•  CASE STUDIES
   by Leon Podles
• Philip Anthony Magaldi
• Peter Kramer
• Donald Matthew Osgood
• Canon N.
• Clive Lynn
• Edward Donelan
  
•  MURDER CASE STUDIES
   by Leon Podles
• Joseph J. Pilger
• Michael Mack
• John Patrick Kerrigan
• Alfred J. Kunz
• Reynaldo Rivera
• Irene Garza
• Patrick Ryan
• John J. Geoghan
• Ryan Erickson

The Murder of Rev. John J. Geoghan

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St. Andrew’s Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, was Geoghan’s next assignment from 1974 to 1984. He was made Scout chaplain and put in charge of altar boys. John Collins, who was not molested by Geoghan, worked as the houseboy in the rectory. He liked Geoghan, his “favorite priest,” because Geoghan not like the older, stuffier priests. Geoghan “was all about fun, games, and treating kids to ice cream.” He had “a trick Superman handshake.” Collin wondered why the housekeeper was so upset when she learned he had been in Geoghan’s room; years later he realized why she reacted so violently. She knew or suspected what Geoghan did to boys in that room.34John Collins, “Inside a Priestly House of Horrors,” Lowell Sun, January 9, 2003.

 

Frank Leary was the fifth of six children in a poor family. In 1974 when Leary was thirteen, Geoghan got him a summer job at the church. Geoghan brought him into the rectory to show him his stamp collection and tried to fondle him. The boy left. A few days later Geoghan found the boy working around the church. According to the psychiatric evaluation

 

 

Leary cried, but stayed.

 

 

Geoghan molested the boy again. Leary remembers a priest yelling. “Jack, we told you not to do this up here! What the hell are you doing? Are you nuts?”36The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe, Betrayal: The Crisis of the Catholic Church (Boston, Little, Brown and Company 2002) p. 13. John Collins thought that this priest would have been Father Mooney. Under oath, Rev. Francis H. Delaney, who was the pastor at St. Andrew’s, said that he could not recall anyone making a sexual abuse complaint about Geoghan; he remembered when presented with the letter he had written on August 17, 1979 describing and dismissing (as the “slow poison of calumny”) such a complaint.37Leary v. Geoghan, Deposition of Francis Delaney, April 27, 2001, p. 44, ll. 20-24,  p. 49, l. 16 – p. 50, l. 24; Letter from Frank Delaney to Most Rev. Thomas Daily, August 17, 1979; Michael Rezendes and Matt Carroll, “Accusers’ Accounts Tell of Abuse and Its Scars,” Boston Globe, January 26, 2002. This is the first mention in Geoghan’s archdiocesan personnel file about allegations of abuse.

 

This complaint was made by Miss Coveny, who told the Rev. William Francis, Chaplain of the Boston Police, that Geoghan had done something immoral (archdiocesan records do not have details). Bishop Daily wrote to Rev. Francis Delany, Geoghan’s superior at St Andrew’s, that “the charges were quickly proven to be completely unfounded and totally irresponsible. One phone call accomplished that.” Daily was able, he claimed, to do a complete investigation and exonerate Geoghan with one phone call. In this letter Daily continued that, to console Geoghan, “I have written to ask him to drop by at the Chancery…to personally assure him of his good record and his good name and priestly reputation.”38Letter from Most Rev. Thomas V. Daily to Rev. Francis Delaney, August 23, 1979; “The Geoghan Papers,” Boston Herald, January 25, 2002.

 

Maryetta Dussourd was rearing her three boys as well as her niece’s four boys in 1977 when Geoghan met the family. The boys ranged from 4 to 11. Geoghan became very close to the boys. An archdiocesan memo said that Geoghan stayed in their house even when he was on retreat because he missed the boys so much. He would “touch them while they were sleeping and waken them by playing with their penises.”39Michael Rezendes and Globe Staff, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, He performed oral sex on them, fondled them and forced them to fondle his penis as he prayed. In 1980 Dussourd discovered that seven of her children and her niece’s children had been molested. Geoghan told her son Ralph that “I [Maryetta] would never believe him, that I loved, that I loved the Church too much, that I would not believe my own son.”40Leary v. Geoghan, Deposition of Maryetta Dussourd, August 24, 2001, p. 18, ll. 4-6. She had her other son Danny, nine years old at the time, tell his father, and the father’s reaction demonstrates why boys were so reluctant to tell their parents what had happened. The father screamed at the boy:

