Amy Berg, the writer, director and producer of Deliver Us From Evil, talks about her revealing interviews with Church officials and the perpetuation of abuse against children.

How did the idea for Deliver Us From Evil arise?

I had been a journalist for about seven years when I started working on stories about paedophilia within the Catholic Church for CNN. I met Father Oliver O’Grady, the paedophile priest, during this time and realised I had an incredible opportunity to document his story for a feature-length film. I didn’t really have a personal interest in the subject matter before this. I wanted to include Oliver’s perspective because it is a side we don’t hear very often, and I think it’s important that we include it to balance with the stories of his colleagues and of the victims.

Your film takes a sympathetic view towards the child abuse victims. You have also tried to understand O’Grady’s views about what he has done’he committed abuse of children while a priest for decades. What answers did you come up with?

Well, he acknowledges it (paedophilia) as an illness and that his abuse of children shouldn’t have happened. But he is also in denial. When he talks about some of the instances when he hurt children, he is very vague. He never goes as far as to say he raped a child. He talks very indirectly about what he has done, always skirting around the extent of it’talking about ‘touching’ and ‘cuddling’ and so on. Another interesting point is that he was himself abused as a child, but he refers to these events as ‘sex’ and not ‘abuse.’ I think that if he did fully acknowledge these traumas of his childhood, he would then have to face up to himself in light of what he has done to hundreds of children…and he doesn’t want to do that.

An excerpt from the Deliver Us From Evil website says, ‘Church hierarchs may believe their divinely ordained status relieves them of accountability to their followers.’ How do you think the Catholic Church justifies covering up abuse perpetrated by inside Officials? And what about them answering to their victims?

Catholic Church officials’the Bishops, Cardinals…they don’t try to justify or explain the abuse in the slightest. Their view is, ‘what happens stays in the Church.’ And the rule of a confessional between Priest and Bishop means that everything said must not be repeated, and that has and still does include criminal activity. The church justifies the cover up because they value members of the Priesthood above children. Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, who appears in a lot of video footage in the film, believes that the Priest and rules of the confessional are more important than the rights of children’he doesn’t acknowledge what has been done to the victims of abuse at all. Victims have sought meeting up with Church officials but this request has not been met. Nor has there been an apology to abuse victims on behalf of the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Roger Mahoney was aware of O’Grady’s record as an offender and was culpable for allowing O’Grady to continue working as a Priest. How do you think his refusal to report O’Grady would fare outside the institution of the Church?

Well, he would be fired or killed, wouldn’t he? There is a great opportunity now for the Catholic Church to change the way people look at them, yet they’re going the other way. They perpetuate myths such as, ‘Homosexuality is linked to paedophilia.’ There are no reports saying homosexuals are more likely to be paedophiles. The psychologist I interviewed in the film substantiates this. Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has the power to set up investigations that set out to prevent future abuse, but nothing is being done. He presided over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that ran an inquiry into child sex abuse. Nothing positive was done during this time. He ordered that the Church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. But you have to remember, we’re talking about a Church that won’t support the use of condoms in AIDS stricken countries.

Do you think Evil exists or is it only a religious concept?

No, I don’t think it does. I don’t want to speak for the victims, but I know that for at least one of them, O’Grady speaks for the devil. I’m not religious in a Christian sense, but I’m very spiritual. I think we all get lost and make bad choices…and we’re individually responsible for those choices.
I’m interested in the power of thoughts and how they manifest themselves, how we can control them.