Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal

by D'Antonio, Michael

  For lawyers representing Catholic institutions, the Kos decision represented a terrible outcome in a case that should have been settled but might now embolden other plaintiffs. For Jeffrey Anderson it felt like an affirmation of his commitment to a cause that had come to consume his career.

  Anderson had long been convinced that men with sexual problems sought shelter in the Church. As priests, they gained the trust of others and the power to abuse them. Even when they were found out, the Church protected them in ways no other institution would. At the core of this problem was the very tool the Church employed to solve it: an ancient view of sex that was impossible to fulfill and filled believers with guilt and shame. Catholic sexual prohibitions, and the feelings they engendered in priests who failed to comply, made it impossible for them to deal with their sexuality forthrightly. As long as the Church fostered sexual shame in so many people, it would never escape its crisis.

  Shame was something Anderson understood at a gut level, although he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone. In the years after Bernardin and Blackowiak, which shut down many of his cases, he promised to control his drinking but always failed. At the office his colleagues pressed him to account for the debt he ran up in his travels around the country. He insisted his work was going to pay off and kept on spending. At home he was alternately repentant, ashamed, and resentful. Unable to sleep, on most nights he kept pouring until he fell asleep.

  Through more than a decade of drinking, Anderson managed to hide his problem from almost every colleague, client, and consultant. The one exception was an attorney in Illinois who brought him into a case against the Diocese of Belleville, which was just east of St. Louis. As Anderson would recall, he once flew into St. Louis, spent the night drinking, and overslept a morning deposition. He arrived “late and smelling like a goat.” The local attorney, Diane Spier, said nothing at the time but telephoned after Anderson was back in Minnesota. “She asked me if I didn’t think I had a problem with drinking,” said Anderson. “I told her I appreciated her concern but ‘No, I didn’t have a real problem.’ The call didn’t make me think I might be an alcoholic but it did horrify me. For a minute she put the mirror up. I put it down real quick and made sure I was more careful.”

  The worst for Anderson came on a trip to Reno where he met up with Tom Doyle, who was sober and was trying hard to stay that way. During the day, the two men worked together with clients. At night Anderson went out alone and gambled and drank. He slept through his departing flight and woke up, still too drunk to drive to the airport. His body was bruised and scraped, but he had no memory of an accident or fight. When he finally got sober and returned home, he found a $5,000 casino charge on his credit card and had no idea how it got there.

  Through even the worst of his addiction, Anderson managed his cases well enough. At the office he seemed to be focused and engaged. However, he had to pour enormous amounts of energy into covering up his problems and explaining his absences, especially to his wife. As he lived with the fear of being found out, Anderson believed he knew how the priests and bishops he pursued in lawsuits thought and felt. At depositions he saw something familiar in their eyes. It was the fear of men with secrets.

  Anderson feared most the loss of his wife and family. Finally convinced that this could happen, he decided that the party set for his fiftieth birthday—August 7, 1997—would be his last drunk. Telling no one but Julie, he downed blue martinis until he couldn’t speak or even stand up. In the morning he called a therapist who saw him immediately and told him, “You have a chance to fix everything before it really gets broken.” He recommended outpatient treatment for thirty straight days. Before signing up, Anderson called his old friend Grant Hall, who had been sober for more than a decade. The two met for lunch.

  “I know I’m an alcoholic,” said Anderson. “And I’m ready to do something about it.”

  Hall brought Anderson to his “home” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was held on Sundays at a county social services building in the St. Paul suburb of White Bear Lake. The next day Anderson began outpatient rehabilitation. He went every day for thirty days and never slipped. In that time he accepted that he was an addict who, as the first of the Twelve Steps says, was “powerless over alcohol.” He worked on the rest of the steps, from seeking the help of a “higher power” to making amends to others in a halting way. And even after he left the day program, he did not drink.

  On any given day, AA in the St. Paul area offered morning, afternoon, and evening meetings. At these sessions, where people pray, testify, and encourage each other, Anderson struggled with the steps that are hardest for most people—the ones about God, and his own failings. His “moral inventory” included a long list of lies, deceptions, and betrayals. He had broken drug laws and traffic laws, his own moral code, and the rules of golf. Perhaps the only virtue he could claim was that he didn’t hold others to a standard higher than his own, unless, as in the case of priests and their bishops, they set themselves above others.

  Sobriety didn’t make Anderson’s life easier. Without the anesthesia of drink, problems that were once ignored became real, and feelings that had been denied became sharp, painful, almost unbearable. Instead of peace, recovery brought demands that he face up to his own ego and a long history of failures in his personal relationships. The work was difficult and full of the bitter taste that comes when a man must incorporate all the dark elements of human nature—pride, hypocrisy, self-indulgence, etc.—into his self-concept.

