by joe cultrera

Hand of God
a film

Priest accused of sex abuse

Rev. Gary Underwood served at St. Odilia's on NW Side from 1983-87 Catholic Church until 1987

A.J. FLICK
Tucson Citizen

A former Tucson priest was indicted last month on charges of molestation and sexual conduct with two boys in the 1980s.

A Pima County grand jury indicted the Rev. Gary Edward Underwood on one count of molestation of a child and two counts of sexual conduct with a minor under 15 in one case and six counts of molestation of a child and one count of sexual conduct with a minor under 15 in the other case.

Underwood served at St. Odilia Catholic Church, 7570 N. Paseo Del Norte, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson from March 1983 through September 1987, said Fred Allison, diocese spokesman.

Underwood, who was assigned to the Archdiocese of the Military USA in September 1987 by the Tucson diocese, has been placed on leave by the diocese because of the allegations, Allison said. The military diocese provides chaplains to members of the military.

The diocese was given information about possible misconduct in June and immediately contacted the Pima County Attorney's Office, Allison said.

Underwood is due in court Jan. 5 for his first court hearing, according to Superior Court records. It's not know where he is.

Underwood's attorney, Dan Cooper, said the charges "came as a surprise" to the priest. Cooper said Underwood is innocent.

"He's a really good person," Cooper said. "We're ready to go to trial."

The diocese is not paying for Underwood's defense, Allison said. The diocese will not act on any allegations regarding Underwood until the criminal case is over, he added.

Underwood was ordained in 1980, Allison said. He served in the Tucson diocese from 1980 through 1987, when he volunteered to join the military chaplaincy.

In 2003, a priest in a little-known order devoted to the Virgin Mary who was assigned to St. Odilia's was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old South Tucson boy in 1982.

Thomas Patrick Purcell, 66, was convicted of three counts of sexual conduct with a minor under 15 and one count of attempted sexual contact with a minor.

In 2004, the Tucson diocese announced that all priests who had been involved in sexual misconduct here had been identified.

Purcell was among 26 priests against whom there were "credible" claims involving 96 alleged molestation victims. Underwood had no previous allegations against him before this year, Allison said.

The Tucson Diocese filed for bankruptcy in 2004 after a series of lawsuits were filed over the sexual misconduct allegations.

Last year, the diocese agreed to pay $22.3 million to more than 50 victims of sexual abuse by priests.

British documentary alleges pope linked to "child abuse cover-up"

Pope Benedict XVI

A British documentary claimed that Pope Benedict XVI was implicated in the systematic cover-up of child sex abuse allegations against Catholic priests.

Before becoming head of the church, the then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger enforced church doctrinal orthodoxy, including a "secret Vatican decree which seemed to shelter the perpetrators and silence the victims of abuse", the Panorama programme said.

This was the 1962 document Crimen Sollicitationis, which told top churchmen how to deal with priests who "solicit or provoke the penitent toward impure and obscene matters", according to a translation from Latin on the BBC website.

It imposed an oath of secrecy on victims, witnesses and those probing abuse claims and said that anyone breaking this would be excommunicated, the BBC said.

Father Tom Doyle, a canon solicitor reportedly sacked by the Vatican after criticising its handling of child abuse claims, told the BBC that Crimen was "an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy, to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen."

But the programme's claims have provoked a furious response from the Catholic Church in Britain.

The Archbishop of Birmingham, in central England, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, told Britain's Press Association news agency that it used Vatican documents "quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the pope."

Speaking on behalf of bishops in England and Wales, he accused the BBC of "a deeply prejudiced attack on a revered world religious leader".

And he added that the Catholic Church in England and Wales was working to protect children with transparency and care.

Ratzinger clarified church law on the issue in 2001 and Panorama reported that he had ordered that the Vatican must have "exclusive competence" for child abuse cases.

"It's all controlled by the Vatican and at the top of the Vatican is the pope so Joseph Ratzinger was in the middle of this for most of the years that Crimen was enforced," Doyle added.

The pope could "tomorrow" order that the church take strong action against those accused of child sex scandals and co-operate with legal proceedings.

The Catholic Church told the Press Association that the second, 2001 document does not hinder investigations of child abuse allegations and that Crimen is not directly linked to child abuse but deals with the misuse of the confessional.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, central London, and spiritual leader of Catholics in England and Wales, has written to Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, to protest about the programme.

