MORE THAN 20 years after the abuse ended, he says, it still haunts him. He was a seventh grader, an altar boy, allegedly one of the Catholic priest's favorite victims. The molestation went on for months, he says. The damage remains.

To try to cope, he put on a mask, a veneer of conventionality. He enlisted in the Army, served ably. He married, had three children.

But he's angry all the time, and his wife wonders why. He's scared to trust her, or anyone. She in turn anguishes.

According to this man and other victims of priest pedophilia, the most formidable challenge of such childhood sexual abuse is exorcising the old demons, breaking free of a secret shame that was none of their own doing.

"All I ever wanted from the church was an apology, but they would not give it to me, they would not say they would try to fix things," said the 42-year-old man, one of the alleged victims of Monsignor Patrick O'Shea.

The former pastor of St. Cecilia's Church, O'Shea was accused of molesting nine boys from the 1960s to the '80s. Earlier this month, a San Francisco judge dismissed 16 felony charges against the priest becausethe statute of limitations for prosecution had expired.

"It was demoralizing what we went through with the legal system and now it is even worse," says the alleged victim, who, along with most who talked for this story, asked that his name not be used. "The door has somehow got to be closed."

His story is similar to other alleged victims of O'Shea. He says the priest repeatedly got him drunk when he was a student at Mission Dolores Elementary School and molested him in the priest's rectory bedroom and at a trailer at Lake Berryessa in Napa County.

More and more adults are confronting Roman Catholic officials with evidence of sexual misconduct by clergy. More are initiating criminal or civil actions, demanding compensation or negotiating confidential settlements.

But the courts cannot help fight the psychological problems that dog the victims as they grapple with a brutal, private reality: How do they regain their lives?

One major group of clergy victims is planning a "national healing" conference in September to tackle that issue.

"The whole focus of the conference is moving beyond our victimization, getting on with life, to acknowledge what's happened to us but not be limited by it," says Tom Economus, president of Linkup, a Chicago-based group with 8,000 members who say they are victims of clergy sexual abuse. There are 57 from the Bay Area.

"The abuse has dictated our lives. It's our responsibility to move on," says Economus, 38, who says he was molested by a Catholic priest in South Dakota starting when he was 14. "I was filled with guilt and shame and all the things that accompany sexual abuse. I don't want to be a victim anymore."

The San Francisco Archdiocese is paying for at least one local victim to attend the conference.

It's also providing therapy for some local residents.

"Any of the victims who have come forward to the archdiocese, and we have asked that they do, have been offered counseling . . . using a counselor of their choice," said Deacon Bill Mitchell, archdiocesan spokesman.

"The archdiocese (is) bearing the cost of that counseling. That, we feel, is the most effective way that the church can help with their recovery."

The archdiocese will not disclose what it has paid or the number of clergy misconduct claims.

"Our intention is to try to get these things disposed of," says Ted Keiler, risk manager for Ordinary Mutual, the insurance carrier for 12 dioceses including San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. "And the (intention of the) church is to try to take care of the person and to take care of their resources.

"We really have very few claims. The bulk of them are from years ago, from things that happened in the '60s or '70s. . . . We have very few claims from recent years. We have lots more people who slip and fall in churches."

In the last five years, the Catholic church has been hit nationally with at least 400 cases involving allegations of pedophilia by priests. Much of the alleged abuse occurred several decades ago, but victims say they remained silent or their complaints were ignored by the church. Experts place the cost to the church at more than $400 million.

"When I least expect it, I'm young again, watching the cot being pulled out from under his workbench," says a young man who allegedly was molested by Brother Salvatore Billante, a longtime parish youth ministry advisor at Corpus Christi Church in San Francisco. "Didn't anybody wonder why he blackened out the windows to his office so nobody in the schoolyard could see in?"

Billante was convicted of multiple counts of child sexual abuse, served four years of an eight-year sentence at San Quentin Prison and was paroled in 1993.

Believed to have molested 24 youths, Billante cost the archdiocese, the Salesian Brothers and their insurance companies more than $750,000.

