Crimes of the Father

  “I believe that confidentiality agreements, and documents seeking to bind victims to no further action, should be cast aside because they limit the rights of those wronged. And all priests should be entitled to make their feelings known about the Church’s processes, since it is their priesthood that will bear the odium if appropriate healing is not undertaken. Classically, it has been the mystique of the priesthood that has made it possible for predators to operate under its cover.

  “In my studies I have been the beneficiary of the conviction of my order’s superiors that the discipline of psychology can provide tools that are of use to the Church. One is to screen applicants for the seminary. It is not desirable anymore that young men should flee to the seminary because they’re suffering emotional instability, developmental problems, or traumas from abuse in their own childhood. I note without prejudice that even my bishop in Ontario required such screening. The process involves an interview and a questionnaire, and I have attached to copies of this lecture the journal in which these can be accessed.

  “Lastly, may I quote fellow priest and psychologist Friar Austin Carter, an American Franciscan. He writes: ‘Should the Church pursue legal arrangements instead of compassion and generosity, within two decades it will face legal sanctions from civic authority. I can foresee that in Ireland, for many of us the source of our faith, the government will soon be willing to react to a church that has operated by authoritarianism towards the victims and protection for the culprits.’

  “By the time we have been called to account in courts and secular inquiries, we will have scandalized those who believe, and created scorn in the hearts of those who look for an excuse to belabor us. Our priests will be under suspicion for crimes they’ve had no part in, and will be making restitutions into which they’ve been allowed no input from their bishops. The shame we already feel, even if some of us have tried to hide it, will be hammered to the door of every church by secular authorities, whereas we could have prevented and healed the harm by our own efforts and by listening not to lawyers but to the generous instincts of the spirit.”

  Applause in the hall stuttered at first, but quickly a number of people were on their feet, nodding in Docherty’s direction. The laypeople at the back of the hall were loudest in their agreement.

  * * *

  A YOUNG priest, a potential careerist, thought Docherty, stood up with his hand raised. Here comes my chastisement, he thought. But the man was conciliatory and asked about false allegations. Didn’t Docherty think that the Church’s method of settling these matters helped to limit false accusations? And was it not appropriate that the complainant be denied the presence of a lawyer, who was not as concerned with reconciliation as he was with maximizing a settlement?

  Docherty argued that by now protocols had been developed to show accurately which allegations were real, the signs and symptoms of an authentic case. The questionable psychotherapeutic practice of retrieving lost memories should not be admitted, he argued. Most clinical psychologists had great concern about these techniques and felt they had in the past led to unjust accusations, often of the subject’s parents. But experts in this area were familiar with the symptoms that typified the victims of sex abuse. Those present could see notes on these manifestations in Docherty’s addendum to the lecture.

  It was true, too, that legal processes were very blunt instruments in delivering justice and in appeasing the feelings of misused humans. But the victim should surely be permitted to bring a representative to his or her meeting with the Church, whether it be a lawyer or not. For the Church had recourse to lawyers, and sometimes they were on the panel that negotiated terms with the victim.

  To this point of history the discrediting of those with true cases against clergy, rather than the reverse, said Docherty, had characterized the whole relationship between Church and victims. Nonetheless, he conceded, the possibility of false accusation was justifiably every priest’s nightmare.

  Some priests stayed in knots, chatting, but the hall soon emptied except for one group. A young priest amongst them, with a lustrous black beard of a kind that would not have been allowed in Docherty’s day (in case the Blood of Christ got caught in the facial hairs), approached him. He introduced himself as a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

  “Are you free for morning coffee on Friday, Dr. Docherty?” he asked pleasantly. “A few of us would very much like to talk to you further.”

  Docherty was used to a reception of repressed hostility to his message. He had experienced it in Canada and the US when he had been invited to speak; those who could sense the impending storm of scandal, retribution, compensation bills, and resented it all, as an Australian farmer might resent a drought. Or else they thought it an overblown issue. But there were always a troubled few who wanted to talk further. He could guess by now what they would tell him: that they had seen what could be called suspicious signs, and they had reported them, and they had been ignored.

  That, Docherty knew, as he said goodbye and agreed to the future meeting, was a common story, too.

  6

  * * *

  Monsignor Shannon Fights the Good Fight

  March 1996

  AT THE end of the summer, a few months before Docherty’s visit to Sydney, Monsignor Leo Shannon enjoyed his morning swim at the Boy Charlton Pool near the Art Gallery of New South Wales before strolling across the greensward of the domain to the Cathedral House gates. The statue of Michael Kelly, a former archbishop who had once argued with guards to let him into the Quarantine Station so he could give last rites to those dying of the Spanish flu, pointed towards a sky of the most superb blue.

  Monsignor Shannon went to his rooms in the Cathedral House and, after a shower, changed into a light, fawn suit, such as would not have been considered appropriate in the old days, put his purple stock over his chest, and adjusted his clerical collar. His hair was thinning but still an evident feature, and on his lapel was the membership badge for the Order of Australia, for which he had been successfully nominated by his contacts in the business community.

