The God Squad

Dear Pope Benedict, Archbishop Mahony and all other members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church,

Last Wednesday, a Dutch television station broadcast Deliver Us From Evil, my 2006 documentary about the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. A few days earlier, the subject of my film, notorious pedophile Oliver O’Grady, was contacted by Dutch police officers, tipped off by his neighbors who had seen an advertisement for the film. Over the course of his 30-year career as a Catholic priest in California, O’Grady abused hundreds of children and is now living on the lam in Europe. O’Grady quickly disguised himself and fled, taking a train from Rotterdam to Schtipol. He managed to catch the last plane out of Amsterdam on Aer Lingus at 20:45. Ironically, had the film aired a few days later, he likely would have been stuck in Holland due to the volcanic eruption the following day.

As you might imagine, after the film aired in Holland, residents of O’Grady’s community in Rotterdam were outraged and contacted me and two of the advocates featured in the film, attorneys John Manly and Jeff Anderson. After I spoke to one Rotterdam family, I discovered to my dismay that O’Grady had been masquerading himself as “Brother Francis” and had been volunteering at their local parish. This is alarming on several levels, especially in light of the Church’s recent commitment to screen all volunteers and laypeople working in the church in order to protect the children and the community. Needless to say, the community was terrified and is still in a state of panic and shock. Another family told me they had been very close friends with O’Grady and had even traveled with him along with their nine-month-old child.

John Manly and I then called the Irish Guarda, an investigatory unit in Ireland who confirmed that O’Grady was on a “watch list,” which means he is a person they know about but is not monitored. They do not follow him or make him register on a regular basis, or take any measures to make sure he is not around children. They do nothing to protect the communities where he lives or visits. Whether or not they reported his history to the police in Rotterdam, or even knew he was living in Holland, is questionable at best. Whatever arrangements were made between the Church and the Guarda are similarly suspect. O’Grady was deported in 2003 from the US after serving several years in prison. Had he been kept here, at least he would have been on a sex offender registry so people would know to avoid him.

So since it seemed like nothing was going to be done, I called my two good friends in Dublin: Noel Donnellon and Daniel Holfeld. They are both respected artists and filmmakers in Ireland. Within two days (after a visiting his old haunts) they provided me with six photos of a bearded Oliver walking freely without a care in the world. He was perusing book stores, cafés, and living the life of Riley. For proof of his whereabouts, please see the photo below.

O'Grady may have shaved off his beard.