In 1886, the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, established its first mission in western Alaska. Making converts in this frozen, unforgiving corner of the world proved difficult at first.
For thousands of years, Eskimos' lives as hunters and gatherers had been ruled by "Yuuyaaraq," or "the way of the human being." Yu'pik people believed that their elaborate oral traditions and spiritual beliefs helped ward off bad weather, famine and illness.
It wasn't until an influenza epidemic in 1900 wiped out more than 60 percent of Alaska's native population that the Jesuits began to make headway. The Eskimo shamans seemed no match for the deadly virus. The spiritual defeat, along with Western influences, caused entire villages to convert to the new religion.
Staffing remote parishes such as those in St. Michael and Stebbins with full-time priests has proved impossible, which is why Lundowski and other volunteers played a key role in village ministries.
Just 200 miles below the Arctic Circle, the wind-swept settlements of St. Michael Island sit 12 miles apart on a rugged section of coast where the tundra meets the Bering Sea. They are accessible only by small plane or, when the ice melts on Norton Sound, by boat.
Lundowski arrived in 1968, at the end of a long personal odyssey. An orphan, he was raised in West Virginia by his aunt. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army under Gen. George S. Patton in North Africa and Europe, former associates said.
After the war, he lived at a Trappist monastery in Oregon and worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska before volunteering to help the Rev. George Endal, a Jesuit priest, in several Eskimo villages.
Endal was responsible for St. Michael, Stebbins and a third settlement, Unalakleet, 45 minutes away by plane. Villagers said that for long stretches of time, Endal left parish affairs on St. Michael Island in the hands of Lundowski and another lay missionary.
Though Lundowski was never ordained, he assumed the role of a Catholic priest. Villagers said he wore vestments and held Sunday services, gave homilies, taught catechism, baptized children, officiated at weddings and performed burial services at a hillside cemetery, where digging a grave required breaking through six feet of frozen tundra with picks and shovels.
Lundowski started molesting boys soon after he arrived, according to legal documents. Joseph Steve, a slight, soft-spoken man in his mid-50s, believes he was the missionary's first target.
Lundowski had daily access to the village children, teaching catechism and holding afternoon recreation sessions in the "monkey rooms," as parish play areas were called.
One day, after Kobuk recited the Ten Commandments and sang "This Is the Day the Lord Has Made," Lundowski told him to stay after class. After the other boys left, Lundowski locked the doors and lowered the shades, Kobuk said.
Kobuk said that Lundowski removed his dentures and performed oral sex on him in the missionary's rectory bedroom. Then Lundowski gave Kobuk a $20 bill — a fortune for an Eskimo boy in 1971— and told him he was a "special kid," Kobuk said.
Kobuk said that when he threatened to tell, Lundowski told him to go ahead, saying no one would believe a child over a man of God. Kobuk said the missionary also threatened to flunk Kobuk in catechism class.
Another villager, Elias Pete Jr., 43, hung out at the Stebbins church on weekday afternoons and Saturdays, drawn by the warmth of its oil-burning stove. When he was 9, Pete said, Lundowski performed oral sex on him for the first of many times. Afterward, he said, the missionary gave him 25 cents that he shook out of an Easter Seal donation can.
Nicolas Pete, Elias' 41-year-old uncle, said Lundowski would threaten to take away stars that tracked his progress toward confirmation unless the boy consented to sex.
"When he was all done, he would say, 'You can keep that star,' or 'I'll give you another one.' Silver or blue, those were the high-ranking ones."
Lockwood, 48, of St. Michael, said Lundowski would drag him into the rectory bedroom, digging his meaty fingers into Lockwood's biceps hard enough to leave bruises.
After one attack, he said, "I showed him the bruises and said I was going to tell. But he just said, 'You're a little kid. People will just think you fell down.' "
The isolated and impoverished Eskimo villages had spotty telephone service and no police officers. But Kobuk and several others said they tried to get help. A few told their parents, who didn't believe them. Three said they reported Lundowski's conduct to the priest, Endal, who promised to take care of it, though the molestations continued.
