by MARK SLUTSKY

That a serial child rapist could operate undetected for decades in California is shocking enough, but that his crimes were not only known but tolerated, and to some extent even abetted, by the Catholic church, is still horrifying, even now, where pedophile priest cases have become almost commonplace.

Such is the case of Father Oliver O’Grady, who relentlessly, aggressively, sexually assaulted boys and girls, in the various parishes where he served throughout the 1970s and ’80s. It’s difficult to imagine or even think about the magnitude of his abuses. He raped a nine-month-old infant. He seduced mothers to get at their children. He wrecked families and damaged people for life. And, after serving seven years for his crimes, he now lives a free existence in Ireland.

You can almost understand, or at least deal with, O’Grady as a rare specimen of human monster—an aberration, a Hitler, a Vlad the Impaler, a horrible mistake. But what’s harder to comprehend is why he was allowed to roam free for so many years, even as his superiors in the church were seemingly fully aware of his actions, sometimes telling upset parents they would deal with the problem while just sending him down the road to another parish and a fresh crop of victims.

Amy Berg’s tremendous new documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, exposes the hypocrisy of an institution that still refuses to take responsibility for its gross negligence. It does so through the stories of O’Grady’s victims, some of whom were willing to come forward and speak out, through footage of taped depositions by O’Grady’s superiors (none of whom would consent to be interviewed by Berg), and, incredibly, through in-depth interviews with O’Grady himself.

For whatever reason, the former priest agreed to talk to Berg, and the resulting interviews are fascinating. Fascinating and horrible; you begin to understand that one thing that made the man so successful was his low-key, humble charisma, and that he’s using the same charm on the camera. He comes across as faintly regretful and not entirely aware of the scope of his crimes; it’s an open question as to whether he’s willfully projecting naïveté or whether he really is as disassociative as he seems. But hearing him gently discuss his “mistakes” produces a feeling of deep, deep wrongness that’s hard to shake.

Berg’s interviews with the survivors are hard to watch for another reason, the opposite one: their heartbreaking emotional clarity. What comes through clearly is the profound extent of the abuse. It would be bad enough on its own, but coming from someone you understand to be the representative of God on Earth must be spiritually shattering in a way that’s impossible to comprehend.

Deliver Us From Evil is an angering, upsetting film. It’s a call to arms. It clearly accuses Church authorities of an ongoing cover-up, and the evidence is strong. Berg goes far enough as to point the finger at Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who at the time of O’Grady’s crimes was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an organization, it is implied, that should have been responsible for dealing with the abuses when they happened. You probably know Ratzinger better today as Pope Benedict XVI. Whether or not he’s directly culpable, it’s clear that the victims’ fight for some sort of justice is far from over.

Deliver Us from Evil opens at the newly re-opened Cinéma du Parc this Friday, Oct. 27

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