'Deliver Us from Evil' Exposes Sins of a Father and Church Father, by Gene Seymour, Newsday, October 13, 2006

'Deliver Us from Evil' Exposes Sins of a Father and Church Father

By Gene Seymour
Newsday
October 13, 2006

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/ny-deliver1012,0,1692662.story?coll=ny-moviereview-headlines

In this still image taken from video released by filmmaker Amy Berg, defrocked priest Oliver O'Grady is shown in a scene from her documentary on clergy abuse, "Deliver Us From Evil." Berg focuses on O'Grady's relationship with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was his bishop in Stockton, Calif., in the early 1980s when O'Grady confessed to at least one instance of molestation.

It's possible to imagine audiences of varied faiths and persuasions viewing the prospect of yet another documentary about pedophilia by Catholic priests with any combination of wariness, fatigue or trepidation. Yet "Deliver Us From Evil" deserves their complete attention -- and their absolute respect. It's more incisive than any other film on its subject.

If there is a single priest whose transgressions could cover wide and daunting ground, director Amy Berg found him in Oliver O'Grady. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, "Father Ollie" ingratiated himself with parishioners all over southern California who entrusted him with their children's spiritual care. As both O'Grady and his victims' parents testify here, he was an apparently insatiable sexual predator whose acts of rape, sodomy and abuse of children numbered in the hundreds.

The, soft-spoken O'Grady, now living free in Ireland after serving half of a 14-year jail sentence, not only enjoyed sex with pre-adolescents and teenagers, but with newborn babies. He was also not above seducing parents as a way of getting intimate with their children.

What really agonizes these victims -- and will infuriate audiences -- is that instead of doing something about O'Grady, his superiors in the California diocese kept moving him from parish to parish in an effort to cover up his behavior. Berg, a veteran of both CBS News and CNN, carefully and calmly assembles a devastating case against church officials' mendacity. There are videotapes of Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahoney and other leaders lying about how much they knew about O'Grady's transgressions.

Part of what makes "Deliver Us From Evil" so chilling is that while the deceptively benign O'Grady seems to express remorse for what he's done, one can't tell whether he's still trying to charm and beguile both Berg and her audiences. Every once in a while, she'll try to press things too hard, photographing O'Grady at different angles or placing him in overly emphatic shadows.

Such lapses still aren't enough to mitigate her film's impact. Here's the bottom line: O'Grady's a free man, Mahoney and his colleagues still have their positions in the church hierarchy and the victims are left sorting through the rubble of ruined childhoods and damaged faith.

Deliver Us From Evil

DELIVER US FROM EVIL (unrated). Though its focus is on the serial pedophilia of a single Catholic priest over 20 years, Amy Berg's chilling, scrupulous and relentlessly inquisitive documentary cuts deeper and wider into the duplicity and complicity of church superiors. 1:41 (explicit sexual material). At select theaters.