Carl Russell waited for much of his life to tell the secret the Boothbay Harbor man should have never had to keep.

With his wife's and his therapist's support, and a teddy bear that would also play a special role, Russell was finally able to speak about the childhood trauma he said went on for years. While it was happening, and afterward, for the rest of his parents' lives, he never told them that a family friend, their Episcopal church's rector in another Maine town, had abused him sexually.

The grandfather of seven continues to heal from the ordeal he buried so deeply, for so long; talking about it was the start. Writing has helped, too.

Russell's book, “No Telling Aloud: Keeping Secrets That Hurt,” details incidents from the time he was about eight, in 1944, until about the age of 14; their assorted impacts, personally and in his career as a priest; and then the start of his healing, decades after the incidents.

“I really needed to write it in order to get some closure for myself, but I also wanted to set the record straight because this man ... managed to get off scot-free .... This whole piece of his life went under the radar and was never disclosed, and I wanted to get the rest of the story out there.”

In addition, Russell, 77, wanted other survivors of abuse to be able to identify with what he wrote and know that they are not alone. He plans to hold an open meeting in town, for anyone who wants to talk about the book or any issues it brought up for people, he said.

“I think this is something that needs to be talked about, and it's a very uncomfortable subject for people, so my thought was, if I could show ... that I'm comfortable with it, that other people might be comfortable to try to come to terms with it.”

A time and place for the discussion will be announced soon, he said.

The man was never charged with the horrible offenses Russell describes in the book. A settlement the two reached after Russell sued him put a gag order in effect, until the death of the already aged man.

Russell said that when he was still a child, the man had also told him not to tell. But that wasn't the only thing that kept the boy from telling his family, or anyone else.

Russell said his parents were dedicated to the family's church, and to the rector; career disappointments had left Russell's father with a void that an active, lay leadership role in the church appeared to fill.

Russell wasn't sure his parents would believe him if he told. He also feared telling, for the trouble it could bring the local church.

Russell stayed silent long after the incidents had stopped. But the lasting effects surfaced in ways that only made sense after he told his wife and then his therapist what happened to him as a child.

For example, Russell still is not comfortable seeing people's bare feet. He associates it with seeing the rector's feet all those years ago.

When Russell became an Episcopal priest himself, he spoke staunchly against people being gay. His sentiments at the time even cost him a potential promotion to bishop; he told the interviewers he would seek to identify and remove all homosexual clergy.

He has since come to realize that, as a result of what he had been through, he was wrongly assigning a link between homosexuality and pedophilia.

He also became very upset one Christmas when his wife gave him a silk robe, which, like the sight of bare feet, reminded him of the rector. And he wanted no part of the vestments the rector had given his mother, to give to him. His mother had saved them for Russell in a box.

“There was a strong reaction to it, but I didn't know why,” said Russell's wife Greta Russell, who was parish vicar at St. Columba's Episcopal Church in Boothbay Harbor from 1997 to 2007.

When her husband finally did speak of the abuse, she said, “It shed a lot of light onto these things.”

He told her about it in 1984, when they were living in Massachusetts. She'd found him weeping after he'd heard a breaking news report on the radio; it alleged a church cover-up in Boston, about priests' alleged sexual abuse of children.

She's proud of him for doing the work of his therapy, and for writing the book about his journey.

“Putting it down in writing is a very brave and courageous thing to do,” she said. She and her husband both feel it furthered his healing.

“Any time you open up a wound and give it air and give it sunlight, healing occurs,” she said.

Russell was about 21, working in a church in the slums of London, when the man contacted him for the first time in about three years. He was traveling, and invited Russell to meet him. Russell took the opportunity to confront him.

“I asked him, 'Why would you do this to a little kid?' I don't think he knew the answer himself. I think he was a very driven man, and I don't know what actually creates a pedophile, but my guess is ... there was a shadow side to him.”

If the man was still alive, Russell said he would want him to read the book. “I'd like to say to him, pretty much what I said in London. ''This was a terrible thing to do and you exploited me and you ruined a huge piece of my life and my wife's life and my children's lives.'

“I would like him to know how costly it was, what he did.”

A key, unexpected part of Russell's therapy was a teddy bear his therapist gave him, with the instruction to take it everywhere he went. The therapist called the bear “Little Carl.”

Whether Russell went to a restaurant or a hardware store, no one gave him any grief about the bear. He laughed when he recalled a waitress asking if the bear would be ordering.

“Everybody was great,” he said of people's reactions to seeing him with the bear.

The point of the bear was serious: Russell was supposed to talk to it. It was a way to face the child he once was.

“I got in touch with the little child in me through that teddy bear. That was a huge thing,” he said.

“And I began to realize that (as a child) I didn't have the resources to cope with this,” he said about what he had endured. “I didn't have any way of explaining it. My brain wasn't formed enough to know how to cope with these things.”

It still makes him sad to think about that, he said. He has told Little Carl he was sorry he hadn't been able to protect him.

Russell once included the bear in a sermon, and explained its meaning. People were moved; some even hugged the bear afterward.

These days, the bear mostly sits on Russell's bureau, and still goes by Little Carl.

“I think it's important, and I think everybody should have that chance. It was the most wonderful thing for me, to be able to address my 'little boy.'”

Russell took an early retirement from his priest job when he was ill with Lyme disease. He and Greta Russell moved to Boothbay Harbor when she got the vicar position at St. Columba's.

One of the couple's four grown children, Asa Russell, co-wrote the book with his father. It can be ordered online at www.notellingaloud.com. It's also for sale at Sherman's Books in Boothbay Harbor and Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta, Russell said.