toledoblade.com --

As a child growing up in Toledo, Tony Comes would sit in the Showcase Cinemas, gaze up at the screen at the larger-than-life actors, and fantasize about someday being an actor.

"I wanted to see my name on the screen," said the 34-year-old Toledo firefighter.

Tony Comes, in a scence from the Oscar-nominated documentary "Twist of Faith," received a $55,000 settlement from the Toledo diocese last year, but he did not want any money for his part in the film.

Zoom | Photo Reprints

Tonight, that dream will come true. But it's not the way he imagined.

Though Mr. Comes will don a tuxedo and walk onto a red carpet and down the aisle to sit among the movie elite, his role in an Oscar-nominated film is nothing glamorous.

He is the subject of one of the darkest documentaries ever considered for an Academy Award: sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

To Mr. Comes, Twist of Faith is more than a cinematic escape. It's his life and the pain he held inside for years.

Millions of television viewers watching tonight's 77th annual Academy Awards ceremony from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood will hear about the man who's emerging as one of the most visible figures in the clerical-abuse scandal.

The documentary, which includes stark images of Toledo in the background, chronicles Mr. Comes' struggles as he comes to terms with his years of alleged rapes and molestation by a Toledo priest in the early 1980s.

Accompanying Mr. Comes to the Oscars will be his wife, Wendy, mother, Sandra, and the two veteran filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt, who were invited into the firefighter's life.

For two years, the cameras followed him to work at Station No. 15. Followed him around his home on Woodhurst Drive in South Toledo. Followed him to his church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Nothing was off limits, from a gentle conversation with his 10-year-old daughter about his abuse to an outburst toward his mother over her donations to the church - money, he said, that will go to fight his lawsuit against the diocese and his alleged abuser: Dennis Gray.

'To have to go through [marital strife] as a result of this, it's a shame. But it has strengthened our marriage,' says Wendy Comes, who appears with her husband, Tony, in "Twist of Faith" above.

Zoom | Photo Reprints

As Mr. Comes sits among the celebrities at the awards ceremony, he knows he doesn't fit in.

"I don't particularly like seeing myself as a 34-year-old guy talking on a 30-foot screen about how a priest performed oral sex on me when I was 14 years old," he said in an interview with The Blade. "It's not what I wanted to be known for. It's not what I expected to be known for."

These are tumultuous times for the 1987 graduate of Central Catholic High School, whose steel-blue eyes reflect a determination to help others after years of trying to hide his past. One of the hardest things for him to do, he said, was take on an institution he was raised to revere.

"We did not want to sue. We wanted honesty. But they [the diocese] chose the arena," Mr. Comes said.

Battling the pain

Juggling the roles of firefighter, husband, father, son, brother, and accuser in an explosive clerical sexual abuse case - seemingly with the whole world watching in Twist of Faith - has taken a toll on Mr. Comes' health.

"Three hours of sleep - that's a good night for me lately," he said.

Since filing his suit against the Toledo diocese and the former priest in September, 2002, Mr. Comes also has had to deal with a severe loss of appetite.

"I was 182 pounds the day I went public. I went down to 147 pounds three times. I was a skeleton," he said.

The pressures also put his 11-year marriage on the rocks. A year ago, he and wife Wendy were on the verge of divorce, their relationship pushed to the edge by his anger, depression, and others feelings he couldn't express or begin to understand.

"We had both met with attorneys," Mr. Comes said. "I was reading the [divorce] papers, they were talking about things like custody and visitation rights. We were trying to juggle the household, kids, possessions. Our marriage was essentially ended."

His wife said she had given up on her union to the man with whom she fell in love 13 years ago. "There was no light at the end of the tunnel; at least it seemed that way," she said.

Tony Comes, in a 1987 Central Catholic yearbook photo, says he was 14 when Dennis Gray began abusing him.

Zoom | Photo Reprints

The veteran firefighter blames himself, saying he shut down emotionally - a common trait among those who say they've been abused. "Wendy had to maintain some sense of normalcy with the kids, in addition to working full-time," he said.

Wendy Comes, 34, said she noticed a disturbing change in her husband in May, 2002, when he spotted Mr. Gray mowing the lawn just five houses away.

The fact that his alleged abuser was their neighbor was too much for a man who still was fighting to build a normal life. He thought about taking revenge, and he feared for the safety of his two young children.

"That was kind of the last straw that broke him down," Mrs. Comes recalled. "The amount of restraint that he had to put forth every day, I think it just emotionally killed him."

Then, about eight months ago, the Comeses suddenly changed their minds about divorce. They resolved together to not let their marriage become another casualty of Mr. Comes' past abuse.

