Raw emotion in documentary on sex abuse in US

TV Watch with Bernie Ní Fhlatharta

Sex abuse seems to be all around us these days and is the subject of many a TV programme, but if we think the subject matter is hard to watch on our screens, think how it stirs up bad memories for the hundreds of victims around the country.

On TV3 last Tuesday, the victims in an award winning documentary film, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, were Americans, but more to the point they were all the more vulnerable as they were deaf.

They showed courage as grown men by taking part in Alex Gibney’s film, as the four told their stories, how the abuse started, how they were abused, how nobody listened to them when they were younger and how, worse still, their complaints fell on deaf ears in the Vatican.

The cover-up within the senior echelons of the Catholic Church is scandalous, but these men didn’t hold back once they decided to expose the priest who had taken away their innocence.

The four men were so expressive in their sign language and facial expressions and were well able to articulate what had happened to them and how they felt about it. There was no doubt about it; they wanted someone to be held accountable. The film shows one of the men landing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to go to the retirement home of their abuser, Fr Lawrence Murphy, and the interaction is actually filmed.

The arrogance of Fr Murphy, even now, years later, was telling. He treated them like animals because he knew he could. He told him not to bother him and turned his back on him to return inside the house, telling his former victim to go away. The priest was the only person in St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee whom they trusted. This was in the 1950s, when few people knew how to sign. Fr Murphy did and he sure did abuse his power.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.