BOSTON (MA)
The Boston Phoenix
BY DEIRDRE FULTON
When the priest at her childhood parish, in Rhode Island, was convicted of child molestation, personal anguish and conflict led Mary Healey-Conlon to dig deeper into the scandal that rocked both her church and her faith. Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church, a new documentary about the clergy sex-abuse crisis, is the result of her quest — a project driven by her private attempt to cope and to heal.
The film, which Healey-Conlon co-produced with Boston resident Louise Rosen, includes chilling testimony from a perpetrator priest who describes his abhorrent actions, and from a former abuse victim who later became a priest — and a children’s-rights crusader — himself. The stories are so powerful that Healey-Conlon has arranged to have counselors available for audience members at next week’s screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
In a phone interview with the Phoenix, the filmmakers talked about why society needs Holy Water-Gate to better understand the crisis, while victims need it to make sure the heat stays on the Catholic Church.
Q: What do you think this film adds to general understanding of the abuse scandal?
Mary Healey-Conlon: My hope is that it will certainly deepen the discussion and will also explain some of the dimensions of how this was allowed to happen, and the depths to which survivors still suffer. But most importantly, I think it’s important for people to see and hear some of the faces behind the stuff they’ve read about but never seen. So in terms of their experience of a film, the fact that they get to see a perpetrator on camera whose statements speak so directly about the institutional mindset is very important.