"The only way for a second- or third-grader to deal with the enormity of the situation is to ignore it, think about anything else, find some other activity to distract the mind," says the young man. "Fortunately for me, I chose schoolwork and prayer.

"Ironically," he said, "some of the most deeply prayerful times in my life were lying on my back inside the rectory while my pants were being pulled down. I was praying to God for the ability to understand why this was happening . . . praying for it to stop."

For most of his life, says the man, he has been in a "guarded shell," unable to confide in others, resolutely refusing, until recently, a showdown with his past.

"I would never admit that I needed therapy, I saw no point in spilling my guts to a stranger," he says. "But you can't cure it, you can't solve it, you can't make it go away. . . . You grow intolerant of the secret, of leaving the past buried, of the cloud over your head. When you uncap your block of feelings, you feel unspeakable rage."

Some turn to alcohol or drugs.

"I made a suicide attempt, overdosed," says a plaintiff in a civil suit against the San Francisco Archdiocese, Archbishop John R. Quinn and others.

"I'm still grossly affected by it. They've (the archdiocese) cut off paying for my therapy. I'm frustrated. What incentive does anyone have to come forward, to make criminal reports when they don't even slap these guys on the wrist?"

Many victims lose faith, not necessarily in God, but in the church.

"I'm comforted by praying every day, but I never go to church," says the San Francisco man molested by Brother Salvatore. "It's hard for me not to see every priest as a potential molester. I know that's not fair, but based on the number of cases in the news, the church is obviously a safe haven for abusers with built-in access to many innocent little people."

James R. Porter, a former Roman Catholic priest, pleaded guilty two years ago to 41 counts of child abuse in Massachusetts and was sentenced to 18 to 20 years. One of his victims, Frank Fitzpatrick, launched a group called Survivor Connections.

"People have to find some way to stand up; it is horrible to quietly deal with it," says Fitzpatrick, 45, an insurance adjuster and licensed private detective.

"That's one of the ways the Catholic Church revictimizes people: They insert a clause into settlements that the victim won't name the perpetrator, won't publicly discuss it in exchange for money. They call it a confidentiality agreement but really it simply protects the perpetrator . . . and it silences the victim once again."

One Rhode Island woman, Kathleen Guilfoyle, is openly defying a confidentiality agreement she and her son signed in 1990.

"The more people keep quiet the more opportunity the perpetrator has to (continue) his crimes," she says. "I feel they won't come after us. They would have to take legal action against us . . . that would make them look even more ridiculous."

Under their settlement, Guilfoyle's son, now 26, who was repeatedly molested by a priest, is being paid $40,000 a year until 2010 when he will receive a lump sum of $750,000.

Guilfoyle's bluntness had a cost: Her son stopped speaking to her months ago, convinced the church would stop his payments.

"He's an emotional time bomb waiting to go off," said Guilfoyle. "He goes through the $40,000 like water. He is so damaged, he doesn't have a conscience anymore, he doesn't know how to love or trust anymore."

Some victims who manage to confront the church simply want an apology.

Others want money for therapy or a tuition refund. Some want sizable damage payments for lost wages or psychological problems.

Most want the offender held accountable, and an assurance that the abuse will not occur again, says Debra Warwick- Sabino, a Sacramento pastoral counselor who negotiates settlements between victims and various denominations.

"They want acknowledgement, counseling, they want to know the church takes this seriously," she says.

"Some people ask for things we can't help with," said Keiler, "like a monetary value for their loss of faith in the church. There is no way we can put a price tag on that."

Some form of payment was important to a San Francisco woman molested at age 11, in 1967, by a visiting priest.

"Payment to me acknowledges that the church does believe me, that a wrong was done to me," she says. The archdiocese is paying for her therapy.

Dr. Paul McHugh, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, maintains that victims of priestly pedophilia can eventually recover.

"It is terrible but it is not life-destroying," McHugh says. "We have a capacity for recovery that is often misunderstood because, in part, people aren't rewarded for recovering, they dwell on it because they have no (reason) not to.

"We're trying to get people to say they had a bad deal, something truly awful happened to them, but ultimately the future is up to them."

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