The way Christopher Gray's mother remembers his childhood, there came a point when her "gentle, kind of shy," soccer-playing altar boy with a floppy Beatles-cut mop of brown hair became inexplicably petrified.

WARWICK — The way Christopher Gray's mother remembers his childhood, there came a point when her "gentle, kind of shy," soccer-playing altar boy with a floppy Beatles-cut mop of brown hair became inexplicably petrified.

"I'd come home and he'd be hiding under the table, under the curtains. ... He'd be wetting the bed."

Unsure what was happening to her 9-year-old fourth-grader, Carleen Gray asked their priest in St. Kevin's Parish for advice. "I'm so worried about him,'' she recalls saying. "I don't know what's going on with my son."

"I'll talk to him. Don't worry about it," the priest, Michael LaMountain, told her.

"He came back to me within a week and he said: 'I have good news. I talked to Christopher for a long, long time. He's perfectly fine. ... He has a new baby sister and he's in a new school. And he's just nervous.'"

"Trust me," Father Mike said. "It's just a phase he is going through, and he will get through this.

"Whatever he tells you, just totally ignore him," the priest told the worried mother.

The year was 1981.

"Needless to say, things got horrifically worse,'' Carleen Gray recalled one recent Saturday at her plush-carpeted home in the Bayside section of Warwick, with her husband, Bill, and son, Chris, now 47, sitting a coffee table away.

Drug arrests. Possession of marijuana. Possession of heroin. Stints at the Adult Correctional Institutions. Counseling at Day One. Rehab. Recovery. Relapse. Methadone.

On Jan. 29, 1999, LaMountain admitted in court to sexually assaulting five boys at St. Kevin's, and at St. John The Baptist in West Warwick, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Chris Gray was not among the named victims in that criminal case.

But two decades later, Gray — a father, a 23-year Verizon employee and recovering addict who identifies himself as one of LaMountain's prey — confirms that he is the plaintiff in a long-dormant civil suit, John Doe vs. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence d/b/a The Diocese of Providence.

The lawsuit seeks "in excess of $10,000" for each of seven counts of alleged negligent supervision and fraud.

It was filed Nov. 3, 2010, by a lawyer in state Sen. Donna Nesselbush's law firm. The case — which, for reasons that remain unexplained, was never logged into the court filing system — languished for more than eight years without any further action.

The law firm, Marasco & Nesselbush, unsuccessfully sought a "voluntary settlement" but never formally "served" the diocese with the suit.

The Journal published a story about the "mystery" court file in June. The diocese filed a motion the next day to try to get the case dismissed. (There has been no decision yet on the motion.)

Soon afterward, Chris Gray contacted The Journal to identify himself as "John Doe" and to express how fervently he wanted to find out what happened to his case, and to tell his story.

In the past week, he has provided The Journal with tape recordings of meetings he had this summer with Joseph Marasco, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit.

During one of those meetings, Marasco told the Grays he suspected that the diocese had leaked the sealed case to this Journal reporter — who, he said, "some people think ... is the devil incarnate.'' He theorized that the diocese had done so to sabotage legislation that his law partner, Sen. Nesselbush, had introduced to extend the time period for victims of childhood sex abuse to sue.

"It's Rhode Island. It's a small state,'' he said.

About the news story itself, he said he could not wait to ask the reporter: "What was your point in doing that? You're just ripping the s--- out from people's lives."

But Chris Gray wants to finally tell his story about what LaMountain allegedly did to him in the rectory at St. Kevin Church, the many years he had no conscious memories of what happened and his meltdown in the Warwick Mall around Thanksgiving 2007 after his mother happened to mention LaMountain's name.

"All of a sudden it was like I was like watching a movie. ... Flashes. Flashes. Flashes," he told The Journal. The memories came back.

As he recounted those flashbacks in 2010 to a psychiatrist, the late Thomas Paolino: "The priest would often grope Christopher's genitals.... Have him sit on his lap after undressing.... Pin Christopher down when he wanted to anally penetrate him."

This is Gray's explanation, to The Journal, of why he did not tell his parents what LaMountain was doing to him:

"I was too scared, if I did.... I'd go to hell. They'd go to hell. As far as I knew, I was an altar boy and Father Mike was the right-hand, a priest of God. He was telling me ... I was going to get kidnapped and he knew the drivers of the van that would kidnap me and also there was people there taking pictures of the kids they want to kidnap and he knew them and he saw them taking pictures of me at recess.

"Here I am a kid that was out here all the time, every day, playing, playing, playing. All of a sudden, just like that, did not want to leave the house. Scared to death."