"I thought (Lundowski) would get in trouble for what he was doing," said Thomas, who says he was molested as a boy. "I couldn't figure it out. I decided one time to tell somebody, but I couldn't figure who to go to."
Austin suggested Lundowski wait until later in the day, when a bush pilot was expected to fly in. "He said it would be too late," Austin recalled.
Like many others, Lockwood turned to alcohol and drugs. Because both villages are dry settlements — a fifth of hard liquor goes for $150 on the black market — Lockwood made "home brew" alcohol, a mixture of yeast, sugar and fruit juice.
Thomas Cheemuk got married, raised six children and attempted suicide three times. In 1999, his brother, John "Dunny" Cheemuk Jr., killed himself, a death Tommy attributes to the molestations.
Kobuk was the only one of the Eskimos to talk openly about what had happened. He said he spoke about the alleged abuse with at least nine priests and one nun. On three occasions, he said, he brought it up with Bishop Michael Joseph Kaniecki, who came to the village annually to perform the confirmation ceremonies.
One evening in 2004, Kobuk saw a TV news report about a sexual abuse case against a Nome priest. For the first time since the Catholic Church molestation scandals had erupted, someone was taking on the Alaska church. Kobuk said he began to consider legal action.
A former state sex crimes and federal prosecutor, Roosa signed up his first client in Alaska's clergy sexual abuse scandal in 2002. Shortly afterward, he was swamped with calls from others who said they had been abused and brought in John Manly, a Costa Mesa, Calif., attorney who had helped negotiate a record $100 million settlement for sexual abuse suits against the Diocese of Orange County, Calif.
Since then, 85 Alaska natives from 13 villages have filed claims against the church for alleged abuse by six priests and two lay missionaries from 1956 to 1988.
The flood of allegations has led to speculation that the Eskimo settlements were a "dumping ground" for abusive priests and lay workers affiliated with the Jesuit order, which supplied priests and bishops to the Fairbanks diocese.
"It's like the French Foreign Legion — you join rather than go to prison," says Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk who is an authority on clergy sexual abuse and has served as an expert witness in hundreds of cases, including those in the Eskimo villages.
Initially, all of the Stebbins and St. Michael men wanted to remain anonymous, agreeing to file suits only under the legal pseudonym "James Doe." That changed when Kobuk came forward and encouraged others to go public as he had.
Now the men must prove their claims. As victims of clergy sexual abuse across the country have learned, reconstructing events that occurred decades ago in secret is a daunting task. For the Eskimos, the job was complicated by the church's initial insistence that there was no record that Lundowski had ever volunteered for the church.
An additional piece of evidence against Lundowski came from one of his alleged victims. The man, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is serving a prison sentence for rape in Alaska, gave the plaintiffs' lawyers a letter Lundowski had written to him in 1993.
In a handwritten letter with a postmark from Chicago, Lundowski replied: "Your letter came to me as a shock and sadden (sic) me as to your condition. It goes without saying that if I am in anyway to blame for your illness, I apologize....
"I pray to God who relieves all illness to comfort you and to restore you to perfect health. Since I left Alaska and came (to Chicago) to work, I have accepted the Lord in a real and personal manner . . . I too have suffered. Two years ago I had a heart attack with a stroke and still have limited use of my legs and arms. My prayer for myself every day is for Him to come and take me. I don't write this for sympathy, but to let you see the Lord punishes us in his own ways."
Officials of the Diocese of Fairbanks and the Jesuits' Oregon Province, the two defendants in the Lundowski suits, have asked a state judge to throw out the claims.
They argue that the statute of limitations on the allegations has run out and that Lundowski was an unauthorized volunteer not under the supervision of the diocese or the Jesuits.
Whitney, head of the Jesuits' Oregon Province, said: "We're not culpable for the actions of Mr. Lundowski, who was never a Jesuit. We have a moral responsibility in our role as priests to be part of the reconciliation work of Christ." He said reconciliation and healing would come in a relationship with God, not in a courtroom.
"We've remained faithful to the people in the villages," Whitney said. "We haven't withdrawn or run away. We want to be companions in their pain and healing."
Kobuk says he longs to go to church but cannot overcome the feeling that the elders there have turned their backs on him twice: once when he was a child and again now.
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