Film takes frank look at pedophile and his church
It isn’t often that you get to meet the devil in all his glory, but here he is in “Deliver Us From Evil,” and his name is the Rev. Oliver O’Grady.
A priest from Southern California who raped dozens of children from the 1970s until his arrest and conviction in 1993 - and who now lives in Ireland, a free man - “Father Ollie” consistently was protected by his diocese hierarchy, which moved him from one parish to another whenever complaints arose.
In her scalding documentary from 2006, now on DVD (Lionsgate, $27.98), Amy Berg wonders who is the greater sinner: the deeply sick man or the church official who knowingly allowed O’Grady’s reign of destruction to continue.
The film gives agonized voice to victims and their parents (and their attorneys), to theologians and child-abuse experts, and to the Rev. Thomas Doyle, who in 1985 warned the Vatican about the looming sex scandal and who has battled on behalf of victims since.
Most shockingly, though, “Deliver Us From Evil” lets us hear from O’Grady himself. Interviewed by Berg in Ireland, the ex-priest is remorseful yet eerily disassociated from the immense swath of psychological damage in his wake. At one point, O’Grady sends a letter to his victims, inviting them to Ireland so he can apologize personally.
The deeper rage, of the victims and the film, is reserved for a Catholic hierarchy headed by Cardinal Roger Mahoney, now archbishop of Los Angeles. In case you’re unclear where his superiors stood on O’Grady: They offered (and he accepted) a lifetime pension in exchange for not testifying about their treatment of him.
Berg strains to make her larger case: that the sexual abuse of children by priests goes back to the fifth century, when celibacy was implemented by the church to get control of priestly assets. It’s an interesting theory, but the evidence here is drive-by.