Survivors, now men, finally face former Wisconsin priest charged with molesting them
HAYWARD - Thomas Ericksen leaned back in his chair and turned to scan the courtroom behind him, with his hands in cuffs in front of his belly.
Two men sat in the back benches, returning his gaze. One was Paul Eck, a tall man with graying hair and dressed in black. This was the first time Eck and the former Catholic priest had seen each other in over 30 years.
It was a moment Eck had envisioned for a long time.
Ericksen is charged with molesting three boys in 1982 and 1983, when he was stationed at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Winter, Wisconsin.
Eck said he was among those victims. He was 17 years old at the time. The other man in the courtroom, who asked not to be named in this story, was the first to approach USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin about the sexual assaults they say they endured from a man they once trusted.
Now in his 50s, Eck drives for a car service near St. Louis, where he's lived for nearly 21 years. He's 6-foot-2 and has a booming voice, with a laugh that comes from his belly when he tells stories and jokes. He's steadfast in his beliefs as a born-again Christian and talks often about his two daughters.
As he sat in the courtroom, he said, the only thing that mattered was finally seeing the man who molested him over 30 years ago where he belongs.
This is the first time Ericksen faced criminal charges in connection with allegations of sexual assault while he was a priest, but multiple news accounts and documents posted online show that the Catholic Diocese of Superior knew about the accusations in the early 1980s. Diocese leaders removed Ericksen from the priesthood, sent him to counseling in Minneapolis and agreed to a reported $3 million out-of-court settlement with two of his victims, according to those reports.
Sawyer County investigators had known about the allegations for eight years, since 2010, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin learned. And they had elicited a confession to some of the crimes from Ericksen more than two years before charges were filed, according to the criminal complaints filed last month in Sawyer County court.
Ericksen's preliminary hearing on Dec. 12 in Hayward marked the first time he would face the men who say he victimized them as boys. The hearing lasted nearly an hour as Judge John Yackel listened to arguments from the attorneys and evidence presented by the Sawyer County Sheriff's Office, before ruling that there was probable cause for a trial.
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Eck waited quietly, listening to the arguments and keeping his eye on Ericksen, who continued looking over his shoulder when he wasn't leaning back and training his eyes on the ceiling. After the hearing was over, Eck stood up and left the courtroom.
He was glad that, finally, Ericksen would not be able to harm any more children, he said.
Decades have passed since the night on which Ericksen is accused of assaulting Eck, after the teen left a high school party intoxicated. Those years have been tough, Eck said, having to deal with the consequences of the assault and hearing that others were molested after him. But he's been steadfast in his path to healing and forgiveness over the last several years, he said, and in waiting for justice.
'Countless lives have been affected'
Eck is a welcoming man, and he draws you in with conversation.
He's devoted to learning more about being a Christian, though he left the Catholic church almost immediately after the alleged assault. He is easy-going and enjoys his driving job, as well as working as a gold and currency dealer for on online company based in Germany. He's looking forward to retiring in a few years, he said.
But he can't talk about his life without starting with what Ericksen is accused of doing to him in 1983, and how it altered him.
Eck met Ericksen at St. Peter's Catholic Church, where he was already an altar boy before the priest was transferred from Merrill in 1982. Eck's dad left his mother when he was 3, so it was nice to have a male role model.
"I don't really have a recollection of having a father," he said. "It was kind of cool because somebody, an adult male, took me under his wing and was showing me things and doing things for me."
Ericksen took Eck to the movies, out for dinner and even on a trip to Merrill, where Ericksen had previously been a chaplain at a hospital and convent. The priest even let Eck borrow his Ford Thunderbird for trips to see his girlfriend in Hayward and to run errands. The night that Eck asked to borrow the car after the homecoming dance wasn't out of the ordinary.
The details Eck shared about that night in an interview with a reporter match those found in one of the criminal complaints against Ericksen.
Eck, a junior in high school at the time, said he drove the priest's car to a party after the homecoming basketball game and dance. At the party, he drank five or six beers, enough to be drunk when he returned the Thunderbird to the priest around 2 a.m.
"I don't know exactly what transpired because I was drunk, but the memories I do have is that I got back to the rectory and he was awake and could tell that I had been drinking," Eck said.
He asked the priest to take him home. Ericksen persuaded him to stay in the guest bedroom for the night.
"In my state, I was like, 'Not a bad idea,'" he said. "So I went into the guest bedroom and laid down, actually probably more passed out than fell asleep. I woke up and he was kneeling beside my bed, rubbing my back and then I drifted off again."
Eck said that he was going in and out of consciousness, but when he awoke again, he was on his back and his underwear were gone. After the teen drifted off and come to again, Ericksen had removed his own clothes and was on top of him.
"When I woke up the next morning I felt maybe I had dreamed it," he said.
Eck said that though he may have thought it a nightmare at first, that night stuck with him, along with the next Monday when he and some other members of the basketball team were suspended from future games because school administrators had found out about the party and drinking the night before. But he also remembers it because of the immediate change the assault brought to his life.
"The tough part about it was the fact that I was still a virgin and I had a girlfriend and she and I just, you know, were just having the regular teenage relationship," he said. "And after that night it all changed ... Like a rock going into water, there's a ripple effect."
Eck broke up with the girl, and from then on he struggled to form close relationships. He continued like that for a long time.
"For 30 plus years I tried to prove that I wasn't gay," he said. "That was the overriding factor in my mind. Like, why was he so attracted to me?"
He married three times and all three marriages failed. He struggled with alcohol. He was promiscuous.
"Countless lives have been affected by what (Ericksen) did that one night," he said, of his own experience.
