New Hampshire State Police are investigating the alleged rape of a teen-age boy in the care of the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette when he was director of Worcester's Come Alive program in the early 1970s.

Dana Vyska, 35, now of Pittsfield, said he was taken by Fredette from Worcester to a camp in New Hampshire in 1972 and was subsequently raped. Vyska said the priest stopped at a package store on the way and bought beer. Vyska, who was 15 at the time, said he got drunk, passed out and woke up on a bed in the camp feeling intense pain and knew he had been raped. Only he and Fredette were in the camp, he said.

State Trooper Richard Mitchell said yesterday that Vyska contacted him Oct. 21 and he talked with him by telephone a few days later to gather information. Mitchell said the information has been turned over to the Rockingham County Attorney at Exeter, N.H. The county attorney is also contacting the office of Worcester County District Attorney John J. Conte to discuss the recent Grand Jury indictment here of Fredette regarding alleged rapes involving two other boys in the priest's care at Come Alive.

Vyska said he contacted New Hampshire State Police after being told by Worcester police he could not bring charges against Fredette in this state because the rape occurred in New Hampshire.

Mitchell said the key to their investigation is finding out where the rape occurred. The trooper said Vyska could not tell him where the rape occurred. An investigator for another alleged victim found that Fredette's family once owned a camp in Raymond, N.H., but the property has since been sold.

Fredette, former member of the Augustinians of the Assumption, left Worcester in 1974, just before he was charged by Worcester police with molesting two other boys.

 

Dana M. Vyska said he remembers the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette as the friend and father he never had.

He alleges in a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire that Fredette betrayed him by raping him at a camp in Raymond, N.H. He was 15 at the time. The betrayal still hurts 22 years later, he said.

Vyska was interviewed recently after Fredette, 60, was finally brought before a judge in New Brunswick, Canada, to face extradition back to the United States on sexual-abuse charges.

Vyska said his life has never been easy. Now unemployed, he has never had more than a minimum-wage job.

He had a trouble childhood, went into foster care, and later ended up at Come Alive Inc., a home for troubled or delinquent boys operated in Worcester by Fredette.

"Father Joe was the only father I had at the time," Vyska said. "That's why it hurts so bad. He was all I had.

"He had a heart of gold. No matter who you were or what you had done, you had a friend with Father Joe," he said.

Vyska described Fredette as having intelligence and "a very easygoing friendly manner."

Vyska's problems go beyond the alleged rape by Fredette, he said, but the incident in New Hampshire in 1972 remains with him and is something he needs to see through so he can close the chapter on his early life.

Fredette fled from the United States in 1974 just as Worcester police were about to bring charges against him for sexually abusing three other boys in his care at Come Alive. Vyska reported the alleged rape to his foster mother, but no formal police complaint was made involving him at the time.

CASE REOPENED

But it was Vyska who caused the case to be reopened in 1992 when he came forward with allegations against Fredette after the widely publicized child-abuse charges against former Massachusetts priest James R. Porter.

Worcester police then discovered the old warrants for Fredette involving the other boys. A Worcester County grand jury indicted Fredette, and Gov. William F. Weld signed the papers seeking his extradition from Canada.

Vyska describes himself as being on an emotional "roller coaster" during the last two years, with highs followed by lows.

He said his frustrations mounted as Worcester police sympathized, but told him he could not be included in the Worcester investigation because the alleged rape happened over the state line.

But his spirits soared when he called the office of New Hampshire Gov. Steven Merrill. A staffer referred him to lawyer Mark Abramson of Manchester, N.H., who filed the civil suit in Rockingham Superior Court.

Vyska has often said he feels insignificant. "Does anyone care about Dana?" he frequently asked. He referred to himself as a "throw-away kid."

Vyska said he really hasn't gotten his life together since he made public his allegations. "I have been waiting and wondering. My life is on hold."

Vyska said his wife has stopped listening to his promises "that someday we will have a better life."

AIRPORT SCENE

He said he has looked forward to standing at the airport as Fredette is returned to this country, and has thought about what he would say or how he would feel.

"I may cry. It hurt so much what he did to me," he said. "But to see him face-to-face knowing that he knew that I looked up to him and considered him my friend ... I want to ask him why he did it.

"He never mentioned it again. Nothing changed. He acted like that night had never happened," he said. Vyska said he felt used, like some kind of inflatable doll.

Vyska, who is not Roman Catholic but has attended other Christian churches, said he no longer trusts institutional religion. "How could I?" he said.

The Rev. Stephen J. Rosetti, a psychologist now with the St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Md., said he recently finished a study, yet to be published, that shows that the religous faith suffers in people who are abused, but it is worse for those abused by clergy.

Rosetti, who acknowledges the harm of abuse, said it's false to believe that all people who are abused "are marred for life.

"That's a serious injustice to the victim. By saying that we are revictimizing them. The human spirit is amazingly resilient," he said. The issues involved in past abuse can be worked through and dealt with in therapy, within a support group or within the family or group of friends, he said.

St. Luke is one of the centers in the United States in which clerical sexual-abuse perpetrators are sent for treatment.