Donna Ballentine was sorting through a box of her late mother’s papers when she came upon a two-page, handwritten letter.

She recognized the handwriting immediately – it was that of a cousin, Stuart Saucke, who’d taken his own life a decade earlier.

“Dear Neil,” the letter began. “It’s been 24 years since you sexually molested me. I also have been an alcoholic for 24 years.”

As she read the letter, she thought about Stuart’s difficult life – including a long struggle with alcoholism that ended when he shot himself to death in Missouri in 1991. There’d been whispers before that he’d been molested by a priest, but now she had a letter in his handwriting laying out specific allegations – sexual assaults on trips to Canada, to Sterling and to Denver. In two of the instances, Stuart had been plied with alcohol, according to the letter.