"Talk" about being the survivors!

Predafile is a forum for those sexually abused by William P. Garvey, and the people close to those abused by Garvey. I have tried to provide an arena for all of us to come together and talk. Talk about our abuse, the impact it has had and continues to have on our lives, and what we can and are doing to cope. The socio-political impact this whole revelation and it's subsequent handling have had on Mercyhurst College and the Erie community has never been a top priority. There are plenty of others willing to attend to those issues. The pursuit of truth and a fair handling of the victims is a priority. Prevention of future instances of sexual abuse is a priority. For me, telling my experience has been cathartic. It has helped me to address incidents and issues pushed out of mind or ignored for far too long. It has been painful. And the unfortunate truth is that the real work has just begun. I have much to do to heal.

What does that mean for the future of this site? At this juncture I am not sure that further self-revelatory posts about my personal experience are what is most beneficial to me or to anyone reading this site. Although finding a corroborating scenario with which to identify and relate is important to individual healing, in my opinion it is just the first step. Realization and discovery are just the first step. The relating of our stories is essential but it is the discourse that follows that leads to healing. Communication with others is vital to one's recovery, to being comfortable with oneself. To be able to love yourself. I recognize the importance of sharing my past with you. It helped to get the ball rolling, for some of us to realize that we aren't alone. That there are many of us, isolated only by Garvey and our own misplaced shame. But, I feel that the need for predafile to lead in this way is perhaps not as necessary as it once was. The story is out. We know that we're not alone. We now know that each of us is just one of many. In that way, predafile has served it's initial purpose.

That given, I think it truly is time for us as a group, rather than me as an individual, to determine the course of predafile. It is time for this site to evolve towards an instrument of discussion of our lives today. Our coping today. In some cases that can't be done without the context and details of the past. So be it. Let's talk about it. It also means that predafile may assume a less public appearance. Fewer and less frequent posts of the sort you are used to seeing. Less me and more... more talk, I hope, privately if necessary, at predafile@hotmail.com. I assure you that your communications to this e-mail account are held in strictest confidence. Some of you have already chosen to contact me this way and I would like for that to continue. For others, the site will remain, and those ready to discuss things in a more public forum can do so. I realize that with the possibility of fewer and less frequent posts the site may appear to be dormant, but again perhaps that is the point to which things have evolved.

We are awakening from a troubled past, but we are strong and facing those hurts by understanding and evolving ourselves. By healing our hearts and souls in our present, and learning to be whole and allowing others to love us for who we really are, we are learning to love ourselves for who we really are: past victims, but more importantly, present and future survivors.

predafile@hotmail.com

Here he...

To this point it was just another "treatment" session (as described in previous post, "Ball-handling drills", 8/6/05): Me, naked, and Garvey in only a t-shirt and dark socks, I lie on top of him rotating my hips under his direction. As he has instructed me, I have my tongue in his mouth while simultaneously I roll his testicles in my hand. After a while of this repetitive monotony, he tells me that this activity has gone on long enough. Then comes the upper-body strength/wrestling portion of what has come to be our routine. This is when he would grab me from behind and restrain me and I was supposed to try to escape:

I twist my body around, violently, trying to extricate myself from his grasp. I am tugging at his forearms and wrists, pulling with all my might. Meanwhile, Garvey has wrapped his legs around me from behind and locked them at the ankles making it nearly impossible for me to do much but wriggle and squirm. I'm praying that I can escape and end this. I just want it to end. Please. I just want to go. Pleeeaase. I flail an arm out to the side as I manage to get it free and my hand lands on the far side of the bed. It hits something. Lands in, on, something that has mostly soaked into the topsheet. There is something on the sheet that feels cool, and vaguely damp but… I reach to feel it again and there it is. A portion of the topsheet is wet, but feels like it’s only a relatively small area … and its feel is smooth and somewhat silky... kind of cool... Is that wet? Or what?

Before I can do anything else, I am wrenched back to the middle of the bed and Garvey wraps his arms around mine, again pinning them to my sides. I manage to break a leg free and I throw my weight back towards the far side of the bed. I reach out again to try and feel around for that spot. I am curious, intrigued. It’s different than our sweat… In my mental wanderings, as I try to direct my thoughts away from this place, away from this predicament, to help me get through the seemingly more and more bizarre bedroom antics with this man, I have stumbled upon something. Something weird. Something that doesn’t belong here. The sheets usually get pretty soaked with the sweat that pours off my body during "treatment" sessions. But this is different. It seems specific to one small area, and more concentrated somehow, I think. I only felt it for those briefest of moments. But the texture is different. Different than anything I have ever felt before. It's kind of like mucous, but not... When I manage to get free enough to try and investigate further, it is gone. The topsheet is crumpled up and finding the mysterious damp whatever is impossible.

