New York Daily News
October 13, 2006
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/461060p-387899c.html
Deliver Us From Evil'
Documentary about a pedophile priest who preyed on kids for over 20 years with the protection of the church. Directed by Amy Berg. (1:43) Unrated: Language, disturbing theme. At Angelika.
For more than 20 years, the Catholic Church shunted pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady from one central California parish to another, ignoring accusations against him and allowing him to continue abusing children.
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| Victims Ann Jyono (l.) and Nancy Sloan. |
"Deliver Us From Evil," Amy Berg's riveting documentary, tracks O'Grady's predatory trail from San Andreas, Calif., to Ireland, where he is now living on a church pension that was apparently meant to buy his silence.
O'Grady appears in the film, his face showing no sign of shame even as he acknowledges and describes the awful things he did. To understand how sick the man is, his youngest victim was a 9-month-old girl, the oldest a married woman he seduced in order to get to her teenage son.
The priest's method was simple. He used his avuncular charm and his proclaimed access to God to burrow into parishioners' homes, take up residence in their guest rooms and visit their children in the middle of the night.
"Deliver Us" intercuts interviews with O'Grady and some of his grown and deeply bitter victims and their families. It's heart-wrenching stuff. But perhaps the greatest outrage is the alleged role played by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was O'Grady's bishop during his reign of molestation.
Mahony won't discuss his relationship with O'Grady, claiming something on the order of doctor/patient or lawyer/client privilege. But Berg makes a very strong case that Mahony protected O'Grady and the church's reputation at the expense of children.
O'Grady was not stopped until he was convicted of sex crimes against two brothers and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was released after seven years and deported to his native Ireland.
His sexual attraction to children was fixed there, he says, through incestuous relationships with both his older brother and younger sister. He was also abused by a priest.
I don't know what kind of vetting procedure a would-be priest goes through, if any, but from everything O'Grady has done - and from the repulsive hint of nostalgia on his face when he recalls his crimes - it seems likely that the simplest personality disorder test would have washed this nut out.
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