Date: April 13, 2007
To: Jaybird <Jay Sefton>
From: Dad <Joe Sefton>
Subject: the bastard.
Link: Priest Defrocked Over Abuse Cases
Jaybird, just saw this in the Inquirer.
Please call me. Love, Dad
“Holy s—,” Jay Sefton thought.
His father — a lifelong Havertown boy, a diehard Catholic and Philadelphia Phillies fan, a chain-smoking Army vet and a veteran claims adjuster — knew how to email a link to an article.
But besides that: No one had ever called what happened to him abuse.
After growing up in a working-class, hard-drinking town where feelings were expressed with four-letter words, Sefton, the son, had learned from his father to curse his way through Philadelphia Eagles games — to be as loud as possible while ultimately saying nothing at all. So there’s something beautiful, poetic even, that 20 years ago, his father gave him permission to use his voice.
Now an Easthampton-based therapist, Sefton is the co-author and star of “Unreconciled,” an award-winning solo play about clergy sexual abuse that is being made into a documentary. The play will be performed at the Academy of Music on Saturday, July 25 as part of an “Unreconciled”-inspired weekend.
In the play, Sefton transforms into 12 different characters — including his father and, in an extraordinary act of empathy, his abuser. While the show centers on what happened to him as a child, it’s really built around that pivotal email and the transformation that ensues as Sefton, the adult, learns to embody his experience with levity, agony and grace.
Change is coming
“Unreconciled” premiered at Chester Theatre Company in 2023. As the play was being workshopped, “talkbacks,” or audience-driven feedback, were integral to improving the storytelling.
“What we’ve learned over the years is the play is really a jumping-off point for these conversations that need to be had,” said Sefton.
A year ago, following a successful multicountry run of the play, Sefton and his wife, Melenie Freedom Flynn, founded the Unreconciled Project. The initiative empowers survivors of childhood sexual abuse to reclaim their voices, process trauma and foster community healing through the art of storytelling, using the theatrical production as a springboard for change.
After Saturday’s performance, Sefton will be joined on stage for a discussion with Licia Sky and Bessel van der Kolk, co-founders of the Trauma Research Foundation. Established in 2018, the foundation dedicates itself to promoting innovative clinical, scientific and educational projects that help individuals and communities heal from traumatic experiences. Van der Kolk is also the author of the landmark book “The Body Keeps the Score,” which explores how trauma physically alters the brain and body. Then, on Sunday, Sefton and Flynn will lead a writers’ workshop and peer support group for survivors and their loved ones.
A higher calling
Sefton was destined to be an actor. In the second grade, he played Julius Caesar, the betrayed Roman dictator, and he can still feel the purple sash that stretched across his chest and made him feel like he was someone else, like he was truly special.
In the eighth grade, his church, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, prepared to perform its annual Passion Play — and Sefton was chosen to play Jesus. The “Journey of Love” was written and directed by a young-seeming, theater-loving priest named Father Tom Smith. Video footage of one of the rehearsals — filmed in 1985 — is interspersed with Sefton’s story as he moves in and out of each character.
To introduce Father Smith, present-day Jay, the narrator of the play, transforms into the priest mid-description: “Father Smith’s hair is white although he seems younger than my parents, an upper lip that stays put while the rest of his mouth is talking” — from here on, you only see Sefton’s bottom teeth — “and a distance in his eyes that doesn’t make them quite crossed, but he’s never focused on anything specific either.” Now, Sefton seems to widen his eyes and squint simultaneously. His voice becomes higher pitched, desperate, defensive.
“I didn’t really ‘join the seminary,’” Father Smith tells the audience. “I heard the call … The power to forgive drew me to the priesthood.”
Forgiveness and acceptance are each character’s central dilemma. Can Jay forgive Father Tom? Can Father Tom forgive himself? Can Philly Jay, Jay’s brash alter ego, forgive Jay’s vulnerability? Can his mom accept that acknowledging his pain doesn’t make her a bad parent? Can his dad accept that, as parents, they were complicit in what happened to their son because they were taught to believe in the power of “the cross and the collar,” in an infallible institution? Can that institution, the Catholic Church, accept responsibility for how it’s failed so many children, so many families, so many communities?