The BBC said it was standing by it and would respond to the letter when they received it.

The programme was presented by Colm O'Gorman, who was abused by a priest as a boy and is now director of One In Four, an Irish charity which supports people who have been sexually abused.

"What gets me is it's the same story every time and every place.

"Bishops appoint priests that they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens," he said on the programme.

The show also claimed to have found seven priests facing child abuse investigations living in and around Vatican City.

Panorama told its viewers that the Vatican had failed to respond to requests for interview.

Bishop Oliver O'Grady

Deliver Us From Evil
A documentary
In theaters October 13, 2006

A Glimpse at the Mind of a Pedophile
A former priest who served under Mahony in the Stockton Diocese describes his ploys.

By Jean Guccione - LA Times Staff Writer
May 11, 2005

In a chillingly frank account, a former Roman Catholic priest, promoted 20 years ago by Roger M. Mahony, recently described his decades-long career as a pedophile, including his sexual tastes and how he groomed his young victims for abuse.

In a 15-hour videotaped deposition in March, Oliver O'Grady described how his heart raced when one of the slim, playful boys he preferred toweled off after a swim. He also said he liked to lift little girls' skirts and peek at their underpants.

Asked to demonstrate how he would lure one of his estimated 25 victims into his arms, the 59-year-old Irish native softened his voice, flashed an avuncular smile and looked directly into the video camera.

"Hi, Sally," O'Grady improvised. "How are you doing? Come here. I want to give you a hug. You are a sweetheart. You know that. You are very special to me. I like you a lot."

If his hug met no resistance, O'Grady testified, he would take the child's compliance as "permission" to molest.

The deposition came in connection with lawsuits filed against the Stockton Diocese over alleged abuse by clergy. Mahony, who was bishop of Stockton from 1980 to 1985 before heading the Los Angeles Archdiocese, inherited O'Grady, who had admitted years earlier to molesting an 11-year-old girl. In 1984, police investigated a therapist's report that O'Grady had molested a boy.

After police declined to file charges, Mahony transferred O'Grady to a rural parish and later promoted him to pastor there, where he allegedly molested three more victims, including a baby girl who suffered vaginal scarring, according to plaintiffs' lawyers. Mahony has said he was unaware of any molestation reports. The additional victims were molested after he left the diocese.

"The cardinal acted on the information he had, just as the police investigator did," church attorney Don Woods said.

Costa Mesa-based plaintiffs' attorney John C. Manly conducted the deposition in Ireland. The now-defrocked priest, an Irish citizen and native of Limerick, was deported from the U.S. in 2001, after serving seven years in California state prison for sexually abusing two brothers. He lives in Thurles, Ireland.

A transcript of the deposition was filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court, where the Stockton Diocese is defending four lawsuits alleging that the church failed to protect parishioners from abuse. Manly filed the transcript in opposing a church motion to dismiss one of the suits.

O'Grady, on the video, asked why church officials did not remove him from ministry after he committed the molestations.

"I think it probably would have been best if, back in 1984, they said, 'Look, we need to put a halt to this. We need to take you out,' " O'Grady told lawyers during the questioning. "But even the 1984 situation, as I understand it, was handled as best it could have been handled at the time."

Woods said Tuesday that O'Grady "was not trying to say what should have been done. He's saying I wish it could have been done differently.

"It's a lament from hindsight," he said.

An attorney for the Stockton Diocese, Paul Balestracci, declined to comment, noting the open lawsuits over O'Grady's misconduct.

O'Grady's deposition offers a far-reaching, and often disturbing, glimpse into the mind of a convicted pedophile. Still, there were times during the marathon question-and-answer session when he was less than candid.

He refused to name any of his 25 victims, invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. He at first denied molesting one little girl, then the next day admitted that he had lied and that he had abused her. He said his abuse ended in the mid-1980s, but in his criminal case he had pleaded guilty to molestations as late as 1991.

Although O'Grady voiced remorse for his abuses, he often appeared to be enjoying his videotaped performance. At one point, he winked into the camera.

O'Grady testified that he was molested as a child by two priests in the sacristy of his church. The first occurred when he was 10 and an altar boy, he said.

The priest "began the conversation by asking how I was, what I was going to do for the day, and I remember he was — he called me over to him and he began to hug me, you know, in a kind of gentle way, first of all.

