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	Film Puts Spotlight on Clerical Sex Abuse By Chuck Colbert National Catholic Reporter [Boston MA] October 27, 2006 http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/memValid/invalid.htm A new documentary film on the scandal of clerical sex abuse in the Catholic church opened to the public in Boston, Los Angeles and New York Oct. 13. "Deliver Us from Evil," was prescreened twice in this area, once at the Boston Film Festival, and again at a screening hosted by the national office of Voice of the Faithful, a church reform organization that sprang up at the height of the sex abuse crisis in the Boston archdiocese. In both instances, the film's director and producer, Amy Berg, a former journalist for CBS News and CNN, fielded questions from the audience. Joining her were sex abuse survivors and a lawyer for victims of clerical sex abuse. "Deliver Us from Evil" has received positive reviews in no small measure because of the extraordinary footage of Fr. Oliver O'Grady, an Irish ex-priest convicted of molesting children, who speaks in his own words about his abuse of young boys and girls. O'Grady comes across on camera much of the time as fun-loving and almost charming. There is little hint most of the time that this man could repeatedly rape youngsters, including an infant. After O'Grady agreed to speak with her on camera, Berg flew to Ireland where "Father Ollie," now 61 years old, was living as a free man, having served seven years of a 14-year state prison sentence for molesting two brothers. "This is going to be the most honest confession of my life," O'Grady says. "Basically what I want to say to them is, you know, it should not have happened. It should not have happened." O'Grady served as a priest in the diocese of Stockton, Calif., where his superiors, including then-Bishop Roger Mahony, now the cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles, shuffled him from parish to parish in rural central California from the 1970s until his arrest in 1993. During that time, O'Grady raped dozens of victims, including a 9-month-old baby. O'Grady also confessed to having sex with two of his victims' mothers to gain access to their children. The documentary features videotaped deposition of Mahony and Msgr. James Cain, vicar of Stockton. Mahony is asked under oath: "[O'Grady] had sexual urges for a 9-year-old. Is that cause to remove him from ministry?" The cardinal's response: "No." "The Mahony and Cain depositions are worth 10 times the price of admission," said Carolyn Disco, a New Hampshire survivor advocate and church-reform activist. "It's valuable to see who these men really are, cover-up artists who got away with everything and are held accountable to no one." She added, "No wonder Mahony has fought tooth and nail for four years to keep church documents a secret." Tod Tamberg, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles archdiocese, criticized Berg for leaving out "a huge amount of information," he said over the phone. Tamberg also faulted the director for "selectively quoting from court papers, police reports and depositions." Another troubling concern, Tamberg said, is the documentary's "obvious anti-church" bias. But Fr. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who appears in the film, took exception to that charge. "The most anti-Catholic members of the church are the hierarchy," Doyle said in Boston after the Voice of the Faithful screening. Doyle has advocated for victims and worked as an expert on their behalf in legal proceedings. "Deliver us from Evil" also features survivors' stories. Two women and one man provide witness to the psychological and spiritual damage the abuse wreaked on their lives and families. Among those were Ann Jyono, an O'Grady abuse survivor, and her parents Bob and Maria Jyono. Ann's father, a Japanese-American Buddhist who converted to Catholicism when he married his Irish-born wife, breaks his quiet demeanor, blurting out angrily, "Raping her -- not molesting her -- raping her, at 5 years old. God save us." Maria acknowledges, "I handed Ann over to him on a silver platter." Ann Hagan Webb, of Wellesley, Mass., a survivor and activist, said the experience of Ann Jyono was typical. "First, there is not telling, then to finally telling, to being believed, and needing some officials in the church to validate what they have told," she said. Olan Horne, a Boston archdiocese survivor, said the documentary demonstrates how widespread is the phenomenon of sex abuse. "It's on both coasts," he said. "And it's not just a Catholic church problem. Abuse happens in families." Yet, he added, "This institution gets the gold medal for perpetrating some of the worse crimes against children in the world." Robert Sherman, an attorney for clerical sex abuse victims, said of the perpetrators, "These men were nothing more than con men and predators with a collar. To be successful, they needed to have access to children and be in a position of trust, along with a culture of secrecy with an institutional desire to engage in a cover-up." For the Jyono family, participation in the film seemed to bring some healing. In Boston, Berg recalled how Ann's father thanked her for putting his daughter in the film. "She went from a victim to being a survivor," Berg said Bob Jyono told her. "Everyone came a long way," she added. Meanwhile, on Oct. 16, the Irish Independent reported that O'Grady had fled Ireland, according to representatives of the country's National Police Service, who said O'Grady possibly went to France, en route to Canada. Freelance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge, Mass.
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