"We made a conscious choice to really listen to what the other person was saying, and that took us over the hump," Mr. Comes said. "To have to go through [marital strife] as a result of this, it's a shame. But it has strengthened our marriage."

His wife said the key was their renewed sense of faith. "When things started to change, ironically, really, was when we both started to gain some faith back - in each other and also in the church. And we both started to realize that there was a light, and we had to make that light happen."

The couple's struggles have impacted their children as well, especially their 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, who would often watch her father break down and cry. Slowly, she is starting to understands what happened to him. One of the more intimate moments of Twist of Faith is the scene of Mr. Comes talking to his daughter about how he was once hurt by a man he trusted.

"You don't want to expose your children to something like this when they're so young, but we didn't have a choice," Mrs. Comes said. "She's amazing. I think she's actually more sensitive to other people's issues and what might be going on that we can't see. She's really helped us stay positive about this."

Their 6-year-old son, Mitchell, is too young to comprehend the difficulties experienced by his father. So far, that's the way Mr. Comes wants it. "I'm glad he's too young to understand," he said.

Every Sunday morning after Mass, his son runs to their parish priest, the Rev. Robert Wilhelm, and gives him a hug. Only recently has Mr. Comes been able to overcome his anxiety about the innocent exchange. "It doesn't frighten me now," he said.

Misplacing trust

Growing up in South Toledo, Anthony Comes was the fourth of seven children in a tight-knit, working-class Catholic family. "We wore hand-me-down clothes - the corduroys were just 'roys' because the cords wore out," he said wryly.

As a 14-year-old freshman at Central Catholic, he was a decent student but had a mischievous streak. "I was the typical middle child. I was the guy with the lamp shade on his head. I was always the class clown."

His early teenage years were tough, he said. He was small for his age, emotionally immature, and not good at sports.

He said classmates used to tease him about being small and clumsy.

"I was getting called names like wimp, wussy, homo - you name it," Mr. Comes said.

The Rev. Dennis Gray taught religion and was a Pied Piper for troubled youths at Central Catholic High School.
( THE BLADE )

Zoom | Photo Reprints

Like many Central students, he was drawn to the Rev. Dennis Gray.

"Father Denny" was a tough-talking, thirtysomething priest who taught religion and was a Pied Piper for troubled youths.

"He cussed, he swore. He was a new, young, magnetic priest," Mr. Comes recalled. "He had a reputation for helping troubled kids. We could relate to him. We were comfortable speaking to him."

The priest often took his favorites - he'd proudly and protectively call them "my boys," Mr. Comes recalled - to a cottage on Michigan's Crystal Lake.

During the first six months of their relationship, Father Gray was "like a hero to me," Mr. Comes said, recalling how the priest taught the young man how to stand up for himself.

But after gaining his trust, Father Gray began molesting the 14-year-old boy, first in the rectory of St. Joseph's Church in Maumee and then numerous times at the Crystal Lake cabin, Mr. Comes said.

The sexual abuse continued until his junior year, he said, when he began to build enough inner strength to distance himself from the cleric.

For years, Mr. Comes said, he was too ashamed to tell anyone about the secret sessions. "The last thing I was going to do was come forward with an allegation that would bring about more ridicule," he said.

The first time he spoke up was at age 21, when he told his mother. She believed him, Mr. Comes said, but after she talked it over with his father, his parents concluded their son was not ready for a confrontation with the church.

He tried to keep his past private, until the U.S. Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis erupted in the Boston Archdiocese in January, 2002, and swept across the country.

Mr. Comes said the media coverage made it impossible for him to suppress his feelings, and he began suffering bouts of depression and anxiety. "The news reports were a consistent, daily reminder."

Confronting the past

During Memorial Day weekend in 2002, Mr. Comes was driving home when he discovered Mr. Gray was his neighbor.

The firefighter said he immediately parked his truck and walked over to the former priest. "I told him to stay the hell away from my family," he recalled.

He then made an appointment to meet with Bishop James R. Hoffman, who presided over the 19-county Toledo diocese from 1981 until his death from cancer in February, 2003.

Mr. Comes said he asked the bishop to do whatever he could to get Mr. Gray to move out of his neighborhood. He said the bishop listened compassionately, apologized profusely for the abuse, and told Mr. Comes and his mother that it was the first time he had heard any such allegations against Mr. Gray.

Four months later, on Sept. 15, 2002, Mr. Comes said he was stunned by an investigative report in The Blade that would change his life.