I don't say anything about my discovery and I'm not sure that Garvey is aware that I found anything of interest or out of the ordinary. But he must have wondered why I kept reaching over there. He would have to be aware that something was there, wouldn't he? If I didn't have anything to do with it, it must have come from him, right? He must know about it. But Garvey doesn't say anything either, which just makes this more and more weird.

When the treatment session is over, he asks me if I would like a shower, and as I always do, I decline. This time, though, he asks me again. Again I say no. I just want to get out of there. Get some distance. Get on with being a kid. A kid with not so much to think about. A kid without so many damn pressures and obligations, that in truth, I just want to get out from under. A kid without so many demands and questions. What was that in the sheets? I wasn’t imagining it. There was something there alright. There was no denying it and of that I was certain. I just didn't know what. And nothing I currently knew was bringing me any closer to answering any of my questions. I was just too young. I didn’t yet have a clue. And quite frankly, I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think about Garvey. He troubled me. It all troubled me. And as much as possible I tried to leave it behind any time or way that I could.

As I have said before, I was terribly unhappy about basketball and my involvement with Garvey. I felt trapped. I dreaded my encounters with Garvey, on and off the court. His behavior towards me was so unpredictable, and mercurial, and erratic. Alternating praise with ridicule. Encouragement with derision. Public acknowledgement with indifference. And it seemed to center around the frequency of our activities in his bedroom, or lack thereof. But what could I do about it? How do I fix everything? Get everything to be OK again? Get me to feel OK again? What can I do?

predafile@hotmail.com

Here he comes

When they see Garvey’s car round the corner from Ash Street onto 27th I imagine that I can hear them: "Here he comes. Heeere hee cooomes." They are all standing in front of the 27th Street doors to St. Johns. Huddled outside, waiting for basketball practice. Waiting for Garvey. When he arrives, late as usual, I am with him, sitting in the passenger seat of his gold Ford Torino. Through the car window I look at the faces of my teammates and the alums that have come to play against us. As we get out of the car, their eyes are on me. I feel every thought, question, side-long glance, and innuendo, racing through their minds and fired out of their eyes. Every comment muttered under their breath. They have no idea how petty and insignificant their jealousies and machinations are. Or the price I pay for my proximity to the king.

As is customary, as we walk up to the front steps, the the sea parts, and Garvey pulls out his keys. He makes a jocular comment or two directed at one or another of those assembled, and as he does so, unlocks the doors to the school and lets us all inside. Garvey makes no attempt to explain my accompanying him to practice this day, or any other day. There is no sign of the intimacy of the activities of just an hour or so ago. He leaves me to my own devices to fend off their stares. I keep my head down and try to avoid eye contact. The scrutiny I feel at this moment is blistering. Noone says anything to me and I don't say anything to any of them. What would I say to them? "I just had treatment. And you know how I always seem to play my best right after treatment. Nothing like a little hip-unlocking, knee-massaging, sinus-draining, strength-building, flexibility-enhancing bedroom session of treatment to bring out the best in my game." Garvey said I played better after treatment. I assumed that I did.

Once or twice I made the mistake of answering a barbed question from one of my teammates by telling him that Garvey was working on my knees or draining my sinuses. When this got around to the rest of the team, older players, or other hangers-on (one in particular), the comments started. The verbal arrows that I was "Garvey’s pet". I was aware of the glances, the nods, the looks; heard the murmurs and the taunts. This one particularly annoying ass would bait me: "You stink anyhow, even if you are Garvey’s pet. So-and-so’s better than you anyway." Kid stuff, but I was a kid. Nevermind that this jerk would never be good enough to play. It still hurt. Wrapped in my secret, I was defenseless. I was literally Garvey's "pet".

