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	Catholic Priest Confesses to His Crimes In Documentary, Priest Describes How He Molested Children By Dan Harris ABC News October 12, 2006 http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2559272&page=1 Oct. 12, 2006 — "I want to promise myself that this is going to be the most honest confession of my life." Those are the words of Oliver O'Grady, a former priest and a convicted child molester. In a new documentary out this week, he makes startlingly candid and graphic confessions about his crimes. "I brought him back into my bedroom again, unbuttoned his pants," O'Grady says in a documentary film called "Deliver Us From Evil," which opens in theaters on Friday. "Looking at his face kinda told me that he was a little uneasy about this. I thought at one point he was gonna cry, you know." The documentary provides a graphic glimpse into the mind of a pedophile and lays blame on the church hierarchy, including a bishop who is now the cardinal and a leader of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the largest archdiocese in the United States. Candid and Graphic O'Grady speaks with surprising candor in the film about his attraction to young children. "And if they said to me, 'Well do you feel aroused when you feel women?' I'd probably say, 'No.' 'Do you feel aroused when you see men?' 'No,'" O'Grady says. "'How about children in underwear?' I'd say, 'Yeah!'" Filmmaker Amy Berg tracked down O'Grady in Ireland, where he now lives, after serving a seven-year prison term in California for lewd and lascivious acts with two preteen boys. At his trial, O'Grady exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and said nothing. That may be one reason, Berg explains, why he's speaking now. "I think he felt somewhat betrayed by the fact that he lost the church. He never got to tell his story, and he's kind of living this secret life," Berg says. "And also, he's got all the characteristics of a psychopath." O'Grady has been accused of abusing scores of children over 20 years, including a 9-month-old infant. His victims and their parents say he used the power of his position to get to children. "He was the closest thing to God that we knew," says Maria Jyono, who, with her husband, Bob, often had O'Grady sleep over at their house. They thought he needed a break from the rigors of priestly life — but those breaks gave him easy access to their daughter, Ann. "I used to go to work and he'd be here saying his morning prayers. Had the Bible in his hands, and he's saying morning prayers. I'd say, 'Good morning, Ollie,'" Bob Jyono recalls. "And during the nighttime he's molesting my daughter. Raping her. Not molesting, raping her. At 5 years old. God sakes. How can that happen? But that's what he did." In the documentary, O'Grady says church officials repeatedly failed to act in the face of evidence that he was abusing children. They responded to complaints by moving him from one parish to the next. O'Grady points the finger squarely at Cardinal Roger Mahony, head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the largest in the country, who in the 1980s was bishop of the diocese where O'Grady served. "I should have been removed and attended to," O'Grady says. "And he should have also then followed up by attending to the people that I harmed. I'd like if he had done that." One reason Mahony may have kept quiet, Berg argues, is is that Mahony was due for a promotion, to his current position of archbishop of Los Angeles. Another is the church's institutional culture. "Part of the psychology in the church is to keep these things quiet," Berg says. "Otherwise, if it exploded that he had a priest under him who had molested a whole bunch of children, then he might not have gotten that promotion." The Archdiocese of Los Angeles calls the film blatantly biased, saying it fails to mention cases in which Cardinal Mahony dealt swiftly with charges of abuse. And that he handled the crisis in a forthright manner as it broke nationwide. "We face the long and arduous task of restoring credibility among the many," Mahony says. Tod Tamberg, Mahony's spokesman, says Mahony had no knowledge that O'Grady was a pedophile, adding that O'Grady is a proven liar and a manipulator, and therefore not credible. "I mean, he abused children upstairs in the home when the parents were downstairs," Tamberg says. "This is the kind of person we're dealing with. Why should we believe what he has to say about any conversation he had with anyone? Why? Doesn't make sense." The archdiocese may dismiss the movie, but prosecutors are not. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office tells ABC News that O'Grady's comments in the documentary have increased prosecutors' interest in bringing possible criminal charges against Mahony for the way he has handled pedophile priests. "People should be held accountable for their actions," Berg says. "And to knowingly move a dangerous man into another setting where he can molest other children is criminal." Tamberg says the district attorney is grandstanding when he talks about charging the cardinal. Though some church members, like O'Grady, have served prison terms, prosecutors have been unsuccessful in attempts to bring charges against higher-ranking Catholic officials — in part because victims frequently do not come forward until years or decades after the offenses. An Ongoing Struggle For Oliver O'Grady's victims, such as Adam, who spoke in the film on the condition that he would be identified by his first name only, the unspeakable crimes remain buried. "He just came in and closed the door, and he just held me down, held my head down and he … sodomized me," he says. "For years, I never even spoke of it." For Ann Jyono, closure remains elusive. "My father won't walk me down the aisle because he can't step in the church," Jyono says. He's taken my wedding away from me. Everything in the future. So I am constantly battling to regain my life back. I've never conceived a child, I'm not married … I'm 39. I'm approaching 40 and it's still not over." Jyono waited more than a decade to tell her parents. "She told me that she asked a little girl what would happen if your dad killed somebody," says Maria Jyono, Ann's mother. "And they said that he would go to jail for ever and ever. And she said that day, 'I decided I could never tell anybody because she said I knew Daddy would kill him.'" "I guess her love for me kept her from telling anyone," Bob Jyono says. "I feel guilty about that. But I feel betrayed by the church. The church betrayed me and my family. They destroyed it." The film shows O'Grady writing letters to his victims, inviting them to come meet with him. Two weeks later, he abruptly rescinds the invitation. To this day, O'Grady continues to live free and unmonitored in Ireland, with easy access to children.
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