In God's House (41 page)

I was sitting on the patio, scanning the sports page, looking at the college football scores and trying to figure out my balance sheet for the bets I’d made with my bookie. Julie had come over on her bike early and was making breakfast. As Julie set coffee down on the glass-topped table, the phone rang.

“Renon, Robert Blassingame. Please excuse this intrusion on your Sunday morning. I received your private phone number from Monsignor Moroux.”

“Yes?”

“I’m here, in Thiberville, at the Hilton. The whole legal team arrived from New Orleans yesterday. We also have the two principal insurance company men here with us. Last week we worked out a whole myriad of offers for the Rachou family – lump sum settlements, even money for the two parents who are not entitled under the law in our view. Structured settlements that spread out payments for ten years, twenty years, thirty years.”

“I understand.”

“All the information was delivered in a package to Chaisson’s office Friday with a request that he meet with us today at noon in Tom Quinlan’s hotel suite to settle the case.”

“And?”

“A half hour ago Chaisson had this message delivered here: ‘There will be no meeting today. There will be no discussion of settlement. There will be a trial, Monday ten a.m. in Bayou Saint
John. My clients want a jury to assess their losses, not some insurance actuary.’”

I suppressed laughter. Kane Chaisson had been way ahead of these high-steppin’ New Orleans lawyers from the first day. Now it seemed he was tying their intestines in knots. No one gets as dry in the mouth as an insurance defense lawyer on the eve of a big trial, for a big loss can cost his firm a lucrative client.

“So, why are you calling me, Bobby?” I asked, deliberately addressing him by his hated nickname.

“We all believe that you are the only one among us who has any rapport with Kane Chaisson. We need for you to intercede. To call Chaisson. Meet with him and bring him to us to discuss settlement. We gave him our research. The most money ever awarded an injured plaintiff in the history of Bayou Saint John is less than a quarter million dollars. The largest settlement paid in the Dubois cases was six hundred thousand. In cash, in one lump sum, we are prepared today to offer him three quarters of a million.”

As accustomed as I was to the gall of these kinds of lawyers, I was still astounded that Blassingame would believe he could prevail upon me at the eleventh hour to assist him after all the water that had gone under the bridge between us. I asked him to hold. Placing the phone under a chair cushion, I started in on breakfast and began circling the last of the college football games I had wagered on.

Julie took a seat and felt the lump under the cushion. She pulled the phone from under her and looked at it with wide eyes and a smile. Covering the mouthpiece, she whispered, “Who?”

I whispered back, “Beelzebub.”

I took up the phone and said, “I seem to remember you once saying you were going to destroy this Rachou kid and his parents. I think you said, ‘The kid is going to put up or shut up.’ You said you were going after ‘mother, father and child’. Now, Bobby, it seems you got the game you wanted. The kid has stepped up.”

I hung up.

I turned back to the sports pages and continued trying to sort out all the bets I had made on Friday with my bookie, Leo. I called him “the beggar” because of the manner he assumed on Tuesdays when he came to settle our account at my office. Leo always told me I was a bookie’s dream, one who bet with his heart rather than his head.

Diocesan lawyer Jon Bendel had told me that in a meeting among counsel it was decided that he alone would sit at counsel table in the courtroom. Instead of being surrounded by Blassingame and his cohorts, Bendel would have the bishop and Monsignors Moroux, Belair and Gaudet seated behind him. Counsel felt the presence of the high-ranking priests would influence the jury, create empathy for the diocese. And they didn’t want all those New Orleans suits inside the court rail, giving off the scent that big insurance policies were available to pay the Rachou verdict.

Whatever the result of the civil trial, it was certain it would not be a secret. There were none of the gag orders or video links that Judge Labat was envisaging for the criminal trial of Dubois the following month. The judge in the Rachou trial had no beef with the media being there. Television news trucks surrounded the courthouse square in Bayou Saint John. Some had camped out there since the night before. Writers from around the country staked out places in the first row of the courtroom, placing down books, jackets and briefcases before wandering back out to the large columned porch across the front of the courthouse.

I had no role to play in the trial. The stipulation of liability had made it unnecessary for Dubois to be present or represented in the case. I was attending the trial in order to monitor the proceedings
for Des and Matt. A ten-year-old child victim was bringing a bishop to court before a jury. It was historic, the first trial of its kind in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

At about 9:30, Kane Chaisson stepped up to the microphone and cameras on the courthouse lawn. He ignored the reporters’ shouted questions and launched into a prepared statement stressing the historical importance of the proceedings that were about to begin. He quoted the Bible about the value of innocence, and celebrated the fact that under the United States constitution a young child is equal to a bishop in the eyes of the law.

