E-Mail This Article to a Friend CATHOLIC CHURCH Turning the camera on priest sex abuse BY DEIRDRE FULTON

When she discovered that a priest she had known as a child had been accused of child abuse and then subsequently moved from parish to parish, personal anguish and conflict led Rhode Island resident Mary Healey-Conlon to dig deeper into the scandal that rocked both her church and her faith. In 1999, touched by victims' stories and outraged by how the abuse was covered up, she decided to make Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church, a documentary that is the result of her quest for the truth about the clergy sex-abuse crisis.

The film, which Healey-Conlon co-produced with Boston resident Louise Rosen, includes chilling testimony from a perpetrator priest who describes his abhorrent actions, and from a former abuse victim who later became a priest — and a children’s-rights crusader — himself. The stories are so powerful that Healey-Conlon has arranged to have counselors available for audience members at next week’s screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

In a phone interview with the Phoenix, the filmmakers talked about why society needs Holy Water-Gate to better understand the crisis, while victims need it to make sure the heat stays on the Catholic Church.

Q: What do you think this film adds to general understanding of the abuse scandal?

Mary Healey-Conlon: My hope is that it will certainly deepen the discussion and will also explain some of the dimensions of how this was allowed to happen, and the depths to which survivors still suffer. But most importantly, I think it’s important for people to see and hear some of the faces behind the stuff they’ve read about but never seen. So in terms of their experience of a film, the fact that they get to see a perpetrator on camera whose statements speak so directly about the institutional mindset is very important.

Louise Rosen: It’s not insignificant that the film has received the kind of attention and support that it has internationally. I think there’s a point to be made about why what has happened in the US serves to be so illuminating not just in the US but elsewhere. The fundamentals of law in America provide for the opportunity for documents and information about the process that the Church went through to conceal some of this activity to become exposed and revealed to the general public. Whereas the fundamentals of law that underpin the court system outside of the UK, in Western Europe, for example, would not allow the same kind of revelation to come forward. Internationally, the film seems to be welcomed because the point is made that here’s an inside look at what has been going on where you are, but which you have not really seen the inside of because the Church has been able to conduct its business or its settlement of cases largely behind closed doors in places like Spain, Italy, France, and so on.

Q: What was it like to interview perpetrator priest Father William C.?

MHC: It was very disturbing to be with him. Oddly, he is charming, as many of these men are. And I felt certainly fortunate that he had a few days that he was willing to speak. He then stopped talking to any media — he did two interviews with two Chicago papers and then contacted a lawyer and stopped talking.

Q: You grew up Catholic, and your grandfather was a deacon. Did your religious beliefs influence the film, or vice versa?

MHC: What was interesting and important for me was the sort of peeling away of my own denial about this. To be confronted with this, the horror of sexual abuse, really tears away at one’s basic and fundamental beliefs. Because on the one hand, you have an experience and a belief about what a priest is supposed to represent, and once you’re confronted with that, you of course can’t look at it without re-examining your faith. So whether one is a fallen-away Catholic or whether you’re a practicing Catholic, I don’t think it really matters. The fact of the matter is, it forces you to question your deepest beliefs.

Q: Does the film suggest a course of action either to prevent abuse or to help the healing process?

MHC: I find it really disheartening that [despite] all of the people who have come forward — since there’s been really this pretty incredible coverage by your paper and other papers across the country — that there’s still this sort of antipathy toward victim survivors. And I think if you look at what the bishops’ conferences are doing by stating that the Charter for the Protection of Young People is not a mandatory document anymore, when in Dallas in 2002 they were saying that this was going to be policy, and it’s really not. I think they need to follow their own moral, spiritual principles.

Q: How do you feel about screening the film in Boston, where this story exploded?

LR: We’re excited, since New England is our home, at the prospect of a Boston premiere. But we’re also very aware that this issue is still very much a raw wound and has not been dealt with appropriately or successfully by the Church, and for a lot of people it’s still an area of tremendous frustration. I think that the film will draw attention because it provides information for anyone who’s interested in the subject, which I would hazard to say goes well beyond practicing and non-practicing Catholics to anyone who’s interested in the issue of children’s rights, and in the issue of the separation of church and state, and all areas of social justice. But I think it will also in some ways be a kind of beacon for some of the frustration that is still out there. So I’d say that it will be welcomed, but it will also be a bit of a catalyst to sort of re-enter discussions that need to happen. Clearly the story’s not over yet, and there’s still more to discuss and more to be done.

Holy Water-Gate will screen at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, January 10, at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline. Call (617) 734-2501 or visit www.coolidge.org.