ARTICLES
FEBRUARY 2005 ARTICLES
Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Can You Really Forget Child Rape?
Revelations from Cardinal Mahony's Court Deposition
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
Did Cardinal Mahony perjure himself? According to Larry Drivon, a lawyer representing alleged victims of molestation by priests, he did, during a 1998 trial in Stockton. In this trial centering on Stockton priest Oliver O' Grady, Cardinal Mahony testified that O'Grady was the only priest accused of molestation during Mahony's years as bishop of Stockton (1980-85).
But in a deposition given on November 23 (and released to the public December 9), the cardinal said that when in Stockton he had dismissed two visiting Mexican priests, Antonio Munoz and Antonio Camacho, accused of molesting minors. Mahony had Camacho deported. In the November 23 deposition, Mahony said he had forgotten those incidents at the time of the O'Grady trial. How could you forget dismissing priests for child molestation, asked victim's lawyer John Manly? "This trial was some 13 years after I had left the Diocese of Stockton," Mahony replied. "We had many events in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and I was very preoccupied. We had the visit of the Holy Father. We had the earthquakes. We had riots. We had everything. And I simply did not remember everything that happened many years ago in Stockton."
Did Mahony perjure himself in 1998? On December 10, Manly told the Los Angeles Times, "the evidence speaks for itself. No one forgets about the first time they find out about a priest abusing a child — especially a bishop. There could have been a nuclear detonation and you wouldn't forget about that. Mahony himself interviewed victims and talked to the police." But archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg said that the inconsistency between the 1998 testimony and the 2004 deposition merely shows "human beings forget things."
During his deposition, Mahony was asked directly by alleged victims' attorney, John Manly, "do you think if a child were raped during your tenure at Stockton, that that would be something that you would forget?" But the cardinal never got a chance to answer; his lawyer, Donald Woods, instructed Mahony not to reply. "Harassing" is what Woods called Manly's question.
The deposition session was not too civil, with Mahony's counsel interrupting questions, asking for definitions of what (to a layman, at least) seem rather easy-to-comprehend words and turns of phrase, frequently objecting and advising Mahony not to respond. Though Manly seemed rather restrained, plaintiffs lawyer Venus Soltan's sarcasm and restrained disdain for Mahony flamed through the drabness of the deposition transcript.
During part of her questioning, Soltan seemed to want to establish that Mahony was negligent as bishop of Stockton for not having in place a policy for dealing with sexual molesters. The cardinal explained that canon law gave him the "authority" and the "tools" to deal with molesting priests — and he had used these when dealing with the Mexican priests. This was not good enough for Soltan, who wanted to know if the Stockton diocese had had in place background checks for priests and teachers in Catholic schools and whether it required fingerprinting of the same — especially after the first molesting priest was discovered and dealt with in 1981. Mahony explained that the 1981 accusation against Father Munoz was an isolated incident, and so it didn't occur to him to establish any policies or procedures. Mahony did say that in 1985, after a meeting of the bishops in Collegeville, Minnesota, that discussed the question of priest molestation, he informed the vicar general, Monsignor James Cain, "that we needed to proceed to develop procedures, written procedures, to deal with this matter." "To your knowledge, was that done?" asked Soltan. "I don't know," Mahony replied, "because I left. I was reassigned shortly thereafter." Mahony was appointed archbishop of Los Angeles.
Finally, Soltan reflected (perhaps anachronistically) that Mahony's way of dealing with the Mexican priests — by simply removing their faculties and assignments — was bothersome. "That means," she said, "you're not going to act until something actually happens; the child has to be hurt before you do something." Then she asked, again, "was there any policy that you had that allowed you to put protections in place in advance of a child being hurt, to make sure that that didn't happen?" As far as schools were concerned, Mahony answered that he didn't know; his superintendent of schools handled all of that sort of thing.
If, as the Los Angeles archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg said, in the case of the two Mexican priests, then-Bishop Mahony did the right thing — "he bounced these men from the ministry and notified the police. They were gone from his diocese" — Mahony's dealings in the case of Father Oliver O'Grady are more open to question. Father O'Grady, a native of Ireland serving in the Stockton diocese, in 1976 wrote a letter of apology to an 11-year-old girl whom he allegedly had molested. A copy of the letter was placed in O' Grady's personnel file at diocesan headquarters. Though the letter was known to Monsignor Cain, Mahony claimed he himself knew nothing about it. In the deposition, Mahony said that Cain had testified in a previous deposition "that he does not at all recall this as sexual abuse but simply as something of inappropriate touching."
In 1980, it appears from Mahony's deposition, O'Grady was involved with a Mrs. Howard. When Mahony learned of this, he said, "I called him [O'Grady] in and told him that he was to cease and desist anymore conduct — contact with Mrs. Howard and the Howard family. He promised to do so, and I never had another report about him." It came out in a 1998 court case that O'Grady molested two of the Howard children, John and James. In 1984, O'Grady reportedly confessed to a counselor that he had recently had sexual relations with a nine-year-old child. The counselor reported him to Stockton police, who initiated an investigation of the priest. According to former Stockton police officer Jerry Cranston, the Stockton diocese attorney persuaded police to stop child abuse investigations against O'Grady. But diocesan attorney, Tom Shepherd, said the police stopped the investigation because they did not have enough evidence against O'Grady.