As Chaisson sauntered off, fussing with the middle button of his sport coat, Jon Bendel passed him, headed in the opposite direction, moving toward the microphones. Bendel addressed the media. “This is a very hard time for the bishop. From the beginning, all the bishop and diocese have ever wanted is for the right thing to be done. We are here this week for that very reason.” With that weak statement, he turned and walked off, ignoring all questions.

The old courtroom had been closed to fresh air since air conditioning was invented. Choosing the jury took no time. Chaisson asked very few questions of the prospective jurors and this told me he had paid a small fortune to investigators to prepare dossiers on each one. He had their life histories in files in front of him. He used his challenges quickly. Jon Bendel was unsuccessful in trying to keep women off the jury as there were too many in the jury pool. By noon the jury had been selected and seated – seven women and five men.

Kane Chaisson’s first witness was Monsignor Phillip Jules Gaudet, pastor of Saint Bernadette’s in Bayou Saint John. As there was a stipulation of liability in place, Chaisson could not open the door wide on the diocesan actions in regard to Father Dubois, nor could he showcase any of the monsignor’s bizarre views that he had elicited during Gaudet’s deposition in January. The scope of inquiry was limited to establishing that the
original complaint about Dubois’s actions in Amalie had been received by him and that he had relayed those complaints to the diocesan chancery in a telephone conversation with Monsignor Moroux.

The Bendel–Blassingame strategy of having the diocese admit legal responsibility for the “losses” of the plaintiff – the Rachous – was holding. It was a strategy I had advocated from the beginning, not least because it meant that the only evidence to be heard by the jury would be that which pertained directly to the Rachous. Whatever egregious conduct the diocese had engaged in would be suppressed. The job of the jury was simply to determine the amount of money the Rachous deserved in compensation.

The parents of Donny Rachou followed Monsignor Gaudet to the witness stand. Neither of them was effective in advocating their cause. They both appeared to be very nervous before the court and I felt they were intimidated by the presence of the bishop and Monsignors Moroux, Belair and Gaudet behind Jon Bendel’s counsel table.

Donny’s dad never made eye contact with anyone. His mother trembled and answered only “Yes” or “No” to Kane Chaisson’s questions. At the end of her testimony, she broke down crying, and said, “I can’t think about it. I can’t think about what Father Dubois did to my son, but I think about it all the time. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

But the jury did not know what Father Dubois had done to her son. Those questions could not be asked of her for that would have been inadmissible hearsay, being only what she had heard her son say to her. At this point, the diocese was carrying the day. Several jurors fidgeted in their seats, one stared at the ceiling. All seemed bored. When the first day of trial ended, it seemed to me the trial would result in a small amount of money being awarded to the Rachou family. It was not Kane Chaisson’s fault that his clients, simple country people, froze up in the courtroom setting. But the bottom line was the bastards were winning.

The day started with ten-year-old Donny Rachou being escorted to the witness stand by Kane Chaisson. The contrast between Chaisson, a big man, and tiny Donny was dramatic. The bailiff placed the Bible on the railing. The child’s little hand lay on the leather cover, and the bailiff recited the oath, ending with “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help you God?”

Donny responded in a surprisingly loud voice. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I want to.”

“Donny, please tell the jury how you met Father Francis Dubois – explain how you knew him then, what he was to you?”

Donny turned to the jury. For a moment, I feared he was frozen as his parents were. Then he began in a steady voice. “I was little. Pre-school. Father Nicky – that’s how we called him. He would come to our class sometimes. He always had a big jug of Kool-Aid and cookies. It was the kind of cookies you get in stores. He was so funny for us. Father Nicky had a bunch of puppets and a little box thing where he did puppet shows. The funniest puppet was a little dog that was always biting this fat lady’s dress and pulling it off, but she had other dresses under. And he did magic tricks. He had lots of tricks. He could make a quarter disappear and then pull it out of your ear. He was so funny. That’s how I got to know Father Nicky.”

The child’s composure was in stark contrast to that of his parents. The whole courtroom was riveted by his presence. When he was speaking, you could hear him in the last row.

“You came to know Father Nicky better, didn’t you?”

Looking in the direction of Kane Chaisson, Donny said, “Yes, sir. When I was taking communion classes from him—”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Donny. But would you tell the jury what you did in the communion classes Father Nicky taught you? Tell us what you learned.”

Turning to the jury as he had been instructed to do, young
Donny said, “Nothing. I didn’t really do nothing. Father Nicky made me one of his helpers. He called us his special boys – the helpers. I helped. With the puppets and cookies and stuff like that.”

“Tell us what you learned in communion class.”

“Nothing. Father Nicky played with the puppets and did magic like he did when I was in pre-school. It was the same. We had parties.”