  He went downstairs to his office—he was the financial vicar and business manager for the archdiocese—collected from his secretary the file he needed, and was in the meeting room in the chancery ten minutes before the appointed time. There he found Peter ­Callaghan—a retired silk, ruddy-faced and wise, a sun-kippered Celt—studying a folder full of the same documents as those in Monsignor Shannon’s dossier. The former deputy commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force, Nick Erasmo, a thin-faced, defined sort of fellow, reliable, son of the Church, was also at the table. He was a young man compared to Callaghan, extremely athletic, even ascetic, with an appropriately hawk-like, inquisitorial face. Yet he had been a wonderful cop, certainly not one to refuse enhanced police powers, but scrupulous in their administration. The normal Australian balance, this committee: a balance between law and order and savoir faire, as Monsignor Shannon thought of it.

  “Do you have the check, Monsignor?” asked Callaghan, sounding a little stressed.

  “All drawn up,” said Shannon. “How are you, Peter?”

  “This one worries me,” said Callaghan, who did look worried, though he was blessedly better at looking it than actually being it. “This one is a highly educated man. He has a doctorate in laser ­physics.”

  “But I don’t think that changes our approach, does it?” asked Shannon.

  “No. But it might influence his expectations.”

  “Well, as you know, we have authorization from the company to go to seventy-five thousand dollars in this case.”

  “Given that Father Guest died in prison serving a sentence for pedophilia, it is hard to deny the likelihood of this claim. The man’s evidence is internally coherent.”

  “Yes,” Shannon admitted. “We know Father Guest was a delinquent.”

  “The account of what happened is true to the way Guest oper
ated.”

  Monsignor Shannon said nothing. He was given to counsels of reticence. He did not pour fuel on fires. The note-taker came in. Pleasantries were exchanged and then, “Gentlemen,” said Shannon, ordering his papers, “tell me when you’re ready for him.”

  “I’m ready,” said Callaghan. “What about you, Nick?”

  “I agree he’s not a typical case,” said Erasmo. “But I’m ready.”

  Shannon saw Callaghan adopt a noncommittal, professionally skeptical face, the one he brought to all his encounters with those who claimed to be victims of clergy or of members of religious orders. Erasmo was studying the file. Shannon called the receptionist and asked her to escort Dr. Devitt into the meeting room.

  The door opened and Devitt entered, in a good if disheveled suit, carrying an attaché case. He was a square-jawed man with the tan and condition of someone who surfed or cycled. His eyes were, however, fraught. The monsignor was half-amused at the way the ecclesiastical atmosphere, the austere grandeur of the cathedral chancery, got to people. That is, a conditioned awe from childhood came into play. That dread we thought we had left when we grew up could rise again in us.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Devitt,” growled Callaghan. “Or I should say, Dr. Devitt.”

  The chair for Devitt was at the end, beyond a swath of polished wood. He would face Shannon, Callaghan, and Erasmo.

  Devitt said, somewhat skeptically, “Thank you.”

  “Dr. Devitt,” said Callaghan absently and not looking up from his papers, as if Devitt were merely one of a string of claimants and they were all being dealt with today, “did you know that I am the commissioner of the Church’s process named In Compassion’s Name?”

  “Yes, Mr. Callaghan,” said Devitt briskly, but the unsettled look was still in his eyes. He cannot be calm about the Church, felt Monsignor Shannon, with fraternal tolerance.

  “I’ll leave it to my fellow board members to introduce themselves,” said Callaghan.

  “I am Monsignor Shannon, Dr. Devitt. I am financial vicar to the cardinal archbishop.”

  Dr. Devitt shook his head marginally, anticlerically—so Shannon decided. Something within Shannon had been wearied by the old white-hot slurs; claimants yelling, “Who was Christ’s financial adviser?”—after which, if there was opportunity, Shannon would spread his hands and say, “Times change. Indeed, our Divine Lord and his apostles were all volunteer workers. But the Church was small then.”

  Devitt, however, went for none of the normal abuse.

  Erasmo introduced himself. “You were referred to us by your lawyers?” he asked.

  Dr. Devitt nodded. “And I have to say, Mr. Callaghan, it seems inequitable to me that my legal representation was not permitted to accompany me. Yet I believe I should hear you out. And discover what, in your terms, ‘reconciliation’ means.”

  “Well,” said Callaghan, “we fear that lawyers, bred to confront, might inhibit the spirit of our process.”

  “Yet the Church engages you, Mr. Callaghan. A justifiably eminent lawyer.”

  “Yes, but I work pro bono, as a volunteer and son of the Church, on these matters. That alters my participation. I am not involved in a confrontation. I trust I am involved in a form of peacemaking.”

  Monsignor Shannon thought that he now perceived what Callaghan had been uneasy about: frequently, in a process of reconciliation, which this was above all meant to be—a process of ­consolation—­victims (and people who were merely victims in their own mind) were healed by allowing themselves to go through the process without legal intervention, that is, without the ceaseless interruption of lawyers on picayune issues.

