Three years ago, Frank Fitzpatrick says...

Thirty years later, memories of Father James Robert Porter and St. Mary’s Catholic Church just keep flooding back.

For 43-year-old John Robitaille, once an altar boy at the red brick church and a student at the school next door, it is the foul smell of Porter’s breath, heavy with the residue of Camel cigarettes.

Patty Wilson, a 46-year-old counselor of disabled adults and children, says that when she thinks of Porter, “I can still feel him sweating underneath me.”

The too-sweet smell of after-shave is what comes back to Ed Williams, a 41-year-old mortgage banker from Tustin. “I used to think: Why do priests need after-shave?”

Frank Fitzpatrick, 42, says he can actually taste his angry, acrid memory of Porter.

“Mincemeat pie,” he says.

Sitting in an office that is plastered with pictures of his two young sons, Fitzpatrick recalls an incident he said took place 30 years ago when he was a 12-year-old altar boy at St. Mary’s. He says Porter invited him to the Boston Garden, but instead of going to the sports arena, Fitzpatrick alleges that Porter spirited him to a private home near Boston, drugged him with pie doused in rum--and then raped him.

“I’ve always hated mincemeat pie ever since then,” Fitzpatrick says.

Fitzpatrick, Wilson, Williams and Robitaille are among more than 50 men and women who say Porter abused them during seven years of service in three southeastern Massachusetts parishes. Of those, about 30 have contacted a Boston lawyer to join in legal action against Porter and the Roman Catholic Church. In addition, criminal charges against Porter are under consideration in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Minnesota.

With Porter living quietly in Oakdale, Minn., the matter might have lain dormant had Frank Fitzpatrick not decided to find the 58-year-old former priest. It was Fitzpatrick who doggedly tracked Porter to the St. Paul suburb where he lives as a self-described househusband with his 40-year-old wife and four children, who range in age from 9 months to 16 years.

It was Fitzpatrick who instigated a series of taped phone conversations in which a voice he identifies as Porter’s admits “there could have been quite a few” incidents of abuse.

Fitzpatrick spent months navigating the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church; his efforts are documented in a 19-page computer printout. But he says the church stonewalled him. One official in the Diocese of Fall River, which oversees the North Attleborough parish, refused to help Fitzpatrick in his search and urged him to leave the matter “in the hands of the Lord.” Calls from The Times to the attorney representing the diocese were not returned.

With the threat of a lawsuit looming, the church has limited its official comment to a statement by Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law lamenting “the tragedy of a priest betraying the sacred trust of priestly service,” and stating that priests who abuse children are “the rare exceptions.”

As part of his quest, Fitzpatrick placed ads in weekly newspapers around New England. “Remember Father Porter?” the notices asked. Gradually, Fitzpatrick found others who were willing to go public with what they say happened to them as children. Some of those who are accusing Porter attended churches--in Fall River and New Bedford, Mass.--where the priest worked after he left St. Mary’s. Although church officials will not comment, Fitzpatrick says he found in his investigation that Porter was transferred from parish to parish after parents complained about his involvement with their children.

In a calm voice that scarcely masks his fury, Fitzpatrick says he finally confronted Porter by telephone on Feb. 19, 1990. Fitzpatrick tape-recorded the conversation and three others that followed in the next year. An insurance adjuster and private investigator, Fitzpatrick knew it was legal to tape-record telephone conversations without one party’s knowledge in Minnesota and in Rhode Island, his adopted home state.

“Do you remember . . . me in particular?” asks Fitzpatrick.

“No, I don’t remember names,” says the voice Fitzpatrick identifies as Porter’s.

The contents of these conversations are key elements in the civil lawsuit that Boston attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr. is preparing to file against the Catholic Church, Porter and “other individuals who are employed by the Diocese of Fall River who were aware of what was going on or who should have been aware.” MacLeish says that as of Wednesday, his office was representing “about 30 individuals” in the proceedings. No damages have been specified.

MacLeish says he hopes that the case will be resolved through “alternative settlements and dispute resolution,” but says he is prepared for litigation. He would not reveal a timetable for filing the lawsuit.

Richard Fabio, of the district attorney’s office in Bristol County where North Attleborough is located, says nine lawyers have been assigned to investigate the complaints against Porter. He cautions, however, that “cases as old as this are difficult to prosecute.”

Two investigators from the Bristol County district attorney’s office flew to Minnesota recently to meet with Porter and detective Bill Hutton of the Oakdale Police Department. Hutton says his office is cooperating with the Massachusetts inquiry and that Oakdale police are also looking into “three separate and specific” allegations against Porter regarding charges of sexual abuse in Minnesota. Hutton would not elaborate.

