Review: Deliver Us From Evil

Deliver us from Evil (Dir: Amy Berg)

Father Oliver O’Grady is a serial rapist who spent as much time planning and carrying out the rape of hundreds of children as he did on his clerical duties over twenty years in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Bishop Roger Mahony covered it up, moving him from parish to parish where he found new victims. In the early 1990s, faced with multiple charges, O’Grady cut a deal, served seven years on a contempt charge, and was deported to Ireland, where he lives freely on an annuity paid by the Church, seemingly incapable of remorse.

If you believe a word of this, you don’t need to see it, and if you do see it, it won’t be for entertainment. Amy Berg’s matter-of-fact documentary is built from interviews with O’Grady’s victims and their families, victim advocates, deposition footage and – surprisingly -- O’Grady himself. He blames his superiors for not delivering him from temptation, and says he would like to apologise to his victims in person. He has no idea what horror he hath wrought – and there are thousands more like him.

Worse, his superiors don’t care, which victim advocate Father Tom Doyle notes is the de facto strategy of a hierarchy that places more value on bishops than it does on children. In a deposition, Bishop Mahony is asked, “He had sexual urges toward a nine-year old. Is that cause to remove him from ministry?” Mahony says it isn’t.

Not sick yet? Try sitting still while O’Grady, one eye on the camera, the other on the playground in St Stephen’s Green, admits he is aroused by naked pre-adolescents. It is unfortunate and ethically questionable for a director who knows his past to film him near children, but more unfortunate is that Berg’s film won’t trouble those who most need to be wrenched out of denial.

(From Totally Dublin, June 2007)