  It was in this time that Anderson, who harbored serious doubts about the existence of a supernatural God, developed a strong moral code organized around what he called “rigorous honesty.” Certain that his sobriety depended on telling the truth, he became open about everything in his life and used candor as an antidote to his long-standing habit of secrecy and deception. In AA meetings, with friends, and with Julie he shared his past sins and insights into his own flaws. Among these were a lack of grandiosity, impulsivity, and a tendency to be oblivious to the feelings of others and his effect on them. Although he felt a great deal of grief about these things, he eventually understood that acknowledging these problems helped him to understand others, including the churchmen he confronted in his work. Sexually abusive priests and bishops who covered for them were tragically flawed individuals who couldn’t find a way out of the trouble they had created. Anderson, who had tried and failed so often in his own life, could relate to their pain. He didn’t approve of anything they had done, but he could imagine the inner conflict, shame, and desperation they surely felt.

  Although recovery was almost a full-time job, Anderson still represented hundreds of clients who claimed clergy abuse in jurisdictions across the country. In one especially complicated case, two brothers in California called him to ask if he would represent them in a claim involving a priest who was a friend of the family. James and John Howard explained that they had been abused by Fr. Oliver O’Grady after the priest had been the subject of a report to the police and Church officials in Stockton, California, had promised to keep him away from children. Instead they had moved O’Grady to the parish where the Howard family worshipped, and he would be allowed to work alone. Although O’Grady had been convicted in a criminal trial for his crimes against the Howards, they wanted to take the diocese to court to win release of Church documents on O’Grady and compensation for their pain and suffering.

  Anderson, who couldn’t have found Stockton on the map when the Howards called, took the case and arranged for his old friend in Orange County, Joe Dunn, to serve as co-counsel. He then flew to the Northern California city to track down police detective Jerald Cranston, who had handled the criminal complaint against O’Grady. Cranston told him the investigation had produced enough evidence of support a prosecution, but it ended when Church officials promised to move O’Grady to a post where he would not work with children. The detective was shocked to learn of O’Grady’s subsequent crimes, and agreed to testify about the arrangement that had
ended his investigation.

  The detective’s recollection, added to documents that emerged in discovery and facts recalled by other witnesses, gave Anderson a firm basis to push for punitive damages. However, as he presented motions in the San Joaquin County court he found the judge consistently resisting his efforts. Frustrated and fearing his case was in danger, he asked Dunn for advice. Dunn recommended a switch in co-counsel. “Bring in Larry Drivon,” said Dunn. Anderson didn’t recognize the name, but he wrote down the number Dunn gave him, hung up the phone, and immediately dialed.

  On the other end of the line Laurence Drivon spoke in a deep, slow voice, which sounded even slower juxtaposed with Anderson’s excited description of his situation. “I have a case going to trial in two months. I’m in front of this judge and getting home-towned and I need your help. It’s a clergy abuse case and it involves a cover-up by the bishop.”

  “Did the bishop know?” asked Drivon

  “Yes. The bishop knew and I can prove it, Larry.”

  “Well, sure, then. I’ll help ya.”

  Unbeknownst to Anderson, Drivon was a local legend in Northern California who had learned much of what he knew while working with Melvin Belli of San Francisco. Belli had famously represented Jack Ruby in the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald and raised a Jolly Roger flag outside his office whenever he won a case. Under his tutelage, Drivon had learned to reserve his compassion for his clients and pursue defendants as aggressively as possible. When he met Anderson he felt like he was in the presence of a kindred spirit “who had everyone below Jesus in his sights.”

  The evidence in the O’Grady case included a confession the priest had written to a family in 1975 and testimony from higher-ups who confirmed that bishops had been informed, repeatedly, that O’Grady might be a pedophile. One of the bishops in question was Roger Mahony, who had left Stockton in 1985 to become archbishop and then cardinal of Los Angeles.

  Mahony had been in charge when local police investigated a child abuse report against O’Grady in 1984. Stockton was a small diocese with about eighty priests. He knew O’Grady, who still spoke with the brogue of his native Ireland. Four years earlier he had heard complaints about O’Grady’s relationship with John and James Howard’s mother. (Mahony thought the issue was serious enough to order O’Grady to stay away from her.) In the 1984 episode, the police report said that O’Grady had told a county health worker “he had contact of a sexual nature [with a child] approximately two weeks ago, and other past behaviors of a similar nature.” The final entry in the police file on the case noted that Church lawyers had assured officials that “the suspect will be sent to counseling through the Church.” A psychiatrist who evaluated him informed the diocese that, “Father O’Grady reveals a severe defect in maturation. Not only in the matter of sex, but more importantly in the matter of social relationships, and shows a serious psychological depression.” The psychiatrist also questioned whether his patient was “truly called” to be a priest.

  After O’Grady was evaluated and found to be suffering a “severe defect” Mahony assigned him to a new parish in the tiny rural community of San Andreas, far from where he had gotten into trouble, and placed no restrictions on his activities. Arriving just before Christmas, O’Grady installed a playpen in the Church rectory. Here, and in a later assignment at a parish eighty miles south in Turlock, he continued to molest children. Turlock was where he insinuated himself into the Howard family.

