Cover Story

Decades later, his tragic tale surfaces

So much thought, so much hurt has brought me, after all these years, to once again acknowledge your presence on this earth, and to once again find myself in a position to be manipulated by you. This time, though, I am armed with years of anguish, hurt, resentment and, finally, resolution to confront you and to remind you that you sexually and emotionally abused me.

Those were the words of Deputy Sheriff Mike Coode, now 62, to the priest he says abused him. On an October day in 1996, he traveled to St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Ala., so that he could speak them directly to Father Roger Lott. That’s where the priest, an old man who once lived in Nashville and whose priestly faculties have since been suspended, was living. In fact, he still lives there today.

Sitting at the dining table in the abbot’s refectory, Coode read over his words. With him was a friend from Nashville, Beth Brown. They waited for the door to open. Their faces were as blank as the backs of tombstones.

When the door did open, Coode came face to face with Father Lott. They had not laid eyes on each other in 38 years.

“He was just like I remembered him,” Coode recalls, “only now he was an old man. Now he walked with a cane.”

Abbot Cletus Meagher, the kind and unassuming priest who heads the Benedictine abbey of some 25 monks, had escorted Father Lott into the room. Both wore the distinctive, black Benedictine cloak with the cowl back. The two priests sat down; Coode introduced his friend, then told Father Lott that he had a letter he wanted to read to him.

Coode had rehearsed this letter for what seemed to him “a thousand times.” Still, at times, the words hung in his throat, emotion interrupting. Except for Coode’s voice, the room was as silent as a catacomb.

You manipulated me beyond belief. You betrayed the trust my parents placed in you. You totally and completely made a farce and charade of my sacred religion. You took an adolescent and manipulated his mind totally, leaving a confused and bewildered person who somehow managed to find a way—his way—a way paved with confusion, wrecklessness (sic) and, no doubt, manipulation if necessary. You left an adolescent a sexual catastrophe willing to use this only resource he had to win affection, gain material things, win approval.

It’s 1953 in Nashville. Along West End Avenue near Vanderbilt University sits the ecclesiastical heart of Catholicism in Tennessee. The Cathedral of the Incarnation contains the Throne of the Bishop, signifying that this is the mother church for all Tennessee Catholics. From the steps of the Cathedral, you can see the upper floors of the Catholic St. Thomas Hospital on Hayes Street. In minutes, a priest can walk from the Cathedral to Elliston Place and enter the all-male Father Ryan High School, named for the priest who was known as the “poet priest of the Confederacy.” Cathedral, the girls’ high school, is next door to the church. It’s all within a little five-square-block area, like Tennessee’s own little Vatican City.

At the first hint of light along West End, a handsome Irish kid, about 13 years old, shuffles reluctantly toward the Cathedral. This kid, considered by his elders as a bit of a hell-raiser, is under orders from his parents to show up at the Cathedral to serve as an altar boy. His name is Charles Michael Coode, the youngest of 11 children of John Coode Jr., a coal salesman, and his wife, Ellen. Young Mike has been assigned to serve mass for Father Roger Lott, a Benedictine originally from Minnesota. Father Lott is down in Nashville, living temporarily in the Cathedral rectory while he works on an advanced degree in library science at nearby George Peabody College.

“It started with him befriending my mother,” Coode says of Father Lott. “Him saying I was trouble—and I was. That’s very typical. They gain the confidence of the parents. Through all of this, I would never have thought my mother and daddy were aware that any of this was happening.”

Coode chokes back tears when he thinks of his parents and the fact that they were, essentially, unwitting accomplices in what he regards as the most traumatic and destructive part of his life. A muscular, tough man can go through 12 years as a sheriff’s deputy, facing pain, mayhem and human wreckage with an unblinking eye and a square-set jaw. But it’s another thing to describe your own parents as participants in your sexual abuse.

“I don’t understand why in the world they didn’t see something wrong,” he says. “I mean, he was taking me to the restaurant in the Hermitage Hotel and buying me clothes and stuff. We were poor. We had 11 children in my family. Why in the world they didn’t see something. I don’t know. I would have gotten my ass kicked if I had ever said anything about it. I was a troubled kid.