fainted, clothed, left, came back, called 911. we said, how do you explain this? he must have misunderstood me. i don t know where that came from. weeks later, the perrys met with bishop john mccormick, whose handwritten notes were in the church file. he insisted his memory of that conversation with father foley was clear. he said, oh, no, he left. he told me he had to clear his head, left the house and walked up and down the streets of the neighborhood. it wasn t just a couple minutes, i don t know how long it was. it wasn t just for a couple months. and came back sometime later and then called. he recalled that detail? very specifically. that was the shocking part of the story. mccormick heard that directly from foley. right. at the end he said it doesn t appear that jim even now is fessing up to what happened. the thought of her passing
rich and chris were away at a basketball camp, summoned from the gym to see their father. my father is not a man to show a lot of emotion, but he was his eyes were teared up. took his glasses off, said your mother killed herself. she overdosed on drugs. jim, who was headed into the third grade, was the next to find out. it was pretty tough to handle at 8 years old. i used to have a recurring nightmare that she was in the hospital, and i would go up to the doctor and tell the doctor that she s not dead, she s just asleep. as the perrys tried to come to grips with their mother s death, all they could point to were her long bouts with depression. the family traced rita s mental illness to the loss of her firstborn child, a boy named tommy who had died as an infant. rita had been a nurse and believed, while pregnant with tommy, her exposures to x-rays caused the illness that proved fatal. she could never move on from
accept responsibility for what he s done. the priest wasn t required to show up for the hearing and didn t. his attorney argued the case should be dismissed. the judge later ruled in jim and emily s favor. foley had to take the paternity test. when you look at his face and you look in the mirror, do you see any resemblance? if i was a betting man, i would bet that he is my biological father. i think there is a resemblance. a month after the judge s ruling, foley, jim, and emily took the dna test that would determine paternity. it took about a week to complete the lab work, but to jim and emily, it felt like an eternity. the results left virtually no doubt. probability of paternity is 99.999%. so it came through as a positive on both jim and emily.
jim and emily s paternity. according to the perrys father, jim had been named for james foley. on her own, emily figured out her name was linked to foley, as well. his sister s name was emily. later, we found out that his mother s name was sheila. your name is emily sheila? emily sheila. his sister and his mother. his sister and his mother. yeah. that was shocking, too. still, the priest said there was no certainty that rita s two youngest children were his. good morning, mr. perry. jim and emily decided to ask a judge to order a paternity test. if foley was their biological father, it could change their understanding of their own medical history. they knew going to court would make this deeply personal matter uncomfortably public, but that was a price they were willing to pay. the fact father foley doesn t want to do the test now makes me want to do it even more. i want to take away that last shred of him being able to not
meet the man himself, father foley. uh-huh. yes. the last person alive to talk to our mother. we had some questions. it had been more than five weeks since the perrys first learned of father james foley s intimate history with their mother, plenty of time to imagine what they might say to the man they believed could have saved her life. the boston archdiocese helped arrange a phone call between jim and father foley. that led to the face to face meeting. jim had promised father foley we d be calm and cool and collected. we looked at each other and said, i don t know if we can do that. we really had to make a conscious decision to check our emotions at the door and go into the room and sit down and listen to him. the stakes were high, especially for jim and emily, who suspected the man sitting across the table was their biological father. emily, how were you feeling as this began? it was scary. it was chilling and i was shaking and hard to look at the