Why ‘Unreconciled’ Is A Story Statistics Can’t Tell

Fact-filled Grand Jury reports and countless newspaper articles fail to protect children. Sharing staggering statistics hasn’t added up to change. But stories — well, those can open hearts and minds and create change.

Weeks after the show, Unreconciled won’t let go of me.

I’ve seen more than my fair share of stage productions. As an Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Catholic Standard and Times in the ’90s, I wrote theatre reviews, but my appreciation began in fourth grade when my aunt took me to see Annie. Exuberant, joyful musicals get me every time. Unreconciled promises the opposite.

The one-man show, performed by Jay Sefton, recounts his true story of being cast as Jesus at age 13 in Annunciation BVM’s passion play. Parish priest and play director Father Thomas J. Smith sexually abuses him, adding to his long list of child victims, kept secret by Archdiocesan leadership. There’s no catchy soundtrack to sing along with later. But ask me to choose between seeing Hamilton (one of my favorites) or Unreconciled again, I’d say the latter, please — and not only because I advocate for child sex abuse prevention.

Sefton and co-writer Mark Basquill rise to the impossible challenge of crafting the most horrific circumstances into 80 minutes of gripping entertainment. The actor plays every role with a talented specificity: his Delco-accented, Phils-loving dad, a grating parish gossip, his sadistic abuser, himself as a confused eighth-grader, and the many others who shape the decades-spanning story.

Video footage of the 1985 play, shown in the stage background, took me back to the innocence and vulnerability of my eighth-grade self, who was thrilled to wear the hot-pink dress as Mary Magdalene in St. David’s Stations of the Cross. I’d choose Unreconciled even if I hadn’t shared the same suburban Philly Catholic youth.

A particular moment in the show brought me to tears. The survivor sitting next to me offered comfort and a tissue — a quiet act of thoughtfulness that says more about the weight survivors carry and their brave generosity than anything I could write here. And it struck me that Sefton continues to represent Jesus far more accurately than many of the priests ordained to that role.

I’d choose Unreconciled for its raw and transformative honesty.

Why does a certain song, book, or movie remain with you months or years later? Because the art of storytelling can transport us beyond listening, reading, and watching to feeling — to an emotional experience that reveals profound truth and connection. This is one of those stories.

Please help Unreconciled reach the widest audience possible by supporting production of the Unreconciled documentary, a feature-length film that follows Sefton as he brings his story back to where it began in Havertown, a tight-knit community deeply impacted by the Archdiocesan cover-up of clergy child sex abuse, and onto Harrisburg, where legislation that would reform the statutes of limitations has been stalled.

Your tax-deductible donation can help make this happen.

Watch the trailer for the award-winning one-man show below: