A Widow's Hunt for the Priest Who Preyed on Her Husband

Peter Fatovich seemed a happily married father of four when he took his own life in 1994. His wife would search for decades to uncover the tragic truth behind his death.

…On the morning of Tuesday, June 14, 1994, my husband, the father of our four children under the age of 5, kissed me goodbye. I sensed heightened anxiety as we stood at the top of the stairs in our Vermont home. He leaned toward me, our lips meeting one last time above the 2-month-old nestled in the folds of my white cotton nightgown, buttons between milky breasts left undone.

“I have an early morning meeting,” Peter said.

I watched from our picture window, swaying to calm both myself and the baby in my arms, as his black Subaru disappeared down the steep Bolton Valley Access Road.

It had been a rainy spring in our Green Mountains. Through June, the rivers still rushed madly with melt run-off. Peter knew this when he pulled alongside the guardrail of Richmond’s infamous Huntington Gorge.

“There was this Father Malone. It’s kinda creepy now that I think about it, how he’d wear a cape and carry a crop around."

……. The article confirms Bert’s recall: “The Count” walking the Stepinac hallways “in a black cape, holding a whip.” The school condoned this kind of behavior?

“The reason for Malone’s removal from Stepinac was a well-kept secret from the day it happened,” the Journal News reported, and after Malone’s arrest, “the teenager’s family did not want to press charges.”

It’s “Spotlight” all over again, I thought. The good Catholics won’t confront the priests who are like God to them. They don’t tell. And the abuse perpetuates itself.

After he left Stepinac,” the article continued, “Malone was assigned to three parishes between 1989 and 1992.” Wait, what? Did these parishes know of Malone’s sordid history? Were the families warned? How many other boys did he groom, lure, molest—rape?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-widows-hunt-for-the-priest-who-preyed-on-her-husband?ref=home