HOLY CRUSADER

HOLY CRUSADER

Saturday May 13th 2006

The real conspiracy in the Catholic Church has nothing to do with the Da Vinci Code - it's the cover-up of paedophile priests, argues Patrick Wall. John Meagher speaks to the crusading former monk 'He is the Hannibal Lecter of the clerical world - truly the scariest man I have ever encountered." Patrick Wall, a one-time Benedictine monk turned international bounty hunter of paedophile priests, is talking about Irish former cleric Oliver O'Grady, whose legacy of child sex abuse haunts northern California. "He has one of the wildest sexual appetites for young children of any priest ever - and I use the present tense because it never really stops," Wall says. "He abused at least 23 young people, including a nine-month-old infant. And what did the Church do? It moved him from parish to parish and tried to cover it up." Oliver O'Grady (60) is considered perhaps the most noxious child sex offender in the US. He spent seven years in a California state prison for his crimes and the Catholic Church has been forced to pay out more than $30m (€23m) to his victims. Yet, he lags some way behind Sean Fortune and Brendan Smyth in the collective consciousness of this country. "Ireland has certainly had its fair share of paedophile priests over the years, but I think people should be aware of Oliver O'Grady - the way he would lure his victims is chilling." Patrick Wall knows a lot about O'Grady and his ilk. He works as a consultant for Manly, McGuire, & Stewart, a Los Angeles-based law firm that specialises in bringing paedophile clergy to court. Wall's job is to hunt down Catholic priests retired by the Vatican in the wake of the sex abuse scandals that erupted in the US in the past five years. The former priest is very likely to be in the news if Patrick Wall gets his way and a multimillion euro lawsuit against the Irish diocese Cashel and Emly, which trained O'Grady, gets the go-ahead. "We've got a 15-hour video deposition from Oliver and we believe that the seminary in Thurles and the diocese should have taken greater steps to ensure that priests with problems like his were identified at the outset and not sent to the US where they've caused horrendous grief." Limerick-born O'Grady is thought to be living in Dublin now, after spending some years in Thurles, Co Tipperary. He was deported from the US in 2001. As part of his job, Wall meets the victims and their stories hit home hard. "In the current catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, the sexual abuse of a minor is described as a permanent scar upon the soul that never goes away. That's what I've felt whenever I've met Oliver's victims or those of other paedophile priests. It truly is a permanent scar on the person, on the spirit, on the soul, on the body. It changes your trajectory of life. Most of the victims never truly recover from that experience." Once an idealistic young priest, Patrick Wall has become utterly disillusioned with the hierarchy of the church. In 1992, just weeks after taking his vows for the priesthood, the 6ft, 18½ stone giant was invited to join the Church's 'sexual abuse response team'. "My job was to firefight cases of sex abuse - basically, take the place of the perpetrator and calm the waters. The definition of success was to make sure no one ever found out." By 1998, he was so disillusioned with the cover-up of sex abuses within the Church, that he quit. Since then, he has worked to bring the Vatican to task. Thus far, he has been involved in 200 cases of clerical sex abuse. Far from tiring of the relentless grind, Wall - along with two other former priests turned whistleblowers - has written a sobering book, Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse, on how the Church has covered up paedophile priests since its inception. "Anybody who thinks this is a new phenomenon couldn't be more wrong. There is documented evidence that the subject was on the agenda on the bishop's meeting in Spain in 309AD." Wall contends that for centuries the Church dealt with sex abuse in a proper manner by excommunicating priests and getting secular authorities involved to punish perpetrators. That all changed in 1866, he says, when the Vatican ruled that bishops should keep the problem in-house. "They were ordered never to turn over a priest to the police. Problems would be dealt with quietly and so began so much of the misery that we know today." Another example of the Church's failure to deal with sex offenders happened in 1962, says Wall, with the introduction of the secret Crimen Sollicationis - Latin for 'the crime of solicitation'. Described as a 'blueprint for deception and concealment' by lawyers investigating the worldwide sex-abuse scandals the document, which only came to light four years ago, contains strict instructions for dealing with what the Vatican calls the 'worst crimes' - such as allegations of paedophilia and bestiality. Rather than report these offences to the civil authorities, it instructs bishops to investigate them "in the most secretive way" or face the "penalty of excommunication". In 2001, this document was followed with a second directive which ordered bishops to send their reports directly to Rome, where they would be kept under lock and key along with other so-called Pontifical Secrets. The person responsible for this directive was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. "We need to start to talk about the fact that the Pope has first-hand knowledge about all these sex abuse cases around the world and yet he seems to have the same attitude as his predecessor: 'Let's hunker down in our bunkers and hope this problem goes away.' "I would meet the Pope at the drop of a hat. If the Holy Father invited (co-authors) Tom Doyle, Richard Sipe and myself, we would be more than happy to come over at our expense to give a detailed report on what is happening around the world. But it's not in the Roman Catholic mentality to have that kind of dialogue. The Church looks upon this as an attack upon the priesthood." Patrick Wall is now married and has a five-year-old daughter, Erin. He believes lessons can be learnt from the mistakes of the past. "It's a balancing act between protecting the priest's personal rights and protecting the children. It doesn't take a whole lot to verify a rumour. First, the police have to be informed. The Church has proved time and again that they cannot police the priests. "There has to be a one-strike rule. If the priest strikes once, that's it. He can no longer ever function as a priest again." Meanwhile, a documentary on Oliver O'Grady is likely to be premiered in Los Angeles at the end of June. Deliver Us From Evil is a feature-length film boasting unprecedented access to the former priest. Producer Amy Berg, who spent 10 days interviewing O'Grady in Dublin last year, says she found him to be a compelling figure. "He's a very troubled man and his crimes are absolutely horrendous and inexcusable, but I do have a soft spot for him. Society can't just abandon paedophiles - we have to try to help them." Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse by Thomas Doyle, Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall is published by Bonus Books next week. © Irish Independent