As a priest occupying the powerful dark space of the confessional box, Robert Schaeufele used to dole out forgiveness. Now, in court and dressed in prison blues, Robert Schaeufele was asking for it.
His voice was flat and his words sounded insincere. Not that they would have made a difference. Pinellas Circuit Judge Brandt C. Downey III already had sentenced Schaeufele to 30 years, for molesting two boys 20 years ago in Pinellas County.
Minutes later, just outside the big doors of the Pinellas courthouse, Jeffrey Rozanowski stood in the drizzle and fingered a cigarette. Others might have considered this a moment to savor. Justice was done. The Catholic Church had been forced to take one more step to clean up its secret sexual past.
But Rozanowski, 25, was hurting and didn't bother to hide it.
"I lost the first father I ever had," he said Friday, through green eyes that sparkled brightly with tears.
Schaeufele, priest and predator, had been the linchpin of his life.
Rozanowski's biological father was utterly absent from the start. His mother was an alcoholic. They lived in public housing in Dade City. The moment lives with Jeffrey Rozanowski still, the moment when his mother drank up their last dime and she had no money to pay the light bill. She turned to St. Rita's Catholic Church in Dade City for help.
That was when Father Bob came into their lives. About a year later, Rozanowski said, the sexual relationship began - a weird ritual in which the priest performed enemas on the boy.
Across the years, the priest's kindnesses seemed bottomless. He bought Rozanowski a moped, several cars. When Rozanowski got arrested, the priest bailed him out. He took him to Disney World and deep sea fishing. He paid tuition to private Catholic schools.
It goes down hard with some of us, but Jeffrey Rozanowski remembers the priest's moral teachings best. "If I had $5 and somebody needed $2.50, I'd give it to them, because of all the good things he did for me and my mom," Rozanowski said.
I'm not telling you this to pitch the bright side of a child molester. I'm showing how shrewdly a man like that picks his victims - a needy child, like the one Jeffrey Rozanowski once was.
You can hear the grown child struggling, as he must have over the years, with the sense that what the priest did was wrong. Rozanowski wanted to stop it, he said, but "I didn't want to lose him."
The sexual relationship ended when he was about 18. But they stayed in touch. Rozanowski didn't come forward about Schaeufele and speak up against the priest until he read about other men doing so. Then he began to reflect on his experience. It's been a slow process.
"I'm still having trouble accepting that it was wrong," Rozanowski said.
If you think about it, this is not so strange. No matter what else, Schaeufele was a reliable feature in an unreliable world. How hard that must be to give up. How painful to learn Schaeufele's kindnesses were all calculated, and not straight from the heart.
"Yes, it is hard," Rozanowski said. "It's not like I had a heck of a lot of family on hand."
So he turned to Father Bob.
"He was my best friend/brother. I was looking forward to him marrying me and my wife. I took his confirmation name, Robert."
And he made this unholy bargain, satisfying the sexual needs of the priest for love's sake.
The love remains. No matter what. Jeffrey Rozanowski still loves Father Bob, loves him like the good father he always needed.