In South Kingstown, R.I., Police Chief Vincent Vespia says “an active criminal investigation” into the Porter case is continuing, after complaints were filed there last month by John Robitaille and another former St. Mary’s altar boy, Stephen Johnson. The two men claim they suffered “serious moral offenses” by Porter at the South Kingstown, R.I., summer home of Johnson’s parents in the summer of 1962.

“Certainly the time frame makes the investigation difficult,” Vespia says. But if the Rhode Island attorney general determines that “these matters are prosecutable, I would have no trouble bringing charges.”

In all three jurisdictions, the statutes of limitations vary substantially, depending on the charges and the ages of the victims at the time the alleged crimes occurred.

Porter did speak by telephone with Joe Bergantino, a reporter for WBZ-TV in Boston, when the story broke several weeks ago. In the interview, Porter confirmed that the molestations took place, saying there were “probably 50 to 100” such offenses.

Since then, Porter’s telephone has been disconnected.

In Fitzpatrick’s taped telephone conversations, the voice he identifies as Porter’s talks about what went on in the years between the priest’s ordination in 1960 and his treatment in 1967 at Jemez Springs Foundation House, a Catholic rest center in New Mexico that ministers to priests with problems such as alcoholism or sexual misconduct.

“I have one question,” Fitzpatrick asks during one of the calls. “Why did you do that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know,” responds the voice Fitzpatrick identifies as Porter’s. “Who knows?” And then he laughs.

At one point, Fitzpatrick challenges Porter to remember how many children he fondled, kissed or raped.

“There could have been quite a few,” Porter replies. “But the thing was, whatever it was--10 or 100--whatever it was, it happened.”

Porter also confirms another of Fitzpatrick’s recollections.

“I know one thing,” he says. Mincemeat pie is “still my favorite. It has rum in it. It has a different flavor.”

Fitzpatrick’s quest began almost three years ago. He had a successful career, a stable marriage, two healthy children and an unremitting sense of worthlessness.

“I kept thinking, I have this nice house, a wife and family, a good job--so why did I feel like crying all the time?” he says.

Experts say this is the classic description of an adult survivor of child sexual abuse. Other typical characteristics include workaholism, an excessive urge to control surroundings, an inability to commit to relationships and perfectionism. Many adults also report a need for approval so strong that it can almost never be fulfilled.

But what unites adult survivors most of all is their uncanny ability to repress the trauma--for years and even decades after the fact. Fitzpatrick, for one, says he blocked the memory for most of his adult life.

The realization that he had been raped came to him three years ago as a kind of perverse epiphany. The new awareness sent him into therapy and jolted him almost as much as the recognition of how successfully he had submerged the memory.

Dr. John Daignault, a Boston-area psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, says children “lack the perspective to place the trauma in the overall course of life’s events.”

A society “which is still Victorian in its approach to sexuality” further encourages children to bury these horrific experiences, Daignault says--so much so that “the only way in which the child can cope with that degree of trauma is to engage in repression.”

When the abuser is in a position of power or veneration--such as a priest--the dynamic becomes even more complicated.

“Basically we’re in the area of what is called authority rape,” says Mark Laaser, a former Protestant minister who now specializes in abuse by clergy at Golden Valley Health Center in Golden Valley, Minn.

“You rape or sexually exploit not with physical power, but with emotional power and spiritual power,” Laaser says.

In a landmark superior court lawsuit in Massachusetts last year, MacLeish successfully argued that the force of this repression effectively negated the traditional statute of limitations in cases of childhood sexual abuse. Rather than three years from the date of the offense, the decision in Riley vs. Presnell held that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until a plaintiff knows or “reasonably should have known” that he or she may have suffered injury.

MacLeish, who says he still struggles with the effects of sexual abuse as a teen-ager, likens the implications of such injuries to post-traumatic stress.

“The average person has no conception of what someone like Father Porter can do,” MacLeish says. “He is like his own miniature war, like a human wrecking ball.”

Many of those who say they were abused by Porter seem to share that assessment. The long-term consequences of such trauma are immeasurable, they say.

Ed Williams says that for 23 years, he was unable to return to North Attleborough, a blue-collar town near the Rhode Island border. Until he linked his aversion to his memories of Father Porter, “my family never understood why.”

Patty Wilson believes that the trauma of childhood abuse led her into a disastrous first marriage and a series of destructive relationships.

Like many others in his group, Frank Fitzpatrick says the experience caused him to fall away from his church. “I don’t consider myself a Catholic any more,” he says.

In retrospect, Fitzpatrick and others say, the seduction is not difficult to understand. Porter was a dynamic figure in the Southeastern Massachusetts parishes in which he served. Younger than many other priests, he was also more accessible--and definitely more playful.

