"Hope to see you soon": Oscar-nominated documentary reveals yet more horrors in the sexual abuse scandal.

Deliver Us from Evil Lionsgate, 2006, $27.98

THE SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDAL in the Catholic church has a never-ending ability to shock and horrify. Amy Berg's Deliver Us from Evil reveals details that are unnerving--even for those who have been paying close attention over the past several years. Berg enmeshes us in a horror story far more real and terrifying than any summer blockbuster. The fact that so many could have stopped it, from the usual suspects in the hierarchy to the local police, yet did not, beggars belief.

The central protagonist, Father Oliver O'Grady, appears at first blush to be a charmer who wouldn't hurt a fly. While other abusers might have set alarm bells off immediately, O'Grady appears different. Hearing his voice, with its soft Irish lilt, is disarming, especially as he reveals the true horrors of his crimes. Responsible for the rape and molestation of dozens of children across Northern California from the early 1970s through the early 1990s, it is mind-numbing to learn that the victims of this apparently sweet little man ranged in age from a nine-month-old infant to the middle-aged mother of a teenager he was grooming for abuse.

The interviews that director and former c B S and CNN news producer Amy Berg filmed with O'Grady, whom we see strolling nonchalantly along the children-filled and sun-drenched sidewalks near St Stephen's Green and Trinity College on the south side of Ireland's capital city, Dublin, reveal next to nothing about why he perpetrated his crimes. We hear the tired excuses about having been abused himself, but the reality is that neither he nor his supervisors, who had a thick dossier outlining his crimes, did anything to stop it. Instead, in time-honored fashion, his superiors, whose career-paths needed protection, moved him on, from parish to parish so he might groom more victims. O'Grady, lacking self-control, just went on doing his thing, with no regard for the lives he was ruining.

The film opens with O'Grady shamelessly lying to us when he claims that the film will probably be the "most honest confession of my life." Yet soon afterwards, he reveals that he had regularly confessed to fellow priests exactly what he was doing, explaining with an almost manic grin that he made his confession so as to ask "forgiveness and absolution," which he apparently received each time.

The documentary goes beyond examining O'Grady's crimes. Berg reserves her real contempt for those who had the knowledge and power to stop O'Grady in his tracks but decided to do nothing, and worse. At least two bishops, a monsignor and the Stockton police department allowed him to move on from one parish to another. Cardinal Roger Mahony, whose obstructionism in several sexual abuse cases is notorious and extends to rewriting church laws to protect himself and his coffers, utilized an early version of the defense that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others used, claiming that he just didn't remember. One wonders what it takes to forget such sordid details as passed across his desk.

Berg notes that "Under Mahony's direction, the Los Angeles archdiocese spends $2 million a month paying high-priced attorneys to prevent the release of incriminating information. These are millions of dollars being spent for their protection, rather than the victims' welfare. It shows where their priorities are."

One victim, Nancy Sloan, was told after she reported her abuse to the hierarchy that they didn't do anything because "you were a girl so we thought it was normal curiosity." If it had been a boy, she was told, they would have taken action. But we know that there were several boys in O'Grady's life, ones that the hierarchy knew about and did nothing to protect.

Berg's documentary portrays the depths of the scandal by contrasting the church's indifference to the experience of O'Grady's victims and that of their families. In a series of moving interviews, they retell painful memories and reveal the agony of abuse and its lasting impact of pain and desolation.

Blame and sadness continued to envelop the lives of many. The father of one victim still blames himself for O'Grady's repeated violation of his daughter. He reveals that the child didn't tell him about the abuse because she had overheard him say that if anyone ever touched his kid he would "kill them." The five-year-old stayed silent about her abuse for many years for fear that her father would go to jail for murder.

Unnervingly, O'Grady acknowledges wrongdoing, but can't seem to accept that it was all that bad. In a stunning exchange, O'Grady suggests it might be a good idea to get together with some of his victims, so that they could then put it all behind them. He writes letters to his victims and invites them to meet him in Ireland. He signs off, "God speed, and hope to see you real soon." As he reads this to camera, he winks, and suggests that it might help his victims heal if during their meeting, they reminded him what abuses he had carried out against them. He acknowledges with a shrug that he didn't expect them to hug him when they meet. (He later withdrew the ghoulish invitations.)

In a similar vein, his deposition to victims' lawyers in 2005 was disturbingly matter-of-fact, as if he were merely revealing the contents of a grocery list, rather than outlining what he had done to children who had been entrusted to his and the church's care.

O'Grady was finally defrocked and imprisoned in 1993 on charges involving two boys. He spent seven years of a 14-year sentence in prison before being deported to Ireland, where he still roams free--with the church hierarchy continuing to hide the truth from families that put him up.

Throughout the film, Fr. Tom Doyle, an early and constant advocate for victims of abuse, is a voice of compassion and reason. Doyle warned the hierarchy in 1985 about the likely impact of priest sexual abuse, putting the likely bill at $1 billion. His warning was ignored and his career derailed. During the making of the film, his financial estimate was topped, with no end in sight.

Deliver Us from Evil is a powerful documentary that gives a glimpse of the true story behind the sex scandal in the Catholic church. It will leave you disturbed and outraged.

DAVID J. NOLAN is the editor of Conscience.