“It was a huge honor for my parents and my family [for me to play Jesus],” Sefton recalled, noting that the first two pews in the church were reserved for family. The Passion Play would be performed several times, for about 300 people at once, and would travel to nearby schools and a nursing facility.
“But there had been whisperings and rumblings,” he continued, “because Father Smith had already been doing the play for two years.”
Hitting bottom
The article Joe Sefton sent his son referenced “a damning 2005 Philadelphia grand jury report” that accused the archdiocese of covering up the abuse of 63 priests, including Father Smith.
“On March 12, 2004, the Archdiocesan Review Board unanimously found credible allegations that ‘Smith took at least three boys playing the role of Jesus in the parish Passion play into a private room, required them to disrobe completely,’ pinned loincloths around them, and then, during the play, encouraged ‘other boys to whip the Jesus character to the point where some of the boys had cuts, bruises and welts,’” the report stated. “These actions, the Review Board found, ‘occurred in multiple parish assignments with a number of different boys over a number of years.’”
“What I remember,” said Sefton, “what I write about in the play, is that there was a very thick robe that I started the play in. I would have to go into the closet prior and he would affix my loin cloth, so I was always really grateful to put the heavy robe on after.”
Following the play and other encounters with Father Smith, Sefton turned to drinking. He did return to acting in college and lived for years in Los Angeles, where he showed sparks of promise and seemed to douse his own flames.
“I’ve never been very good at saying no,” present-day Jay opens “Unreconciled.” But he was never good at saying yes, either — living in a state of purgatory where not committing to anything was both self-preserving and self-annihilating, a way to live without being alive.
The email from his father jolted him into therapy, and into writing and performing in “The Most Mediocre Story Ever Told,” an early version of “Unreconciled” that won an L.A. Weekly Theater Award for best solo show.
“I got through that show and I had learned the lesson of working with resistance and moving through it,” said Sefton.
Over the years, Sefton went to school to become a therapist, married Flynn, and got sober. While he relocated to Massachusetts, he followed Pennsylvania law closely. In 2021, after legislation to allow survivors to sue their abusers regardless of when they were abused fell apart, Sefton was enraged. Many states allow these so-called “lookback windows” — temporary legal exceptions that revive previously time-barred civil lawsuits after the standard statute of limitations has expired — but Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are not among them.
“While I had already written a couple op-eds, they had limited reach,” said Sefton. “I thought, ‘Let me see if I can write a show about this.’”
Rage and resolution
In its first year, “Unreconciled” racked up two Berkshire Theatre Critics Association Awards for outstanding solo performance and the Sally and Robert Sugarman Award for World Premiere of a New Play. During the play’s Los Angeles run, Sefton met Trevor Jones, a documentarian who would film Sefton on the Philadelphia leg of the tour in April 2026. At J.D. McGillicuddy’s — the bar Sefton grew up frequenting, right down the street from the church — Sefton played to a particularly raucous crowd who knew the characters of the story, its hometown and its hero.
Joe Sefton died in 2012, so he was never able to see “Unreconciled.” But he lives on as the story’s beating heart, pushing Jay to confront the truth and daring audiences to join him.
“My son may think this story, the one that youse are now a part of is about him,” he concludes the play. “Well, it’s only partly about him. It’s about you. It’s about me.”
Earlier this year, before the play’s Philadelphia run, Sefton, the son, stopped by his old bar, took a walk around the block, and, after a lifetime had passed, reentered the church.
“I remembered feeling how scared I was as a kid just being around it,” he said. “But what came next was that I’m not afraid right now. I’m so grateful for everything that happened in-between.”
Before he left, he walked around to each confessional and threw open the doors — even the priests’ doors. He watched himself as he did it, half-laughing, almost giddy.
His father would have said, “This is my son, whom I love and am well-pleased.”
Tickets for “Unreconciled” start at $30.83 and are available at aomtheatre.com/aom_event/unreconciled. Learn more about the Unreconciled Project, which funds performances, support groups and an upcoming documentary, at unreconciledtheplay.com/the-unreconciled-project.
Melissa Karen Sances can be reached at melissaksances@gmail.com.