  “This is a matter,” said Peter Callaghan to the young man, “of the Church genuinely trying to make peace with its own and to address their valid concerns. We hope it is a mediation in which all parties feel they are well served. Please feel free to make any notes you choose to.”

  Devitt unpacked his attaché case and took out a notepad. “Now, what precisely do you mean by reconciliation, Mr. Callaghan?” Devitt asked.

  Callaghan said, in a practiced manner, “Well, first, of course, before reconciliation, we mean to protect the Church from false accusations, a consideration that does not apply in your case. Following your assessment by our psychologist, we wish to utter our regret and to offer you a warm and fraternal reentry into a community of mutual trust.

  “We are here, too, to offer spiritual counseling, if you believe you need it. We wish to mark our concern for you, and our regret for the crimes of the deceased offender by making an ex-gratia ­payment—a mere gesture, I know, but something adequate to prove goodwill and compassion. A payment made on the basis of mutual respect, that is. Not wrung out of us by any arduous or antagonistic process.”

  Devitt said nothing for a time, then chose the moment Monsignor Shannon was drawing his breath to speak. “I’ll pass on the spiritual counseling, thank you, gentlemen.”

  Again, he spoke levelly. There was barely a sign of pent-up fury, or, if there was, it was a new kind of fury, a matured, subtle one with a steely density. It was far easier to deal with those who raged until it ended up chastening them. This brought them to a quick resolution, either through embarrassment at what they had said, or their relief at saying it. They took the $50,000, signed their binding confidentiality statement, and often could not leave soon enough, having got out their anger. They had been believed, and thus were convinced they might now face a renewed life.

  “The trouble with counseling,” Devitt continued in that even tone, “is the brand of it I got from Father Guest.”

  “Yes,” said Monsignor Shannon, and wraithlike images of Guest, whom he had known, flickered about his memory. “Your interview with our psychologist makes that clear.”

  But Devitt would not be prevented from telling his story. “He began quizzing me in the confessional, asking me if I’d committed sins I had not yet even thought of. I’ve heard from others—I don’t like the word victim, but I’d better say victims for clarity, anyhow—that the confessional has played a big part in child abuse. That’s where these predators start working on a kid. You might remember that in Father Guest’s cases . . . the five he went to jail for, two of them being suicides . . . they all said that. It started with that bloody confessional box. Maybe you fellows should have a look at that. It was a dating agency for Guest. It is for other monsters, too. And one with a high success rate. If you consider raping a child a success.”

  “The Church did not want any of that to happen to those five,” said Callaghan, the capable, dry-humored but kindly man. “It does wring the heart of the Church. I have to say it wrings my heart.”

  “The feeling does you credit, Mr. Callaghan. By the way, I played cricket with your son and remember him as a nice boy. But back to business. Don’t forget that Guest was prosecuted only because one of the victims was a nephew of a public prosecutor.

  “Now, do your notes recount that when at last I told my father about this, he took the matter to the auxiliary bishop, Charlie Modena, in Penrith? Modena told him it would stop. And it did, with me. I was nearly fourteen by then, anyway—I was getting too old for Guest. You know that phrase from the Bible? ‘We are legion.’ Well, Guest’s abused children were legion, but they weren’t the demons. He was the demon. Anyhow, I’m sure you don’t mind my speaking at a little length.”

  “No,” said Callaghan, neither sympathetic nor prohibitive. “Within reason. You are a reasonable man, I know, Dr. Devitt.”

  Shannon said, “We spoke to Bishop Modena, who is retired now. He remembers your father coming to him with a complaint. We do not dispute your case.”

  “Obviously he did not report my father’s claims to the police.”

  “You have to remember that he was a man of his time. There was no legal requirement to report . . .”

  “That’s right,” said Devitt. “One of thos
e merry men and women some call enablers.”

  “Well,” said Callaghan, “that might be a little harsh in Bishop Modena’s case. But we are willing to acknowledge the special circumstances of the damage done to you with an ex gratia payment in this case of seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  Devitt whistled, but there was irony in the sound.

  Callaghan said calmly, looking at his papers to show he did not intend to argue, “The sum is not negotiable.”

  “And I have to sign that agreement, don’t I?”

  Callaghan passed a copy of the agreement to the monsignor, who reached and groaned a little to get it all the way down the table to Devitt.

  “Excuse me if I take a little time. I was not presented with the terms previously.”

  He read the document, making notes on his pad.

  “I see,” he said, raising his eyes at last. “I take your . . . payment, then I must keep silent on all aspects of Guest’s abuse of me, and on the arrangements we make here.”

  “As you know,” Callaghan said, “the media is ready to pounce on any vulnerability of the Church and make a carnival out of it. A carnival out of you, too! The victim is useful to them only as a trigger for their story. I don’t have to remind you of that, Doctor.”

  Devitt conceded that with a wave of the hand. “But may I be clear? Does signing the agreement mean that my lawyer and I are prohibited from disclosing the amount of the settlement to any person? And, second, if I speak of Guest’s other victims, I do it under pain of prosecution and am required to repay the amount of the settlement, with interest?”