In a 2010 report that Gray provided to The Journal, Paolino memorialized what Gray had told him about his childhood: "abdominal cramping, diarrhea and rectal bleeding after being sexually assaulted anally." Lighting several matchbooks on fire at the same time. "Letting his friend's German shepherd off his leash to chase cats."

"It should be noted that the fascination with fire/firesetting, animal cruelty and bedwetting are behaviors significantly indicative of sexual abuse in preadolescent and adolescent boys,'' the late Dr. Paolino wrote in the report.

Robert N. McCarthy, an investigator for the diocese, asked Gray on Sept. 9, 2010: "If the Bishop walked in the door right now, sat in that open chair, what would you want him to know?"

Gray's answer, according to a transcript: "I'd want him to know how bad one of his priests messed up my life, and how mad I am that they knew this guy, whether he knew, whoever knew, that this guy was accused down in Baltimore of this and they just shipped him up here. And just, just vent."

McCarthy: "How do you know he was accused in Baltimore?"

Gray: "After I came to the recollection, we started looking into it." (The Journal has previously reported that the Providence Diocese was apprised in fall 1993 by the Baltimore Archdiocese that a 34-year-old man had said that he and others had been fondled by LaMountain in the early 1970s.)

McCarthy's reply: "The current bishop comes from Pittsburgh ... by way of Youngstown, Ohio.... He wasn't even here when any ..."

LaMountain served at St. Catherine's Church in Warwick from 1975 to 1976, at St. Kevin Church in Warwick from 1976 to 1983, at Saint Joseph's in Woonsocket from 1983 to 1987 and at St. John the Baptist in West Warwick from 1987 to 1995.

In 1999, in exchange for his plea, LaMountain was given a suspended sentence that spared him prison.

Marasco told the Grays, in a recorded conversation this summer, that he does not believe that the newly passed Rhode Island law extending the statute of limitations from seven to 35 years for suits against pedophiles helps Chris because he is suing an institution — not LaMountain, who died in August 2010 — and the time limit has expired on his case.

Marasco said he filed the suit in case one of two things happened:

State law changed in Gray's favor, or a case pending at the time would open the door for cases that are based on "repressed memories."

Marasco did not serve the lawsuit on the diocese, he said, because "from every indication at that time, the diocese would file a motion to dismiss based on statute of limitations and the case would be done [with prejudice].... That would mean you could never bring it back again."

"The idea was: let's institute suit, let it sit out there." (In the interim, he wrote letters asking the diocese to "voluntarily participate in settlement discussions." Nothing came of it.)

The Rhode Island Supreme Court in June 2016, in Hyde v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence, rejected "repressed memory" — absent evidence of an "unsound mind disability" — as a basis for filing suit after the legal deadline has lapsed.

"I would say as far back as about 2013-14 ... I had written it off,'' Marasco told Gray. "There was no significant movement anywhere."



He told the Grays that the best option would be to voluntarily dismiss the case "without prejudice" in the event the law changes further, or Rhode Island judges change their thinking. "That would give Chris the opportunity to re-file the complaint within one year."

"If it were my son sitting here, I would say that the possibility of ultimately recovering on the case is very, very, very, very, very low."

He also told Chris that he was "really disappointed" that his mother, Carleen, seemed so angry.

"I'm the guy that instituted suit on a case I didn't think we could prevail on. I'm the guy that invested $3,200 ... with Paolino to give that damn report on a case I didn't think I could win, but I wanted to keep out there because justice would say we should win. You know? A hundred hours of attorney time ... just to protect your rights."

In an email to The Journal on Thursday, Marasco reiterated his legal thinking and said: "I feel terribly for Chris and his family. They have lived through an unimaginable tragedy ... [and] our system of justice should provide a remedy. ... But the law as it existed when suit was filed and as it exists today may deny Chris a remedy or even his day in court.

"Hopefully the General Assembly will consider amending the statute to provide a 'window' provision for Chris and so many others in his situation,'' Marasco wrote.

Gray has a new lawyer, Albin Moser, who said: "Chris Gray deserves his day in court. He’s been waiting a long time for that."

Of Marasco's belief the case has no chance, Moser said: "There is always a way to win. It is the attorney’s job to find the way."

Rep. Carol McEntee, the House sponsor of the new law that extends the deadline for child victims to sue their abusers, has no delusions about the legal difficulties Gray faces.

But she fought to keep a "discovery rule'' that allows suits that might otherwise be time-barred seven years "from the time the victim discovered or reasonably should have discovered that the injury or condition was caused by the act."

If a judge lets that apply, McEntee said, "his cause of action against the institution may have been preserved by them filing the lawsuit."

"It is a different age,'' she said. "I think the whole atmosphere today and the knowledge that people have [now] about the sheer magnitude of abuse ... within the church, can't go unnoticed.

"Justice screams on this case,'' she said.

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