The bitter wake of a pedophile protected by the church

2. Survivors Ann Jyono (left) and Nancy Sloan (right) pray in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate 2. Survivors Ann Jyono (left) and Nancy Sloan (right) pray in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close The bitter wake of a pedophile protected by the church 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Deliver Us From Evil: Documentary. Directed by Amy Berg. (Not rated. 101 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.

There's nothing fancy about the way "Deliver Us From Evil" unfolds. The spellbinding power of this almost certain Oscar nominee for best documentary comes from its chilling subject matter -- a notorious pedophile priest and the case that director Amy Berg makes for a cover-up of his heinous acts by the Roman Catholic hierarchy in California.

Berg, a former TV producer debuting impressively as a documentary filmmaker, eschews the stylistic innovations and tricked-up camerawork favored by some of her colleagues. Instead she goes the old-fashioned route of relying predominantly on on-camera interviews, in which, unlike Michael Moore, she stays resolutely in the background. The responses she elicits from Oliver O'Grady, a former priest defrocked after his conviction for "lewd and lascivious" acts with preteens, his victims, their distraught parents and various legal experts are interspersed with testimony from his trial.

But "Deliver Us From Evil" does contain one visual you can't get out of your head. It's a montage of photos of O'Grady during his 20 years as a parish priest in Northern California. He's pictured with dozens of his young charges, smiling down at them affectionately. The children's faces have been blurred to hide their identities because this man of the cloth probably molested some of them. O'Grady raped and sodomized countless of his trusting parishioners -- girls and boys alike -- of all ages, even a 9-month-old. For this, he wound up serving a mere half of his 14-year sentence.

When Berg catches up with him, he's leading the life of Riley in his native Ireland (to which he was deported). But what about the kids he was photographed with? What sort of lives are they living as a result of his heinous acts? You get a sense of the pain he caused the three victims who talk openly to Berg. They're now in their 30s and 40s, and their emotional growth clearly has been stunted. But their willingness to come forward indicates that they are probably the lucky ones. Some of the others may yet to have told anyone what O'Grady did to them. In a chilling postscript, Berg quotes a study estimating that 80 percent of those molested by priests in the United States never acknowledge the abuse. Those photos of the children camouflaged as if they were the guilty party may haunt you as they have me.

O'Grady also stays with you, but for completely different reasons. His soft Irish accent and kindly face predispose you to like him, accounting for the one family interviewed who had him as a frequent houseguest, totally unaware that he was sneaking into their young daughter's bedroom at night.

Walking around the streets of Dublin, he peers into schoolyards with an interest that can only appear perverse after what's been revealed about him. He seems so removed from his evildoings that he could be an actor playing the part of a pedophile ex-priest. It's almost incomprehensible to hear him talk about his sexual urges -- the sight of children in swimsuits turned him on -- as if he were addicted to ice cream.

That he agreed to appear in "Deliver Us From Evil" is an indication not just of an oversize ego but also a failure to comprehend how he will be perceived. As the casualties of his actions sob onscreen and their parents talk about how O'Grady was the ruination of their family, he talks about the rise in the number of pedophile priests as another bad patch the Roman Catholic Church is going through, like the Dark Ages.

At 65, O'Grady will start receiving interest from an annuity purchased in his name by his former employer. The film alleges that it is hush money, offered in return for O'Grady not testifying against Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who, while bishop in Stockton in the 1980s, shuttled the priest from one parish to another every time an abuse accusation was made, allegedly out of fear that if the truth came out, the bishop would never rise in the ranks. The church declined to comment to Berg. Her film speaks volumes about its silence -- and about a wrong that can never be righted.

-- Advisory: Sexual references and deeply disturbing commentary.