'He was a predator'
Eck is one of three victims who reported assaults by the priest to the Sawyer County Sheriff's Office. Ericksen is being held in the Sawyer County jail on a $500,000 cash bond awaiting his arraignment in January.
He is charged with one count of first-degree sexual assault of a child, one count of second-degree sexual assault of a child and one count of second-degree sexual assault of an unconscious victim.
The sheriff's office began investigating the reports of abuse in 2010, and Ericksen confessed to investigators in 2016, according to criminal complaints. Sawyer County District Attorney Bruce Poquette's office filed charges on Nov. 16, two weeks after USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin filed an open records request for documents from the investigation.
The news network has heard from another man who said Ericksen engaged in inappropriate conduct toward him while serving as a priest in Merrill. The man said he has grappled over the years with whether to take his story to police but has not.
Ericksen told police that he also molested boys in Rice Lake and Rhinelander, according to the criminal complaint, but USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has found no record of charges against him in those counties, nor were law enforcement agencies aware of any investigations into the former priest.
Ericksen was the chaplain of the Holy Cross Convent and Hospital in Merrill for three years before he was relocated to Winter, according to documents from St. Robert's Catholic Church. During that time, it wasn't uncommon for him to assist other priests during Masses, like those held for students at St. Robert's Elementary School.
The man who spoke with a reporter, but not police, said he attended St. Robert's at the time. That church merged with another Catholic parish in 1995 due to priest shortages, and became known at St. Francis Xavier, according to the Superior Diocese website.
The man reached out to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin after its first story about Ericksen was published in November. He is now in his late 40s and no longer lives in Merrill. The man wished to remain anonymous, and USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin doesn't typically name people who say they've been sexually assaulted unless they consent.
He said he had surgery during the school year that required an incision below the line of his underwear. After the priest found out about the surgery, he would routinely stop the boy who, as an altar boy, was often isolated from other students before and during Mass. Ericksen would take him to a small bathroom, away from the normal routes of travel for students and teachers, to inspect the wound, he said.
"I'd have to pull down my pants (for him) to see how the healing was progressing," the man said. "It was a part of the everyday course of school. It was always he and I."
The man said that this occurred for months, only ending when school let out for the summer. He can't remember what exactly the priest would say to him, but he vividly remembers the bathroom.
He also recalls other times when the priest behaved inappropriately, like the day the priest talked a group of young boys into going skinny dipping.
"We did it and he took our clothes," he said. "I don't remember what happened to the clothes, but we ran around looking for (them)."
And then there was the time that the priest asked the boy to come back to his apartment, the man said.
"I remember him asking me to come over and see his waterbed," he said.
The two other men who came forward to a reporter both said that Ericksen would talk about the rarity of having a water bed.
Ericksen left Merrill when the Diocese of Superior moved him to St. Peter's in Winter, and the former Merrill man said he didn't think of the priest until he was an adult and news stories started to come out about how the church had protected abusive priests, moving them to different parishes instead of turning them over to police.
"I thought 'Well, we had one of those in my church,'" he said.
After that, the man said, came frustration. He's always wondered if there were more victims in Merrill.
Coming to terms with the past
Over the years, another man has wondered the same thing. That man, who is 50 and still lives in Merrill, told the Sawyer County Sheriff's Office in 2011 that Ericksen assaulted him in 1982 in Winter.
After that, there wasn't much more to do than wait. So he did, for seven years.
The man reached out to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and shared his story this fall, saying he hoped to see Ericksen in a place where he could not harm anyone else.
He was the other man sitting next to Eck in the back of the courtroom last week.
"Seeing him there, just kind of felt good, like he's finally where he belongs," the Merrill man said after Ericksen's preliminary hearing. "And that's something that's been my whole motivation, you know, I didn't want anyone else to get hurt."
The man, who asked to remain anonymous to protect family members, said he doesn't hold any animosity. He doesn't believe the blame lies with anyone other than Ericksen, although he wishes the Catholic Church had done more to protect him and other children.
He is frustrated with how long it took the district attorney to bring charges after there was a confession. Yet he said there's a new sense of peace in his life since Ericksen's arrest.
"My life has been a mess," he said. "But I can feel a change, you know, it gets easier. Easier meaning that I've started to come to grips with the fact that it happened and I'm not embarrassed or ashamed and I don't feel like I did anything wrong."
He said that he hopes other survivors can read his story and know not to carry the shame and anguish of assaults, and to bravely step forward, too.
"I'm stronger for it," he said of speaking up.
'I didn't feel anger'
Eck said Ericksen's court appearance last Wednesday was the first time he'd seen the man in 35 years, since the priest was ousted from St. Peter's in the 1980s.
He was surprised by his own emotions when Ericksen entered the courtroom, shackled and wearing a jail-issued orange winter coat.
"I didn't feel anger and I didn't feel any hate. I felt satisfied, seeing him where he should be," he said. "This is not about me getting vengeance or me getting satisfaction or justice for what he did to me. It's entirely now about keeping him off the streets and away from other little boys."
It took Eck a long time to reach this point, he said, to come to terms with the effects of the assault and of hiding it for so long. But Eck sees his process as a way to help others who are struggling. He said he wants survivors of sexual assault and abuse to know that they don't have to hide in shame or face their pain by themselves.
"The shame of it was kept inside for such a long time, that once I released it and started talking about it, I talked about it to anybody," Eck said. "If I can use this to help people heal who have gone through it, then it was worth it. I wish I wouldn't have gone through it, you know, but it's being used for good now. It's not an evil thing anymore."
Laura Schulte is a reporter based at the Wausau Daily Herald. If you have any information about this case or other cases involving clergy abuse that have not been reported, you may reach her at leschulte@gannett.com or by phone at 715-496-4088.
This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: Church abuse: Survivors face ex-priest charged with molesting
