DETROIT _ After 41 years in the priesthood, Father Eduard Perrone wasn't prepared for the hellfire that tore through his parish last summer: He was accused of molesting an altar boy decades earlier, and ousted from his church.
The sex abuse claim blindsided the pastor's loyal flock, though they believe he is innocent _ and have launched an unorthodox crusade to clear his name.
In an unprecedented lawsuit in Michigan, and possibly the country, 20 parishioners from Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Detroit are suing the Detroit archdiocese for $20 million, claiming it caused them emotional distress by taking away their priest.
The lawsuit alleges church officials "fabricated" a rape charge against Perrone because they didn't like his conservative views and wanted him out, and because they wanted to avoid bad press. Perrone was removed from the clergy one month after reporters started asking questions about a fondling claim against him.
According to police reports, the claim involved a 54-year-old man who alleged that Perrone started grooming him when he was 13 while he was an altar boy at St. Peter Catholic Church in Mount Clemens.
The man alleged that Perrone groped him during swim parties at the Perrone family lake house, that he served minors wine, had boys stay overnight in the rectory and took him and another boy on a private camping trip, police and church records reviewed by the Free Press say. The church learned of these allegations in 2018, after the man's wife called an archdiocese hotline and said that her husband had been abused by his priest 40 years earlier. An investigation followed.
Perrone has denied the allegations.
"It seems like it's all a nightmare," Perrone said in a recent interview with the Detroit Free Press. "I can't believe this is happening to me. Forty-one years of priesthood ... and this has happened? It seems not possible ... I know this didn't happen."
The parishioners' lawsuit raises questions about the credibility of the accuser, who, according to police reports, suffers from mental health issues and has changed his story multiple times: He started out saying he was raped, but for reasons unknown, he took back that claim and has said there was only groping and fondling.
The lawsuit alleges that the accuser eventually denied to church officials that he was ever sexually abused by Perrone, though police reports tell a different story _ one of a traumatized and devout Catholic who struggled with guilt and shame, feared his disclosures would lead to retaliation, so he shut down at times, then opened back up with the help of therapy.
In the eyes of the Catholic Church, the man's inconsistencies didn't matter as it concluded that there was a "semblance of truth" to what the accuser was saying, and it couldn't afford to look the other way. So on July 5, the archdiocese stripped Perrone of his collar pending further review from the Vatican.
Then came accuser No. 2.
Two weeks after Perrone's ouster from Assumption Grotto, another former altar boy from St. Peter's came forward with an allegation that Perrone "rubbed his genitalia" in 1981. According to a police report, the two were riding around the city of Detroit in a Volkswagen Rabbit, looking at the architecture of various Catholic churches when Perrone reached his hand over and rubbed the accuser's private parts. He said he pushed Perrone's hand away, and that Perrone acted like nothing happened and drove him back to the church in silence. The boy said he then took a bus home; and after that day, he quit being an altar boy.
Perrone has denied the allegation, saying he doesn't know the second accuser and doesn't recall him ever being an altar server at St. Peter. The lawsuit also challenges the credibility of the second accuser: a recovering drug addict who did time in prison for theft, according to police records.
Both accusers, through their attorney, have declined to speak to the Free Press. Both are now 54 and said they first disclosed the sex abuse allegations in therapy sessions long before contacting the authorities, according to police and church records.
They are not seeking money nor pursuing lawsuits against the archdiocese, church officials have said. They have received therapy from the church since coming forward.
Perrone's supporters, meanwhile, believe the 71-year-old pastor, who has passed two polygraph tests, has been caught up in mass hysteria due to scores of clergy sex abuse reports in recent years. The first allegation against Perrone surfaced just months before the explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report, which detailed child sexual abuse and cover-ups by more than 300 clergy members.
Multiple states launched clergy abuse investigations of their own, including Michigan, whose attorney general charged five Catholic priests with criminal sexual conduct last year.
The Detroit archdiocese also weighed in with letters from Archbishop Allen Vigneron, who offered prayers for the Pennsylvania victims and affirmed the need for accountability among clergy.
Against that backdrop, Perrone's supporters say, falsely accused priests don't stand a chance.
"Nobody cares about a wrongfully accused priest. So if the parishioners don't stand up, who will," said Christopher Kolomjec, a Grotto parishioner and Perrone's lawyer who has spent months trying to exonerate his priest.
At issue for Perrone's supporters is the official church document that was used to remove Perrone. It contains the rape allegation, stating that the alleged victim reported that Father Perrone "penetrated him anally," even though the accuser has said that didn't happen.
The lawsuit claims that church officials fabricated the rape claim to justify Perrone's removal and "browbeat" and "manipulated" the accuser into saying something salacious to satisfy the church review board overseeing the case.
"There's been a dark cloud over our parish since it happened. I have yet to meet a single person who wonders if it could be true," Kolomjec said. "He really is like a member of everyone's family. The parish has been crushed, devastated."
