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	Cardinal Could Face Trial over Pervert Priest Sunday Independent [Ireland] October 8, 2006 http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1702153&issue_id=14742 A Documentary film featuring an extraordinarily candid interview with an Irish former priest convicted of molesting children may lead to the prosecution of a US cardinal. US law enforcement officials are now considering a criminal case against Cardinal Roger Mahony, says a prosecutor who has been investigating sexual abuse cases involving priests. In the documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, the former priest, Oliver O'Grady, describes how he abused young boys and girls across central California for more than 20 years, including a period in the 1980s when Cardinal Mahony was his superior as the Bishop in Stockton. The former priest, who lives in Ireland, said he was able to continue abusing children in part because of actions by Cardinal Mahony, who now heads America's largest Catholic archdiocese in Los Angeles and is among the church's most influential American leaders. Mr O'Grady says in the film that as Bishop in Stockton, the cardinal moved him from parish to parish in the face of abuse accusations. "The film does certainly charge the atmosphere here in Los Angeles," said William Hodgman, the top deputy of the target crimes division of the LA District Attorney's office, who co-ordinated prosecutions of LA priests. The film, he added, "will fuel ongoing consideration as to whether Cardinal Mahony and others engaged in criminal activity". However, the lawyer for the Los Angeles archdiocese, Michael Hennigan, said: "If Mr Hodgman is suggesting in any way that the cardinal is the subject of a criminal investigation, he is being irresponsible and in our judgment is committing prosecutorial misconduct." Mr O'Grady, who confessed to abusing boys and girls as young as nine months old and also adult women, said in the documentary that he "should have been removed from the priesthood" by Cardinal Mahony. In 1993, he was convicted on four counts of lewd and lascivious acts with two preteen brothers and served seven years in prison. Cardinal Mahony, who was the Bishop in Stockton from 1980 to 1985, when he was appointed Archbishop of Los Angeles, has disputed Mr O'Grady's account of events. His spokesman, Tod Tamberg, said Mr O'Grady's comments in the documentary were not believable. "The film rests on the credibility of a convicted child molester who lied to his bishop, to his therapists, to the families of the young people he abused and to law enforcement," Mr Tamberg said. "He is the classic paedophile. He lies to conceal his activity from public view." However, Mr Hodgman said the district attorney's office believe Mr O'Grady's revelations, along with documents obtained from the archdiocese through subpoena, provide firm new evidence in determining whether criminal acts were committed in handling paedophile priests.
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