Parents' Guide to

Deliver Us from Evil

By Cynthia Fuchs, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Intense child abuse documentary. Adults only.

Movie NR 2006 101 minutes
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What's the Story?

DELIVER US FROM EVIL focuses on the sad, infuriating story of Catholic priest Father Oliver O'Grady. During the 1970s and '80s, O'Grady was assigned to a series of Southern California parishes. At each stop, he abused children sexually; each time he was found out, church officials moved him to another town -- in order, the film argues, to protect their own careers from scandal by association. No one took responsibility for O'Grady's repeated, predictable actions, and so he kept going, unchecked, for nearly two decades.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

Former CNN reporter and first-time director Amy Berg's unsettling film builds slowly toward full revelations. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that family members and authorities were unable to face what was happening. Deliver Us From Evil uses standard documentary methods -- talking-head interviews, photos provided by interviewees, maps charting O'Grady's movements, and videotaped depositions by church officials -- in order to show the frightening depths of the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Interviewees -- including abuse survivors and their families, lawyers for the families, a therapist, and a cleric who served with O'Grady -- trace O'Grady's particular case in some detail. Much of this detail comes across indirectly, as the film also includes videotaped depositions by church officials as they try very hard not to answer questions about what they knew and when they knew it. But their fidgeting and refusal to look at the camera only make them look shifty.

By the time O'Grady reveals that he, too, was abused as a child, it's almost impossible to feel sympathy for him. But his ongoing inability to comprehend what he's done or even what happened to him underscores the film's most terrible truth: The cycle of abuse is ongoing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the responsibility of the church in this ongoing scandal. How does the movie present the reasons for the cover-up? Interview subjects say that they can't forgive or forget such betrayal, by both O'Grady and the church hierarchy; how do you think people can deal with this sort of devastation? How does the film suggest that the two victims' journey to Rome was a start toward recovery?

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