"Then he turned me around … which means I had my back to him with him standing behind me, and then the hands would come down and hug me here and then went lower."

When he was growing up, he testified, he was involved in molestation within his family, both as perpetrator and victim. And when he was a teenager, he added, a priest touched him sexually.

"It was not a very pleasant experience on some occasions, but it was a very normal thing. Nobody talked about it," he said. "I did not consider it a very serious criminal matter."

O'Grady testified that his own sexual attraction to children began before he was ordained a priest in 1971.

"The only thing I understood religion to say at the time was that anything … to do with sexuality was sinful, and that is where a lot of my conflict came," he testified.

His first assignment as a priest was to the Stockton Diocese in 1971. Five years later, O'Grady testified in an earlier deposition, he fondled an 11-year-old girl he had met at a summer camp and invited to sleep over at the rectory.

"I remember going into her bed, and I tried to caress her and fondle her, and I sensed her objections to that, nonverbally, and I stayed for a little while more and then decided not to continue. So I left and went back to my own bed," he told lawyers during the March deposition, estimating that he had spent no more than 20 minutes in the girl's bed.

The girl's parents complained to then-Bishop Merlin Guilfoyle, who preceded Mahony in Stockton. O'Grady testified that the bishop, who is now deceased, confronted him and he confessed.

O'Grady wrote the family a letter of apology, angering Guilfoyle, O'Grady said. The letter was in O'Grady's personnel file when Mahony assumed the bishopric, according to court records.

O'Grady said he suffered no repercussions for his transgression.

"Life just continued," he testified.

Court records show that in 1984, four years after Mahony became bishop of Stockton, O'Grady told his therapist he had fondled a 9-year-old boy. The therapist alerted child welfare officials, and police opened an investigation.

O'Grady took the 5th Amendment when asked during the deposition what he told his therapist. But he testified that Mahony was out of town at the time, so he told the bishop's second-in-command about the investigation. He said the official sent him to talk to the diocese's lawyer.

The child, who had been asleep during the alleged molestation, said he was unaware of any abuse, and police declined to file charges. Court records show, however, that police said an attorney for the diocese promised that O'Grady would be transferred to a job where he would not have contact with children, and that he would be sent to therapy.

O'Grady testified that Mahony sent him to a psychiatrist for an evaluation, which the cardinal has acknowledged was the church's standard operating procedure at the time for handling pedophile priests. Almost immediately thereafter, O'Grady said, Mahony transferred him to a parish in San Andreas, about an hour outside Stockton. Mahony later promoted him to pastor.

There was no school at his new assignment, but O'Grady testified that he supervised hundreds of students who came in on weekends and after school to study Catechism.

Mahony has testified in court that he never saw the letter of apology O'Grady wrote to his female victim's family. He also said that he did not know the details of what O'Grady had told his therapist and that once police declined to file charges in connection with the 9-year-old boy, he saw no reason to investigate further.

O'Grady "was in counseling at the time," Woods said, "and the second opinion that the diocese obtained said the counseling was satisfactory and he should continue with it.

The second opinion did not recommend that he be removed from ministry, nor did the [evaluation] render any diagnosis of pedophilia."

After years of therapy, O'Grady said, he's embarrassed and ashamed of his sexual attraction to children.

But asked to describe his "type," he gave an animated response. "Generally, a boy who was — spontaneous, affectionate, playful, generally around the age of 10, 11, and who seemed to maybe need somebody to care for him. I'm not saying that he necessarily had family problems but seemed to identify with me as somebody who he could trust, who he could come to, who was willing to take care of him."

The priest searched his congregation for submissive children. "If they demonstrated affection, by hugging and that sort of stuff, it sort of awakened within me urges to be affectionate in return," O'Grady testified.

"If I got comfortable doing that and felt he was comfortable with me hugging him, and I had thoughts or feelings that I wanted to go further, I might at that time explore that possibility," he said.

"I might have to do a little planning … to be sure that the boy was there, to be sure the boy was alone, and that there was not any hurry on him leaving."

O'Grady testified that he had sexual relationships with two mothers of children he molested. He also said he occasionally wore women's lingerie he found among donated clothes left at his church.

"Perhaps I was trying to use external things to arouse myself," he said.

A Stockton jury in 1998 awarded one of O'Grady's victims $30 million, later reduced to $7 million. Jury members told The Times they thought Mahony was untruthful on the witness stand, that he had allowed O'Grady's pattern of abuse to continue.

