Deliver Us from Evil (2006 film)
Deliver Us from Evil (2006) is a documentary film directed by Amy J. Berg which tells the true story of Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady, who admitted to having molested and raped approximately 25 children in Northern California between the late 1970s and early 1990s.[1] The film won the Best Documentary Award at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, losing to An Inconvenient Truth.[2] The title refers to a line in the Lord's Prayer.
Synopsis
The film chronicles O'Grady's years as a priest in Northern California, where he committed his crimes. After being convicted of child molestation and serving seven years in prison, O'Grady was deported to his native Ireland, where Berg interviewed him in 2005. Additionally, the film presents trial documents, videotaped depositions, and interviews with activists, theologians, psychologists and lawyers which suggest that not only were Church officials aware of O'Grady's crimes, they actively took steps to conceal them.[3][4]
Reception
The Irish Independent criticized Berg for filming children in Ireland without their knowledge.[5]
The film was very well-received by critics, earning a 100 percent "Fresh" rating from RottenTomatoes.com.[6] As of January 2011, the film ranks eighth on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the best reviewed movies of all time.[7]
After the documentary was shown on Dutch national TV in April 2010, members of a parish in Schiedam recognized O'Grady as an active volunteer in the parish until January 2010. His background was unknown to the parishioners. Apart from that he was active in the Netherlands as an organizer of children's parties.[8]
Movie claims
The film claims that:
- O'Grady is the most notorious child molester in the history of the modern Catholic Church.
- Despite early warning signs and complaints from several parishes, the Church lied to parishioners and local law enforcement while continuing to move O'Grady from parish to parish.
- To protect his career, Roger Mahony, O'Grady's supervising Bishop at the time and current Archbishop of Los Angeles, orchestrated the O'Grady cover-up.
- Church documents prove that since 1973, O'Grady raped and sodomized children with the full knowledge of his Catholic superiors.
- The Church was afraid that through the powers of civil discovery, civil attorneys would discover the Church knew O'Grady had probably molested children prior to his ordination in the late 1960s.
- The night before O'Grady was scheduled to provide testimony regarding Mahony's awareness of his history as a child molester and rapist, Mahony's attorneys went to O'Grady's jail cell and cut a deal with him. The deal exchanged O'Grady's silence for a financial annuity: An undisclosed amount of money that the Diocese of Los Angeles will start to pay him once he turns age 65 in 2011.
- O'Grady "forced his penis into the vagina of a baby", as stated by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a clergy abuse psychologist.
- Over 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse have come forward in the United States alone. The movie also reports that this claim is contradicted, however, by the John Jay Report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose figure is of only 4,000 claims covering a period of over 70 years.
- Experts say that more than 80 percent of sexual abuse victims never report their abuse.
- 10% of the graduates of St. John's Seminary, which supplies the "vast majority" of the priests for the West Coast of the United States since 1960, are pedophiles (this claim was attributed to the Los Angeles Times).
- Most countries are just beginning to report clergy abuse.
- Since 1950, sexual abuse has cost to the US Catholic Church over $1 billion in legal settlements and expenses (not including the Los Angeles settlement).
- Pope Benedict XVI was accused of conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse in the United States. At the Vatican's request, President George W. Bush granted the pope immunity from prosecution.
See also
References
External links
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