Ask Wayne Bowers what he thinks about the clergy sex-abuse scandal that has embroiled the Archdiocese of Boston and rippled throughout the nation, and he will offer up a typical response — it’s time, he says, for the Catholic Church to lift the shameful veil of secrecy it drapes over pedophile priests. Or, as he puts it, "The Church must break its silence. That’s the only way it can heal."

But these are not the words of a typical scandal observer. Bowers, a bespectacled, graying man from Lansing, Michigan, arrived in Boston last week to attend the April 11 conference of the Massachusetts Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (MATSA), a group of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and social workers who treat pedophiles, child molesters, and other abusers. Dressed in a royal-blue polyester blazer, blue-striped shirt, and maroon tie, Bowers looks just like a high-school shop teacher. In fact, he is a sexual predator who has spent 19 years in what he calls "recovery." In short, he’s the poster boy for treatment.

"I feel I’m always on the defensive whenever I speak," says Bowers, one of the few sex offenders to travel the country and talk about his crimes in public. He has become all too accustomed to the hisses, boos, and curses he can elicit from crowds. The general public, after all, regards molesters as monsters, the dregs of American society. Even within the treatment community, they can be viewed with disdain. "It’s a challenge to go anywhere and talk about sex abuse," he admits.

At the MATSA convention, the 200-strong audience proved to be less hostile. Many of them sat quietly, their arms crossed, their expressions keen, as Bowers told his personal story. He used to live in a Kansas town, where he worked as a newspaper publisher. He also coached youth baseball. It was his work as a coach — and, specifically, his "inappropriate behavior" with teenage boys — that led to his arrest. While Bowers was awaiting sentencing on charges of indecent liberties with minors, however, his family saw a Phil Donahue show featuring Fred Berlin, the founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic and a top expert on pedophilia. (Bernard Cardinal Law named Berlin to a new archdiocesan committee on clergy sexual abuse.) Bowers ended up at the Johns Hopkins clinic, where he stayed for nearly four months before being sent to a Kansas jail to serve out his sentence.

The experience, he said, "was my second education." Through therapy, Bowers was forced to realize how he had objectified his young victims. Whenever he spotted an attractive 14-year-old boy, he’d home in on the boy’s crotch. He never saw his victims as people. He never saw their pain. Therapy, which he continued throughout his prison term, "did wonders for me," he told the audience.

For Bowers, who now heads a Michigan-based outreach treatment program for incarcerated abusers, recovery didn’t start until he put a face on his victims. Likewise, he believes society must "put a face on offenders too" — which is why the Catholic Church should seize this current crisis as a unique opportunity. The one thing that the Boston pedophile-priest scandal shows is how good people — people who are capable of ministering to the poor and destitute — can do reprehensible things. Like many offenders, Bowers said, pedophile priests "are caring, respectable people who have serious flaws in their personalities and have done indefensible acts."

"More than ever," he concluded, "the city of Boston and the Catholic Church could open up dialogue around sexual abuse in this country." If the pedophile-priest scandal helps people understand the psychology behind sexual abuse, he said, "it could help turn this negative into a positive for all involved."