Mahony, however, claims that he did not know the details of the 1984 allegations and had no other reason to believe that other incidents had occurred. That same year, Mahony made O'Grady the parochial administrator of St. Andrew's in San Andreas; but before assigning him, Bishop Mahony referred the priest to a psychiatrist, John Morris. Morris, in a written report, warned, "Father O'Grady reveals a severe defect in maturation, not only in the matter of sex, but more importantly in the matter of social relationships... Perhaps Oliver is not truly called to the priesthood." Mahony, who has said he never checked O'Grady's personnel file (where he would have discovered the 1976 letter), after receiving Morris' report, assigned O'Grady to St. Andrew's.
Why did he do this? Attorney Rick Simons asked in the deposition. Morris' letter, said Mahony, did not exhaust his contacts with the psychiatrist. "I had other conversations with Dr. Morris about the suitability of Father O' Grady going to a parish in San Andreas," said Mahony. "And so Dr. Morris, an outside psychiatric consultant whom I had asked to review Father O'Grady independently, reached this conclusion that in his opinion Father O'Grady could continue at St. Andrew's in San Andreas, and he that [sic] pointed out what was customary in that time that there were two avenues to pursue: One, counseling, and the other, spiritual direction and spiritual assistance. Those are his two recommendations. At no point in the conversation or the letter does he say Father O'Grady is a danger to anyone nor does he say he should not remain there, he should be taken out of there."
Mahony's reasoning, if true, is not necessarily comforting. Perhaps Bishop Mahony knew nothing of the 1976 letter. Perhaps he acted in good faith and truly thought O'Grady was no threat. Maybe Mahony received the counsel he said he received from Dr. Morris. Even assuming this good faith on the part of Mahony, his deposition reveals some facts which point to something more ominous. Deceit or cavalier disregard, a homosexual and heretical underground, may not be at the root of the mess that is the priest molestation scandal.
In the unfolding of the priest molestation crisis, some Catholics have called for structural reform of the Church, with greater openness on the part of the clergy and greater power in the hands of the laity. Some have gone so far as to call for open ecclesial democracy. But are the Church's problems structural, requiring some kind of technical, formal solution? Or do they rather result from a benumbed spiritual sense on the part of Catholics as a whole, and bishops in particular?
For instance, some have said that diocesan priests are treated more as company employees rather than as sacred charges for whose souls the bishop is responsible. The O'Grady case seems to support this hunch. Though Bishop Mahony may have known nothing of O'Grady's 1976 letter, he did know of the priest's relations with Mrs. Howard; he knew of Dr. Morris' diagnosis that "Father O'Grady reveals a severe defect in maturation, no only in the matter of sex, but more importantly in the matter of social relationships." One would think that, as O'Grady's bishop, Mahony would have been keenly interested in O'Grady's spiritual condition and placed him under close guidance. But the deposition reveals he did not do this.
"Who was there to supervise Oliver O'Grady when he was appointed pastor at St. Andrews?" Simon asked Mahony toward the end of the deposition.
"There was no one actually there who was given the role of supervision," Mahony replied. "There were two retired priests living in the rectory with him, and I thought that would be helpful for his maturation in dealing with authority problems as Dr. Morris suggests."
"Did you communicate with those retired priests regarding Oliver O'Grady's performance as pastor at St. Andrew's?" Asked Simon.
"I did not."
"Did you personally visit St. Andrews during the time that Oliver O'Grady was pastor?"
"I believe so because I believe there would have been probably confirmation given up in that parish during the time I was there."
"When you visited the parish, did you privately seek out other persons including the retired priests to ask about Father O'Grady's job performance?"
"No, my prior knowledge was that once the parish was advertised, there was an open hearing up in San Andreas which anyone in the parish was invited to give their comments about who the next pastor should be in terms of qualifications, but apparently they were also a [sic] very strongly in favor of Father O'Grady remaining as their pastor."
Presumably, Bishop Mahony did not think O'Grady's problems serious enough even to inform his successor about them. Mahony left Bishop Donald Montrose, who succeeded to Stockton when Mahony went to Los Angeles in 1985, in the dark in regards to O'Grady. "Did you brief [Montrose] about Oliver O'Grady and his past history with regards to the Howards and any other matters having to do with sexual affairs?" Venus Soltan asked. "No," Mahony replied.
Nor, it seems, did Mahony take pains to become better acquainted with the man O'Grady. According to the cardinal's testimony, the priest remained mostly a stranger. "You had a very good personal relationship with O'Grady; right?" Simon asked the cardinal. To which Mahony replied:
"I hardly knew the man actually."