Should I tell them Garvey was a family friend? That he came to dinner at our house? That he attended family celebrations like birthdays and graduations? That he gave me a Timex watch with a gold-rimmed face and a black leather band? That for my First Holy Communion he gave me $50.00, far more money than I ever could have imagined? Should I tell them about the clothes? Going to Isaac Baker’s mens’ store? The books and shopping at the The Erie Bookstore? (I remember the titles to this day.) How about the milkshakes and pretzels at Fred’s on 27th and Parade Streets? The roast beef sandwiches at Arby’s? Burgers at McDonald’s? The time he let me sit on his lap and steer his car while he worked the pedals? Or when he was giving me a ride home and we stopped to pick up his "date"? (This was a Mercyhurst woman who it seems, in hindsight, was merely a useful Garvey feint at normalcy, knowingly or not, enabling Garvey to disguise his pedophile activities. And this same woman penned a letter, defending Garvey, to the editor of The Erie Daily Times-News days after the accusations hit the paper.)

Of course I shouldn’t say anything. Or more accurately, couldn't say anything. Not and survive in that environment. And Garvey knew I couldn’t. He had the skills of a practiced hunter and a predator. I was neither the first nor the last, but I didn’t know it at the time. I thought this was just "treatment". But Garvey knew. He knew the value of stalking his prey, luring it in, and isolating it from the herd. Well, he certainly had ingratiated himself into my world, successfully lured me in, and isolated me from my friends and family. While I seemingly reaped the benefits, I certainly was paying the price. As I have said before, I was easy prey.

A serial pedophile’s mastery is in negotiating, manipulating, your silence. Your compliance. Garvey cannot continue to abuse without the help of his victims. He needs and operates under the shroud of silence of his victims. Silenced by Garvey's authority, our own confusion, and the taunts of peer pressure when we are young. And now that we are older, silenced with an added measure of humiliation and embarrassment that we were somehow duped, complicit in our own abuse because we were too trusting and naïve to know better. I have said this before: Garvey has shamed us to silence and shamed us into keeping his dastardly secret. Our continued silence only serves his interests and puts others at risk. Pedophiles are predators. They hunt, feast, and move on. Move on to whom? Some other intimidated young boy. Here he comes.

predafile@hotmail.com

Clouds of hurt; tears toward redemption

For some months now, I have poured my thoughts, my feelings, and my emotions into sharing with you the story of my abuse. It has been liberating and it has been pain-filled. Each of these posts, particularly those in which I retell the details of my seduction, manipulation, coercion, and physical handling, pulls me... pulls my heart and my sensibilities apart. As I relive these moments, the moments that are my boyhood, I am thrown back through time, through visceral time. The mind of a man dealing with the emotions and the nervous system of that boy.

If you have ever lost a loved one, someone particularly close to you, maybe you understand. Maybe you know that feeling that, when you begin to talk about them, wells up in your stomach and rushes into your throat. Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, the tears come. You can feel them as they swamp your eyes. Your chest heaves and it all pours out in a gasp that you are unable to suppress. That is what happens when I recount these intimate details of my relationship with Dr. William P. Garvey. It is happening now.

Sure there are times, when I am editorializing, that I punch at the keys as my resentment and anger rush to mind faster than I can hammer the words out. But more often, there are times like now, when I cry, and my chest does heave, and my tears drip down my face, and I gently push at the keyboard, ever so lightly pressing each key because that something, that sentiment that I'm feeling, is mine. A pure unedited response, it is purely mine. And it is precious. And It is so fragile, so hurtful, so sad, that that is all I can do to protect it. To protect me.

I have tried, over the course of the last few months, to begin to deal with this something. This something that was pushed on me. This something that I did not ask for. That I have buried deep inside of me. I can't shed it and I cannot outrun it. The sheer strength and physical nature of my reactions now, decades later, tell me that Garvey did things to me that are so wrong, so powerfully wrong, that he has changed me forever. In ways I'll never know.

I do know this. In my chest, in my heart, I carry a cloud. I carry a cloud that is the pent-up deluge of years of denial. Denial of acknowledging the acts and emotions, dealing with the feelings and doubts, thrust upon me by William P. Garvey. It is a cloud ready to gush at the very mention, or fleeting image. A cloud that heaves and bursts when I talk to you. And after, for a while, I feel better. There is no rainbow but, for a while, there is release. And there is calm.

Please, this is not a plea for sympathy. If anything, it is a statement of understanding... and inclusion. It is lonely in this place. This place of hurt and downpour. The hurt that is my past, our past, and the downpour that is my present, our present, with William P. Garvey. Lonely, yes. I understand. Alone, no.

predafile@hotmail.com

Mercyhurst Board of Trustees

The following is the list of the Mercyhurst College Board of Trustees that appeared in the Erie Daily Times-News 9/9/05:

Mercyhurst Board
Mercyhurst College has 32 members on its board of trustees. Trustees are elected to four-year terms and can be elected to additional four-year terms without limit.

