Over the past decade, the Catholic Church has been rocked by a series of shocking scandals involving priests accused of molesting young children of both sexes. The fallout has been significant: apart from the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed from church coffers to settle the legal cases, the judgment of the institution and its senior bishops has been seriously called into question.

Director Amy Berg has been a producer for CBS News and CNN. Her first feature documentary delivers a shattering and revealing account of the human cost of this issue. She tells the story of Father Oliver O’Grady, a notorious pedophile who used his position – as well as his Irish charm – to rape and abuse members of dozens of Catholic families across northern California over a twenty-year period. His victims ranged from a nine-month-old infant to the middle-aged mother of another adolescent victim. Astonishingly, despite ample signs and warnings as to his proclivities, the Church moved him from one parish to another, covering up the reality of what was going on from both the unsuspecting members of each new community and from the police. Church documents prove that, beginning in 1973, his evil deeds were done with their full knowledge.

The most astonishing thing about Deliver Us from Evil is O’Grady’s participation in the film. Now living in Ireland, he agreed to cooperate fully and this casts an entirely novel light on the subject. Berg meticulously leads us through the past of these heinous incidents and into the present. O’Grady has his story to tell, and our shifting feelings about him over the course of the film make for a fascinating journey. We also hear the other side of the story, as his victims relate how his actions shattered their lives and their families. These scenes contain extremely powerful and emotional footage; the true cost of one man’s sickness is laid bare for us all to see. Berg certainly does not pull her punches when it comes to the Catholic Church, which betrays itself as an institution still unprepared or unwilling to confront the issue fully. There is no denying the justifiable outrage one feels when confronted with this story. (Piers Handling)