Director Alex Gibney on the set of "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God." Credit: Noah Fowler / Courtesy of HBO

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It is a story almost too horrible to comprehend.

Deaf boys sent by their parents to a Catholic boarding school in Wisconsin, where they were molested again and again by a popular priest who stalked them in their dorm rooms at night, on trips to his North Woods cabin, even in the confessional.

Dismissed as "mentally retarded," they were often not believed, or worse ignored, for years by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, police, prosecutors and the media.

Gary Smith and Arthur Budzinski are among the victims of the late Father Lawrence Murphy who have worked for decades to make their voices heard. Their heartbreaking accounts have since been told on the pages of the Journal Sentinel and The New York Times.

Now they'll reach a new and potentially wider audience with the release of an HBO documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney.

"Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God," which makes its U.S. debut at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Friday, traces the church's global sex abuse crisis, and the Murphy case in particular, to the highest reaches of the Vatican.

"I started crying even before they turned it on," Budzinski - who got his first glimpse of the movie at the Toronto Film Festival last month - said, signing through his daughter, Gigi.

"You think, it's a movie now. Maybe people will finally understand."

Budzinski of West Allis and Smith of Milwaukee are among five alumni of the now defunct St. John's School for the Deaf in St. Francis who are featured in the film (one posthumously), which recounts one of the most sordid chapters in the American Catholic Church.

Murphy, who worked at St. John's from 1950 to 1974, is believed to have molested as many as 200 deaf boys before his death in 1998. Bishops had known about the abuse for decades but did not move to defrock him until he was near death.

Murphy's victims are believed to be the first to publicly protest the church's inaction when they distributed fliers outside Milwaukee's Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in 1974. And Smith was among the first to sue his abuser and the church, dropping that lawsuit for a $5,000 settlement he says he did not understand.

Gibney recounts their story in old black-and-white snapshots and Super 8 footage, contemporary images of Vatican opulence and re-enactments that struck Murphy's victims as disturbingly accurate.

"The way it showed Murphy walking through the dorm, and boys would lie with their eyes closed afraid. That's how I felt," said Budzinski.

As part of the filming, the men revisited the Boulder Junction cabin where Smith and others had been abused; and where they and fellow victim Robert Bolger, who has since died, confronted Murphy in 1997.

In footage shot that day, we see the gray-haired Murphy shouting at the men to leave. "I'm sorry," he tells them. "Don't bother me."

"I got such a bad feeling being there (again)," said Smith, in sign language through Gigi Budzinski. "That bedroom window will be embedded in my mind forever."

Gibney, whose previous films tackled Enron Corp. and the torture and death of an innocent man in Afghanistan, said he was drawn to the story by the survivors, whom he called heroes.

"That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this film," said Gibney. "This story is so bleak, but here are these survivors who wanted to get the word out to protect other children, and to hold somebody to account.

"At the end of the day," he said, "what they wanted was justice."

A spokesman for the archdiocese said he had not seen the film and that it had no time, in the midst of mediation in its bankruptcy, to draft a statement in response.

The film features other voices familiar in Milwaukee, including a contrite retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland; Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests who helped to make the story public in 2006; and Minnesota attorney Jeffrey Anderson who represents 350 victims, including those of Murphy, in the archdiocese's bankruptcy.

It also touches on the bankruptcy and accusations that then Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan, now cardinal of New York, transferred millions in church funds to keep it from victims.

Dolan has vehemently denied the allegations. But efforts to interview him were unsuccessful, Gibney said .

Murphy's victims are among a large number of creditors in the bankruptcy who could receive nothing in the way of a financial settlement if the archdiocese is successful in throwing out older claims or those in which the survivor had received a prior settlement.

Budzinski, who was paid $80,000 as part of the church's private mediation program, said he can live with that. More important than money, he said, is the release of the church's internal documents telling what it knew and when - an accounting victims have sought, not just in Milwaukee but around the world.

"We're just a small number of victims," Budzinski said of the boys, now men, who were molested by Murphy.

"There are thousands of others who deserve justice as well. We're just trying to represent that."

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If you go:

"Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" makes it's U.S. debut at 7 p.m. Friday at the Oriental Theater as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival.

Victims of the late Father Lawrence Murphy, including Arthur Budzinski of West Allis and Gary Smith of Milwaukee, will join Gibney and others for a talk-back after the film.