As active
members of St. Thomas More Church, the Niagara Falls family was proud when a
priest started to show an interest in their teenage son.
“I
looked up to him as the leader of the church,” said Matt, now in his late 50s.
“We all did.”
The
family was unaware the priest’s attention had a sinister goal.
Over
a five-year period, Donald Grecco preyed on the teenager to satisfy his own
devious sexual appetite.
“Had
I gone home and even suggested that something was going on, I’m sure,
potentially, I would have been second-guessed over a priest,” Matt said.
Grecco,
now 81, was sentenced to 18 months in custody in 2017 on several counts of
gross indecency for the sexual abuse of three boys between 1975 and 1982. He
was released from jail after serving only six months.
Matt,
not his real name, was one of those boys. He cannot be identified under a
publication ban imposed during the criminal proceedings.
The
Ontario man was frustrated and angered by the criminal court process. He felt
revictimized.
He couldn’t understand how a pedophile priest, previously convicted in 2010 of sexually abusing three former altar boys, would receive what he saw as a lenient sentence.
Based
on his previous conviction, Matt had expected the penalty to be much harsher
for the repeat offender.
“The
hurt and the wounds were reopened,” the victim said during an interview from
his lawyer’s office Tuesday.
“Our
(criminal court) system is so broken.”
Determined
to get justice for what happened to him as a child, in 2017 he filed a civil
lawsuit against Grecco and the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Catharines.
The
trial was set to begin in October 2021.
Within
a week of the start of the trial, the case was settled and Matt was awarded $1
million.
He
plans to use the funds to support victims of sexual abuse and to develop
initiatives aimed at preventing what happened to him more than 30 years ago.
“It
is so important that we close that gap between abuse and disclosure,” said
lawyer Rob Talach, who represented Matt as well as a number of other victims of
Grecco.
The
London, Ont., lawyer urges anyone who has been the victim of sexual assault to
“come forward sooner rather than later.”
“Right
now, survivors are operating at a multi-decade gap and there’s a lot of time
there for the abuser to go on and abuse others and a lot of time where they
aren’t held to account,” he said.
“It’s
also reflective why the courts system isn’t tough on these guys because they
look at harmless old men by the time they’re actually caught.”
Matt
met Talach by chance.
Total
strangers, they happened to sit next to each other on a train. The two men
chatted and Talach told him he represents victims of sexual abuse.
“I could
literally see his complexion turning grey,” the lawyer said of that first
meeting.
When
they parted, Talach gave the stranger a business card.
“It
took some time, but he eventually reached back out to me and said he was ready
to take some steps.”
Matt
said he reached a point in his life where “justice had to be done,” and someone
had to be held accountable.
“Like
any individual, any person, it has had an effect on me,” he said of the abuse
he endured.
“For me, I had the ability to block it out a bit better than others, but it’s always there. You close the door to it, but it eventually swings open.”
Matt
said he was a naïve 13-year-old boy when Grecco began to show a special
interest in him.
The
priest would pay the teen for helping out with odd jobs at the Dorchester Road
church and serving masses. He also invited him along on trips in both Canada
and the United States.
Grecco
comes from a prominent Catholic family and his brother Richard, who also
previously served as a pastor at St. Thomas More, was a bishop in Eastern
Canada before retiring in 2021.
Matt
maintains the diocese was aware of what was going, but chose to do nothing
other than to transfer Grecco to another parish.
The
priest served at St. Thomas More, St. Mary and St. Kevin churches in Welland,
St. Alexander in Fonthill, St. George in Crystal Beach, St. Vincent de Paul in
Niagara-on-the-Lake and St. Stephen in Cayuga.
“The
Catholic Church is so blind to something that is so obvious,” Matt said. “This
is a perpetually broken-down system that no one wants to deal with.”
Representatives
with the Diocese of St. Catharines could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Alison Langley is a
St. Catharines-based reporter for the Niagara Falls Review. Reach her via
email: alison.langley@niagaradailies.com
Published on January 5, 2022