“Did your parents know you were not being taught anything?”

Donny turned to look at Chaisson. “No, sir. Father Nicky had us promise we wouldn’t never tell our mommas or papas that we just goofed off in communion classes. It was a secret.”

“Did you become an altar boy?”

“That was the worsest mistake.”

“Why?”

“I would have to go to his house one night every week. There were other boys that spent the night too. Can I say names?”

“No, Donny. Don’t say any names of other boys. How many boys?”

“About four, I guess. Sometimes three or five. It was different sometimes.”

“What happened when you spent the night at Father Nicky’s? Tell the jury what happened.”

The child did not look at the jury. For a long time he looked down at his shoes. When he lifted his head, he stared straight at Bishop Reynolds. “We did sins. I know now it was sins we did with Father Nicky. But not first. After school, Father Nicky first he gave us a lot of snacks. And he took pictures with this little camera that made the pictures in a minute. Then we all took a shower. In the same shower. All of us naked as jaybirds. He would soap us down there. He made us soap him down there too. And…” Donny’s strong voice cracked and gave way to sobs. His mother rushed to him as the judge declared an early lunch recess.

Young Donny had his baseball hat in his hands when he climbed back in the witness box to start the afternoon's testimony. He was composed. So were the five female jurors who had been crying as he was led out of the courtroom by his mother before lunch.

Resuming, Kane Chaisson said, “Donny, what did Father Nicky tell you about him touching you – about him making you do things to him?”

“He said about secrets. If we told anyone, we would die and who we told would die too. He had guns. With bullets. All over the place. By the bed.”

“Did he touch you with the guns?”

“The guns were cold. And he said the hole where a bullet goes in is a little hole, but where it comes out, it's big, big.”

Kane Chaisson walked over to the witness stand. “Donny, I know this is hard for you to talk about. It's hard for us to hear.”

“Yes, sir.” The child was staring at the priests seated behind Jon Bendel. “Some men could have stopped all this.”

Bishop Reynolds had a coughing spasm, downed a glass of water, and coughed more. Kane Chaisson stood motionless, watching the bishop until his coughing subsided.

“So, Father Nicky scared you with guns. Made you believe he would kill you and your parents if you told them about what was going on—”

“And pictures. He was always taking pictures of us doing
things to each other with no clothes. We was all scared who might see the pictures.”

“Did he ever talk about whether this was right or wrong?”

“He said it wasn't wrong 'cause he was a priest. And he showed me a picture on his wall of Jesus eating something with a lot of men. He said this was the way holy men loved each other.”

“How, Donny, how did they love each other? What did ya'll do in Father Nicky's house that was supposed to be a secret?”

Donny hung his head. The room was silent for three long minutes. In a soft, quivering voice, Donny said, “Everything, I guess. Father Nicky made us put our pee-pees in each other's mouths and sometimes he made us put our pee-pees in someone's behind, or they did it to us and stuff.”

Kane Chaisson laid a hand on Donny's shoulder, and in a stage whisper he asked, “And with Father Nicky? What did you do with Father Nicky?”

“Father Nicky played with our pee-pees. He put his mouth down there too. He made us play with his pee-pee and make stuff come out of it on his stomach. Sometimes he grabbed it and made stuff come out on us. He put his in our mouths too.”

“Did Father Nicky put his anywhere else?”

“In our behinds. Some of us. It hurt. It was too big.”

“You? Did he do this to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kane Chaisson could have ended the trial then and there, but for good measure he called Doctor Aaron Kennison, Donny's treating psychologist. Doctor Kennison gave the jury a textbook account of how the boy's devastating injuries had caused permanent damage from which Donny would never fully recover. He talked about how the injuries were made worse because they were inflicted by a Catholic priest, a father figure in the child's eyes, God's agent on earth.

The closing argument of Kane Chaisson was subdued. He simply reminded the jurors to replay in their minds the testimony
of Donny Rachou. Jon Bendel seemed disconcerted as he mumbled to the jury about how money could not replace everything.

The crowd of spectators had not even finished filing out of the courtroom and into the hall when the bailiff boomed, “Jury's coming back. Court will come to order.”

A mad scramble brought everyone back to the pews. The whole courtroom stood as the jury filed back in. The audience remained standing, waiting for the verdict. The judge had to bang the gavel and instruct everyone to be seated and remain silent while the verdict was read.

Moments later the verdict was announced. “One million, nine hundred thousand dollars.” More than double Blassingame's highest offer on Sunday. The courtroom erupted in cheers. As Kane Chaisson made his way through the gate in the railing and into the mob of reporters, Jon Bendel led the bishop and monsignors out via a private side door. The Rachou family had left the building before the jury returned with its verdict.