Mahony said he thought the jurors were wrong and that he took extraordinary steps to protect children.

Over the years, O'Grady said, he tried to understand and possibly curb his appetite for children — reading books about his disorder, touring a residential treatment center for pedophile priests and eventually opening his parish to secret Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings so he could attend.

After O'Grady was released from prison and returned to Ireland, the Stockton diocese paid for him to undergo three years of outpatient therapy, he said, and also agreed to pay him $800 a month for 10 years starting on his 65th birthday.

"I would have liked somebody in the diocese or somebody to have intervened as early as possible in helping me confront this situation as a very, very serious one," he said, "and help to educate me to the very serious nature of the problem that I had and was causing."

Each time he reached into a child's pants, O'Grady said, he knew his conduct was wrong, "definitely a sin." But there was "another part of me saying, 'I can't seem to control these desires, thoughts, feelings when they come.' "

After a molestation, O'Grady testified, he always went to a priest and confessed his sin.

Copyright © 2005, The Los Angeles Times

Archdiocese May Sign Abuse Settlement

Sep 29, 5:54 PM (ET)

By GILLIAN FLACCUS

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese could sign a $60 million settlement with dozens of alleged victims of clergy abuse within days, several attorneys told The Associated Press.

The settlement being drafted by attorneys for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the alleged victims would give 45 claimants a total of $60 million, said Venus Soltan, a plaintiffs' attorney. The settlement would encompass alleged victims whose claims are not covered by the church's insurance policies, she said.

If distributed equally, each alleged victim would get $1.3 million, although how the money would be divided remained unclear.

"We are in the final stages of documentation and the settlement should be coming public within a week," said Soltan, who represents two of the people who would receive money under the agreement. "It's a very big deal because it's the first time Los Angeles has settled any of its cases."

An attorney for the priests and another plaintiffs' attorney confirmed those figures for The Associated Press in interviews this week and said a deal is likely within a week.

The 45 cases are a fraction of the more than 500 clergy abuse lawsuits filed against the archdiocese since 2003, when alleged victims were allowed to file lawsuits under a state law that peeled back the statute of limitations on sexual abuse claims for one year.

Archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg acknowledged Friday that both sides were working hard on a deal, but said similar negotiations with the uninsured cases fell apart last year.

"Talks are ongoing, we're trying to settle the uninsured cases, that's no secret. Last month, people were saying it was going to happen within days," Tamberg said. "I've seen so many stops and starts along the way and I wouldn't hazard a guess at all."

The potential deal would be the most significant step to date toward resolving extensive litigation against the archdiocese that has dragged on for years. It would represent the second-largest publicly known clergy abuse payout in California and the fourth-largest in the nation, according to an AP review of settlements.

"We're aware that they've been working very hard, both the lawyers for the church and the plaintiffs' lawyers, and they're very close," said Donald Steier, an attorney who represents accused priests, including some whose cases would be included in the proposed settlement.

Those familiar with the cases said the settlement would resolve claims by people who say they were abused before the early 1950s and after 1987, when insurers stopped covering molestation.

Attorneys cautioned, however, that several things could cause the fragile agreement to collapse, including a dispute over the release of confidential priest personnel files.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have said in the past that they would not agree to any settlement without securing the public release of those files. Attorneys for the individual priests, however, are likely to fight to keep the records private.

Mary Grant, spokeswoman for the Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests, said she hoped the proposed deal would come through.

"We want victims to be cautious, we don't want them to get hurt again," she said. "It's not settled until it's signed."

The news of a possible deal comes as the first round of civil lawsuits are being prepared for trial. The first one goes to court in late November.

Attorneys for the archdiocese and plaintiffs last year selected 44 cases for trial from among the hundreds in hopes that jury verdicts in those cases would provide a better idea of the church's liability. Some victims' attorneys have estimated that a settlement encompassing all the cases could surpass $1 billion.

Sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church at least $1.5 billion since 1950. Several American dioceses have reached multimillion-dollar settlements with victims in the last few years, as bishops have tried to resolve the crisis and move on.

The Diocese of Orange, Calif., agreed to the largest payout to date - $100 million for 90 people - in December 2004.

Three dioceses - Tucson, Ariz.; Spokane, Wash.; and Portland, Ore. - sought bankruptcy protection from a flood of lawsuits.