  Since the damning facts were available to defense lawyers before the case got near to a courtroom, Drivon and Anderson expected the other side to offer an acceptable settlement. Their clients’ main condition required that the record of the case remain open. No confidentiality agreements. No sealed documents. The defense wouldn’t agree, and the two sides proceeded to select a jury. In questioning potential jurors through a process called voir dire, Drivon and Anderson didn’t ask whether the men or women called to the courthouse liked trial lawyers or the notion of people filing lawsuits. (Drivon told Anderson that Stockton was so politically conservative he should assume that everyone hated plaintiffs’ lawyers as a matter of principle.) The two lawyers did manage to exclude people who attended Catholic services on a daily basis, and those who believed, as a matter of faith, that men wearing collars always told the truth. However, several Catholics were part of the panel.

  * * *

  Jeff Anderson arrived in Stockton in the middle of June 1998, a few days before the trial. He had spent months preparing the case and doing very little else. His plan for trial included a sequence of fifteen witnesses—starting with Nancy Sloan-Ferguson, who first reported O’Grady as an abuser—and hundreds of pages of documents. He anticipated calling O’Grady and using him to testify against higher Church officials.

  With less than a year of sobriety, drink still called to Anderson every day and he depended on AA meetings to get through most nights. In the past his spare time on the road would have been spent at bars and clubs where he would have instantly made friends who would consider him one of the most entertaining men they ever met. In Stockton, Larry Drivon introduced him to an alcoholic lawyer who had achieved more than a decade of sobriety.

  This new friend, who identified himself only as “Robert” to preserve his anonymity, made himself available day and night. He brought Anderson to his home group, which had been running in Stockton for roughly fifty years, and made sure he could get to a meeting every single day of the week. At these sessions Anderson encountered farmhands, businessmen, clerks, and doctors. A few of the regulars seemed to be fellows who lived on the street. When Anderson stood to introduce himself—“I’m Jeff. I’m an alcoholic.”—he got the same chanted welcome (“Hi, Jeff”) he would have received at any AA meeting in the world. When he stood to “share,” which meant talking about how he had hurt himself and others and now struggled to stay sober, Anderson did his best to speak directly and plainly and without trying to charm or entertain. During coffee breaks and in post-meeting chats, he made a conscious effort to stay focused on the steps, the slogans, and lessons at the core of AA.

  After meetings and long talks with Robert, Anderson would eventually have to face his hotel room and the battle for sleep. Without chemical assistance, his racing mind flashed through images and thoughts like a strobe light firing in a darkened room. When the show inside his head got to be too much, he would flick on the bedside lamp and spend some time with the files and legal pads that he had arranged on the second bed in the room. During these sessions, Anderson absorbed the case so well that he could recall every detail and event better than he could recall the story of his own life.

  All the study came in handy at trial where Anderson and Drivon shared the job of presenting their own evidence and witnesses and cross-examining those brought by defense attorneys. The details of O’Grady’s offenses were more disturbing than the crimes reported in most other clergy abuse cases. A true sexual deviant, O’Grady’s victims were both male and female and age didn’t seem to matter to him. Scars had been found in the vagina of a two-year-old girl left in his care. He also had sex with at least two adult women who were mothers of his child victims.

  As the details accrued, and the faces of the jurors betrayed their shock, defense attorneys offered higher amounts to settle. Anderson’s new AA friend and fellow lawyer was stunned when he heard that an offer of $5 million had been rejected.

  “What would it take?” he asked.

  “There’s not enough money in the fucking world,” answered Anderson.

  Profane as it was, Anderson’s response to the settlement offer reflected the feeling in the courtroom as a series of witnesses recounted the many times they had warned the diocese about O’Grady. When she took the stand, thirty-three-year-old Nancy Sloan-Ferguson described how O’Grady had molested her when she was eleven. She held up the confession O’Grady had written in 1976 and recounted how, ten years later, she had spoken to diocesan officials about the danger O’Grady posed to children.

  “I to
ld them I was a rape crisis counselor, that I was concerned about the possibility that O’Grady was continuing to abuse children. I told them a pedophile was somebody who was sexually excited by children, that they had an incredibly high likelihood of repeat offending and that they needed to continue to monitor.”

  Although higher-ups said they did not understand the threat O’Grady posed, Drivon turned to items in the priest’s personnel file that contradicted this claim. In a letter from 1980, a father complained that O’Grady took his two-year-old son out alone for long drives in a car. Another note from 1984 reported that O’Grady had admitted to feeling sexually attracted to children. Soon after this paper was placed in the file it was followed by a notice from a social worker assigned to see O’Grady. He said he was reporting the priest to child protective services. A monsignor who testified about the file said he didn’t ask why the social worker was calling authorities but added, “I suspected it had to do with the acting out of urges toward a boy.”

  As they presented documents and testimony Drivon and Anderson taped big sheets of paper on the wall beside the jury where they wrote a time line and noted key moments in the case. Every time a witness made a point, they returned to the wall to point out connections between the testimony and events. All along the lawyers tried to show that O’Grady’s superiors were partly responsible for his crimes. Repeated and documented complaints and suspicions, especially those related to pedophilia, should have made any supervisor take notice. This would be doubly true for leaders of an organization devoted to the care of a trusting community.