He said he learned from the story that numerous men were stepping forward to say they were sexually abused by Mr. Gray when he was a priest at Central Catholic during the same years Mr. Comes went to school there. The story reported that the diocese was aware that other men were accusing the priest of sexual abuse - contrary to what the bishop told Mr. Comes, he said.

The newspaper reported that at least one of the accusers, Matthew Simon, went to the diocese in 1995, complaining that Mr. Gray had molested him repeatedly at the same cottage in the 1980s where Mr. Comes says he was molested.

The article stated that the Rev. Raymond Sheperd, then vicar of priests, wrote to Mr. Simon in 1995 and said Mr. Gray "has admitted to us that he was guilty of child abuse" and that he "is remorseful and wishes to apologize." Mr. Gray left the priesthood in 1987.

The day after The Blade story was published, Mr. Gray was placed on administrative leave from his job as a Rogers High School dean, and was later transferred to a post supervising janitors at night for the school district.

After reading the report, Mr. Comes said, "The gloves came off."

Days later, he filed suit in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, using the generic identity of John Doe. Three months later, he made the rare move of amending his case to include his name. "It's time to stand up and do this with dignity. I want people to know who I am," he said at the time.

Eleven other men filed lawsuits in 2002 against the diocese and Mr. Gray. The cases have since been settled.

Blade coverage of Mr. Comes' case caught the attention of the filmmakers, Mr. Dick and Mr. Schmidt of the Los Angeles-based Chain Camera Pictures. They contacted the Toledo firefighter and asked if he would be willing to go on camera.

Although Mr. Comes received a $55,000 settlement from the diocese last year, he did not want any money for his part in Twist of Faith. "I don't want to get paid for this project," he said. "I don't want anyone to think I did this for the money. I would trade it all for a change in history."

Coping with new stresses

Mr. Comes told Toledo Fire Chief Mike Bell and others in the chain of command that he never would let his personal problems jeopardize anyone's safety. "I told them to pull me if my performance declined, and I said that if I felt I would be a liability to my crew mates or the public, I would pull myself."

When Twist of Faith began to receive national attention after its debut at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival last month, followed by its Academy Award nomination for best documentary, Mr. Comes' sleep and diet problems intensified.

Two weeks ago, he said, he requested and was granted temporary assignment to "light duty," handling administrative and clerical chores and working regular eight-hour shifts.

At the Sundance Festival, where he met such stars as Clint Eastwood and Alan Alda, he said the most rewarding part was the reaction of everyday people.

A dozen people came up to him after seeing Twist of Faith and said they had been victims of abuse, he said. A Catholic priest in Lake Orion, Mich., who saw the film at Sundance thanked Mr. Comes and the film's producers, saying the documentary "would be an important step in the healing process of the church."

Wendy Comes was amazed by the reactions at Sundance, both during screenings and question-and-answer sessions. "Other than giving birth to my children, Sundance was probably the most powerful and emotional week of my life because Tony and I, going in this, did not realize the deep emotional impact it would have on people's lives."

One of the biggest surprises, she said, was how the film's portrayal of the couple's devotion to the church seemed to restore others' faith in Catholicism.

"Folks told us that they'd never been abused and didn't know anyone who had been abused, but they left the Catholic Church years ago because they didn't trust the leadership and were disappointed that the leaders weren't forthcoming and doing the right thing. But because of this film, they're going back to Mass," Mrs. Comes said.

Mr. Comes said he and Wendy are committed to the Catholic Church.

"People ask me, 'How can you remain a Catholic?' " he said. "I choose to change the church from within. We are the church - the congregations, not the leadership."

Many good Catholics have been victimized by the scandal, not just those who were sexually abused, Mr. Comes said. "I can't imagine how difficult this is for good priests and nuns and people who work for the church. And there are parishioners who have to bow their heads, too ashamed to say, 'I'm a Catholic.' The family members of the abusers are victims too."

He said he and Wendy pray for Mr. Gray and his family, but other times, the anger wells up inside. "Forgiveness," he said, "is a work in progress."

Every day, Mr. Comes said, he gets letters and email from people who have seen the movie or just read about it and want to thank him. "It's so surreal to hear people use the words 'courage' and 'hero' when they're talking about me," he said. "To me, those don't apply."

The best that could happen with Twist of Faith, he said, is not to win an Oscar, but for the film to help prevent abuse.

"I hope a child sees this documentary, sees me talking to my daughter, and says, 'I can talk to my mom and dad.' I hope a potential perpetrator sees this documentary, sees my face, and says, 'I better not.' "

Contact David Yonke at: dyonke@theblade.com or 419-724-6154.

Permanent Link