Said no to support groups

Last summer, between eighth and ninth grade, Robbie found a way to get back on-line. He used a password that belonged to the father of his best friend, Christopher Collins, one of the few peers that Robbie told his secret to. Like Robbie's family, Christopher was open to the news.

"I just accepted it and decided not to stop being friends with him just because of one aspect of his personality," Christopher said.

Christopher's father stopped Robbie's access when he got the bill. Robbie paid him back for the on-line time and apologized for what he had done. Once again cut off from the computer, he began making calls to gay 900-number adult entertainment lines.

When his mother confronted him about the phone bill, again Robbie was apologetic.

"He was always very sorry," Leslie said. "Everything else in his life had always been honest and decent--I always trusted him. This behavior was uncharacteristic for him. This was the one thing that he felt he had to lie about because it was part of his expression of being gay."

Leslie suggested having a gay friend come over and talk to Robbie, and offered to take him to PRYSM, a support group for gay, lesbian and bisexual youth. Robbie said no to both. "I think he was fearful that his cover would be blown," Leslie said.

Macho culture in high school

After graduating from the eighth grade, Leslie let Robbie choose which high school he wanted to attend. He tested well enough to be offered a full scholarship to St. Edward High School in Lakewood, not far from his father's home. Instead, he chose St. Ignatius High School, a Jesuit preparatory school in Cleveland's near west side known for its academic excellence as well as its championship football program.

"He wanted to be a writer, and he felt that St. Ignatius was the best," Leslie said.

Choosing Ignatius also meant he would be going to school with Christopher Collins, and since Robbie had been having problems, Leslie felt that it would be best for him to be around at least one friend. Each day began with getting the boys off to school, and Leslie and Christopher's mom, Sharon, took turns making the 40-minute trek into the city.

Robbie's oldest sister Danielle is a sophomore at Miami University in Oxford. She remembered her women's studies instructor, Marcie Knopf, coming out to the class on the first day, and asked her about resources for Robbie.

"One of Danielle's biggest concerns was that she had gone to an all-girls Catholic high school, and she had a sense that for Robbie, entering the ninth grade at a Catholic all-boys high school was a really dangerous and scary thing," Knopf said.

"I'm familiar with the atmosphere at St. Ignatius," Danielle said. "They're very homophobic and driven by masculinity. The few guys that I did know that were gay had to really make a statement about it in order to survive. If a guy's sexuality was called into question, it was a very big deal. I just didn't think that it would be good atmosphere for [Robbie]."

Danielle was also concerned that Robbie always "had more girl friends than guy friends, and he wouldn't have them there."

Robbie's other sister Claudia, a senior at Magnificat High School in Rocky River, was also well aware of what her younger brother might be up against. She made the senior St. Ignatius boys that she knew promise not to harass Robbie.

"I told them, 'He's nice, he's sensitive, don't be mean to him'."

An unfortunate crush

Unfortunately, though, Claudia could not make all Ignatius boys promise to be nice to her brother, and one in particular made his life miserable.

"Robbie had a crush on a boy who was a jock, a football player," his mother said. "This kid was not gay and this kid teased him."

According to Claudia, Robbie knew better than to tell this boy about his crush. "He never really said much about it," she said. "He told me he had a crush on [this boy], but said that he knew he couldn't tell him or do anything about it." He indicated that knew he was in for a long four years when he said to Claudia, "You know, it's hard to be gay at St. Ignatius."

Besides Christopher, Robbie had told two other Ignatius boys that he was gay. News tends to travel in any high school.

Rejected by the church

The family continued to stay involved in Robbie's coming out process, reading books that had been recommended by Knopf. They got in touch with Cleveland area resources for gay and lesbian youth and their families, and planned on looking into a church that would accept Robbie just the way he was. Robbie had begun to express his displeasure with the Catholic church. Whether or not he was aware that the catechism of the Catholic church had declared his desires "intrinsically disordered," and "contrary to natural law," he clearly understood that he was not accepted the way he was.

"A few months before he died," his mother recalled, "Robbie said, 'Do I have to go to church? The Catholic church does not accept me, why should I go to it?' At that point I said, 'Robbie, we can find a church that does accept you, that's fine, we can go to a different church.' But he still went with me [to Catholic church] with a little bit of protest at the end."

Last November, Robbie signed on to the Prodigy computer service using his mother's checking account and driver's license. Leslie found out about it on the Monday before Christmas. A week later, on December 30, she and Robbie's therapist discussed getting him into PRYSM again, and for the first time, Robbie was agreeable.

"It was like he said, 'Okay, Mom's finally going to force me to go to PRYSM'."

The therapist also told Leslie that, in the meantime, she should put locks on the computer room door and "treat Robbie like a two year old."

Earlier in December, Leslie had also taken Robbie to a psychiatrist who was also gay. "I was glad he was gay," Leslie said of the doctor. "I thought he could be an excellent role model for Robbie."

The doctor prescribed Zoloft, an anti-depressant that takes about four to six weeks before it becomes effective.

Leslie said she grieved that things seemed to happen just a little too late to save her son. Robbie would have attended his first PRYSM meeting at noon on Saturday, January 4, but two days earlier, he was dead. The day Robbie was buried, Leslie had to cancel the locksmith who was to install the lock on the computer room door.