Porter, who graduated from Boston College with a BA in mathematics in 1956 and then attended St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, “was an absolutely charming character,” says Fitzpatrick. “I looked up to him, almost like hero worship. I wanted to become a priest when I was a kid because of him.”

“Parents loved him,” Fitzpatrick says. “Meanwhile, he was molesting kids in the next room.”

The incidents allegedly took place in the rectory of St. Mary’s, in private homes, in the hallways of St. Mary’s School, in Porter’s church office and, in at least one alleged case, on the altar itself.

Women describe violent kissing, rubbing from behind and manual vaginal penetration. Men say he caressed them improperly, wrestled in a sexual fashion or raped them. Some of his accusers describe single attacks; others describe multiple abuses.. The typical age of the victims was between 10 and 12.

“He was just in a constant state of arousal,” Patty Wilson says. “His hands were on just about every kid in that school.” But the children did not discuss what was going on, Wilson says. “Everyone felt like they were the only one.”

In polite circles 30 years ago, sexual abuse of any kind was not a topic of conversation. Still, some parents apparently did suspect that something was amiss at St. Mary’s. Fitzpatrick says a number of mothers and fathers complained to church officials about Porter, and that one parent drove the priest to appointments with a psychiatrist to discuss his “problem.”

In his taped talks with Fitzpatrick, the voice he identifies as Porter’s also recalls that he was sent to a Boston-area hospital for shock treatments.

“They didn’t work,” he says.

Father Stephen J. Rossetti of Brookline, Mass., the author of a book called “Slayer of the Soul: Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church,” says that while cases such as Father Porter’s may attract attention, “our best clinical guess is that priests are no more or no less involved (in sexual misconduct) than other adults who have contact with children.”

Nevertheless, the church has had its share of problems in this area. “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” a forthcoming book from Catholic journalist Jason Berry, states that since 1985 the Roman Catholic Church has paid more than $350 million in damages, health care and legal expenses stemming from cases of priests abusing children and teen-agers.

Father Rossetti, for one, decries the “geographic cure” that was apparently applied in Porter’s case--that is, transferring him from parish to parish when word of the alleged “problem” began to leak out.

“That is not OK any more,” Rossetti says. “A priest should be suspended from the ministry” if sexual abuse is even suspected.

But Rossetti concedes that because of the complex tapestry of the Catholic church, “denial is certainly a factor” in many of these cases.

In his taped talks with Fitzpatrick, the voice identified as Porter’s expresses relief that no legal action was taken at the time the alleged offenses occurred.

“I mean, actually, I’ve got to look back, how fortunate I was I didn’t get creamed-- creamed --by parents, the law, anything else,” he declares.

But in the tapes, the former priest also implies that he has been rehabilitated. Leaving the church in 1970, he says at one point, was really all it took to return him to a normal life where he could marry and work as a volunteer at his parish in Minnesota. (The priest at Transfiguration Catholic Church in Oakdale says he does not discuss the private life of his parishioners.)

“It’s funny how things have worked out,” Porter says. “Marvelous. Especially me, mentally.”

Reminded by Fitzpatrick that his alleged transgressions did cause suffering to “a lot of children back then,” Porter replies, “I don’t take it lightly. God Almighty, it can make you sick. If I keep dwelling on it, I’d go crazy.

“So what I have done,” Porter explains on the tape, “is I have just invented my life as best I can, and tried to live in a Christian, Catholic way.

“It’s been marvelous, how I’ve had no difficulty whatsoever.” And later: “Right now, it is absolutely marvelous for me and the family.”

Porter even invites Fitzpatrick, “Christian that you are,” to “be happy” that life has gone so smoothly for the one-time priest. In one of their three talks, he tells Fitzpatrick that the Porter family will offer up a Rosary for him in their evening prayers.

Fitzpatrick and the others who call themselves “The Victims of Father Porter” make no secret of their anger at the Catholic Church. Several say that another priest from St. Mary’s walked in while Porter was abusing them--then discreetly closed the door and walked out. Many rail about the hypocrisy of an institution where Porter, a former priest, is permitted to worship and take the sacraments, but where a number of his alleged victims--those who are divorced or homosexual, for example--are not.

“Right now, the church seems to be more worried about the effect this will have on the priesthood, rather than the effect it has had on the victims,” Fitzpatrick says.

But it is Porter himself who most earns the enmity of those who say he victimized them three decades ago.

“I’m not interested in the church’s blood money. That’s the last thing I want,” Patty Wilson insists. “What I want is to see Porter prosecuted. I want to see him behind bars.

Robitaille, the president of a communications firm in Providence, R.I., is adamant. “I want Porter off the streets,” he says, fists clenched.

“I want him in jail, for the rest of his life,” Fitzpatrick concurs. “Oh yeah, definitely. The rest of his life.”