OFFICERS
Chairwoman of the board
Marlene Mosco
President, PNC Bank, northwest Pennsylvania region
Erie
Elected chairwoman in June 2004. Term expires June 2006 as an officer, December 2008 as a trustee.

Vice chairman
Bruce Raimy
Partner, JGB Consulting
Erie
Term expires June 2006 as officer, June 2008 as trustee.

Secretary
Robert Miller
Chairman, NE Foods Inc.
North East
Term expires June 2006 as officer, June 2009 as trustee.

Assistant secretary
Sister Lisa Mary McCartney, RSM, Ph.D.
Vice president and designee of the Sisters of Mercy, Regional Community of Erie
Erie
Term expires June 2006 as officer, June 2008 as trustee by virtue of office.

TRUSTEES
Mary Ann Baldauf
Director and shareholder, Times Publishing Company, which owns the Erie Times-News
Erie
Term expires June 2009.

Randall Clemons, Ph.D.
President, Faculty Senate, Mercyhurst College
Erie
Term expires April 2007.Serves by virtue of office.

Sister JoAnne Courneen, RSM
Director of finance, Mercy International Centre
Dublin, Ireland
Term expires June 2008.
On leave of absence as of September 2004.

Charles A. Dailey
President, Dailey Enterprises
Erie
Term expires June 2009.

Vernon Dobbs, Ph.D.
Retired director, Erie County Assistance Office,
State Department of Public Welfare
Fairview
Term expires June 2008.

Rosemary Durkin
Attorney, Stark and Stark Law Firm
Philadelphia
Term expires June 2009.

Sister Mary Felice Duska, RSM
Manager, Mercy Terrace Apartments
Erie
Term expires December 2006.

Thomas Gamble, Ph.D.
Chairman, College Council
Vice president of academic affairs, Mercyhurst College
Erie
Serves by virtue of office.

Elizabeth Greenleaf
Mercyhurst College alumna
Meadville
Term expires October 2008.

Myron Jones
Former owner, JET Broadcasting Co.
Erie
Term expires June 2007.

Charles Knight
Principal, Schaffner, Knight Minnaugh & Co.
Erie
Term expires June 2006.

Richard Lanzillo
Attorney and partner, Knox, McLaughlin, Gornall & Sennett
Erie
Term expires June 2007.

F. Brady Louis
Chairman, President's Associates
Mercyhurst College
Retired executive, WQLN
Erie
Serves by virtue of office.

Michael Malpiedi
President, Mercyhurst College Alumni Association
Vice president, NextMedia Radio
Erie
Serves by virtue of office.

Dennis Marin
President and chief executive, Wedgewood Investors Inc.
Erie
Term expires June 2007.

Owen McCormick
President and chief executive, Joseph McCormick Construction Co.
Erie
Term expires June 2006.

Michael McQuillen, Ph.D.
President, Mercyhurst College
Erie
Serves by virtue of office.

Helen Mullen, Ed.D.
Retired administrator, Robert Morris University
Moon Township
Term expires June 2009.

Sister Maria O'Connor, RSM, Ph.D.
Pastoral minister, St. George Catholic Church
Erie
Term expires June 2007.

Gary Renaud
Chief executive, Erie Steel Products
Erie
Term expires June 2006.

William Sennett
Attorney, of counsel, Knox, McLaughlin, Gornall & Sennett
Erie
Term expires December 2008.

Sister Maura Smith, RSM, Ed.D.
Consultant, Mercyhurst Civic Institute
Outreach coordinator, Sisters of Mercy, Erie region
Erie
Term expires December 2008.

Monsignor L. Thomas Snyderwine, Ed.D.
Pastor, St. Luke Catholic Church
Erie
Term expires June 2008.

Doris Stackpole
St. Marys
Term expires December 2008.

Jane Theuerkauf
President, Jane Theuerkauf Designs
Erie
Term expires December 2008.

Frank Victor
Partner, Victor Foundation
Erie
Term expires June 2008.

Barrett Walker, D.D.S.
Retired dentist and private investor
Erie
Term expires June 2007.

Kathleen Zurn
President, Bright Sky Properties
Erie
Term expires June 2009.

predafile@hotmail.com