![]() Even though he wasn’t the caretaker, Thomas Touchstone was often around as well. “She gave him tons of love, we never ever suspected a single thing,” Christina Brophy said. Ann Touchstone adored Ryan, Christina Brophy said. This was the beginning of a long family friendship between the two couples. “We were struggling about what to do, and things fell into place,” Steve Brophy said. To the Brophys, the Touchstones seemed like a simple and kind couple. Then one day, the woman who’d sold them the house knocked on their door and asked if they needed a babysitter for Ryan when Christina went back to work.Īnn Touchstone was a former nun and teacher, and her husband, Thomas Touchstone, was a baker at Boston College. He was an infant when they moved into a house in Dedham, Mass., in 1987, and didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood. Steve wondered how could anyone have any faith in the church.Ī few months later, in summer of 2016, the Brophy family got answers about what happened to Ryan. Steve and Christina Brophy sat in silence in the theater in Warwick, watching the end of the film as it scrolled through a long list of places where priests were accused of abusing children. They remember, though, watching the movie “Spotlight,” about The Boston Globe’s investigation into the Roman Catholic Church’s coverup of sexual abuse. They didn’t know what was wrong, but there were clues: a diagnosis once that prompted questions years ago about whether he had been sexually abused, Christina Brophy said. “There’s a lot of pain all around, and we’ve done everything under the sun to try to support him,” Steve Brophy said. And they saw his rages and pain, which eluded the help of counselors, therapies, and medication. His parents, Steve and Christina, saw a boy who was always smart, athletic, quick to stand up to bullies. ![]() Ryan said he struggled early in his life with abuse of alcohol and drugs, depression, and anger. For most of his life, Ryan and his family knew there was something deeply troubling him that he couldn’t express.
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