ALTON (IL)
The Telegraph [London, England]
October 5, 2024
By John Dunphy
Catholic Priest Joseph O’Brien’s disturbing Alton story
This article discusses matters of sexual abuse, which may be distressing for some readers. We aim to approach this subject with sensitivity and accuracy, providing insights into the ongoing issues surrounding this topic. Reader discretion is advised.
I recently learned that a monster once lived in Alton. Not a mythical monster like the Piasa Bird, but a human monster. And he was a Catholic priest.
His name was Joseph Cullen O’Brien, and he served as pastor of the long-defunct St. Patrick’s Church in the Hunterstown neighborhood from 1968 to 1970.
My Catholic childhood was spent at St. Mary’s, but I heard plenty about O’Brien from Joe Dromgoole, my great uncle, who worked for The Telegraph. St. Patrick’s was his lifelong parish, and Uncle Joe believed O’Brien’s abrasiveness was destroying the church.
Uncle Joe told me that he first met O’Brien when he stopped by The Telegraph office in 1942 — the year of his ordination — to make a specific request. The actor Errol Flynn had been accused of statutory rape by two teenage girls. O’Brien pleaded with Uncle Joe not to run this story in The Telegraph because it would surely scandalize this region’s young persons.
My uncle, who was also my godfather, told me that O’Brien at that time was polite and well-mannered.
“Then he joined the military,” Uncle Joe said, “and when he came out, his personality had completely changed.”
I checked and confirmed that O’Brien indeed served as a U.S. Navy chaplain from 1950 to 1955. Upon his discharge, he returned to the Diocese of Springfield and was appointed pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in 1968. He simultaneously served at the Catholic Children’s Home on State Street in Alton.
O’Brien renovated the interior of the church, a move that alienated many long-time members.
“He was the one who completely destroyed the interior of St. Pat’s and made it look like a barn!!” a woman wrote on an Alton Facebook page. “I refused to get married there.”
Uncle Joe told me about O’Brien’s decision to remove the church’s stations of the cross. When a parishioner told O’Brien that his family had donated those stations of the cross to the church, the priest sarcastically replied, “You can have them back.”
Dubious taste in church renovation and verbal abrasiveness were the least of O’Brien’s faults, however. According to the Office of the Illinois Attorney General’s Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois, which can be accessed online, O’Brien was a pedophile.
Released in 2023, the report “represents the conclusion of my office’s multi-year investigation into child sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy in the six dioceses across Illinois,” according to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
The report includes testimony from Christopher, who was victimized by O’Brien while a student at St. Patrick’s School. O’Brien “curried favor among parish boys like Christopher by dropping in on their religion classes to offer some sex education.” The priest “talked about girls and lust and masturbation, among other ‘forbidden’ subjects.” Providing sex education to gullible Catholic boys wasn’t O’Brien’s goal, however. “Looking back, Christopher recognizes O’Brien was grooming him and his classmates.”
This predator even used the sacrament of Penance to recruit victims.
“O’Brien told the parish boys he wanted to hear their confessions openly and face to face” and “would ask them probing questions to help identify and address any sins they may have committed,” according to the Attorney General’s Report.
When Christopher admitted that he committed the sin of masturbation, O’Brien told him “to drop by the rectory sometime after school if he wanted to receive some ‘counseling,’ ” according to the report. The details of O’Brien’s victimization of Christopher, who was 12 at the time, are so graphic that they can’t be included in this column.
“There was no way I could tell anyone,” the report quotes Christopher as stating. He worried his devout mother, who so admired priests, wouldn’t believe him. He also worried his father would believe him and then kill the priest.
O’Brien served at four other parishes after leaving St. Patrick’s. According to the attorney general’s investigation, the “reported survivors” of this predator number 14. As someone commented on my Facebook post about O’Brien, “Victims were freed of his presence in 1978 when he died, but never from the crimes he purposefully committed.”
I recall O’Brien being invited twice to Marquette Catholic High School during my student years. He addressed our boys’ religion class freshman year and sophomore year. The freshman year talk was especially memorable because it graphically dealt with masturbation. Marquette even made an office available to O’Brien so that we boys could get individual counseling from him. In all fairness, it should be noted the administration had no idea that he preyed on the young.
O’Brien mixed and mingled with us after his talk. When he learned my last name was Dunphy and that I attended St. Mary’s, he asked why I wasn’t at St. Patrick’s since it was a traditionally Irish parish.
I don’t recall my reply, but now realize I dodged a bullet by not going to his office for “individual counseling.”
John J. Dunphy is a writer and owns The Second Reading Book Shop in Alton.