He struggles to explain — to those who struggle to understand — why he maintained contact with a priest who initiated a sexual relationship with him. Paquin, he said, steered the relationship in a sexual direction
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