 

She told the Rev. John Thomas, whom she knew through her charismatic prayer group, that she suspected Geoghan had molested probably a total of fifteen children, two of whom had set fire to their bedroom to get away from him.42Leary v. Geoghan, Deposition of Maryetta Dussourd, August 24, 2001, p. 26, l. 19; p. 26, ll. 1-2. Thomas asked her what the families wanted done. She told him they wanted Geoghan removed immediately, and that her husband wanted to beat Geoghan up and then call the police. Then, according to Dussourd,

 

 

Thomas confronted Geoghan, who casually admitted, “Yes, it’s all true.”44Michael Rezendes and Globe Staff, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, Thomas told Bishop Daily, who sent Geoghan to his family’s home from the parish that day. Thomas was horrified that Geoghan might suffer consequences. Dussourd reports that Thomas pleaded with her not to go public, not to hurt Geoghan. Thomas said “do you realize what you are taking from him?”45Betrayal: The Crisis of the Catholic Church p. 23 Dussourd didn’t know what to do and other parishioners shunned her as a troublemaker.46The Dussourd family continued suffering: “Maryetta does need help. She is now divorced. Her three sons are now in their twenties; one was discharged from the armed forces for attempting suicide” (Letter from Edna D. Buckley to Cardinal Law, January 19, 1994).

 

 When Geoghan was confronted with the charges about the Dussourds, he casually admitted “homosexual activity with seven boys ages six to 11,”47“The Geoghan Papers,” Boston Herald, January 25, 2002. but excused his behavior because “it was only two families.”48Michael Rezendes and Globe Staff, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, 2002. The archdiocese was aware that Geoghan “admits the activity but does not feel it is serious or a pastoral problem.”49Michael Rezendes and Globe Staff, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, 2002. The archdiocese apparently concurred with Geoghan’s judgment of the abuse. Bishop Daily did nothing to prevent further abuse. He explained that “I am not a policeman, I am a shepherd.”50Betrayal: The Crisis of the Catholic Church, p. 24.

 

In 1980 Geoghan took a year’s sick leave and saw Dr. Robert W. Mullins, who knew Geoghan well. Mullins was a neighbor of the Geoghan family in West Roxbury, and was a family physician without any expertise in psychiatry or sexual disorders. Dr. John H. Brennan, whom Geoghan also saw during this year off, was a psychiatrist, and wrote to the Archdiocese that Geoghan “was now able to resume his priestly duties.”51Betrayal: The Crisis of the Catholic Church, p. 208. But Brennan had no experience in treating sexual disorders; his experience was more personal. In 1977, three years before he treated Geoghan, Brennan was sued by a patient who said he had sexually molested her and who settled for $100,000. (Another suit by another patient was filed in 1992.)52Michael Rezendes and Matt Carroll, “Doctors Who OK’d Geoghan Lacked Expertise, Review Shows,” Boston Globe, January 25, 2002. But Brennan had other qualifications: he was director of psychiatric education at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton and received many patients as referrals from a priest-psychologist, the Boston Franciscan Fulgence Buonanno.

 

Geoghan knew what the doctors would say. He wrote to Cardinal Medeiros, “I have been receiving excellent care on direction from two wonderful Catholic physicians, Dr. John Brennan and Dr. Robert Mullins. They assure me that within a relatively short time I shall be able to return for fruitful years of priestly ministry. I am eager to return.”53Letter from John J. Geoghan to Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, November 2, 1980; Sacha Pfeiffer, “Letters Exhibit Gentle Approach Toward Priest,” Boston Globe, January 24, 2002. In 1981 Cardinal Medeiros put him into St. Brendan’s Church in Dorchester but neglected to tell the pastor, the Rev. James H. Lane, that Geoghan had a history of sexual abuse.

 

At St. Brendan’s, Geoghan prepared children for First Communion and then took them to his summer house, where he abused them. Geoghan spent so much time with children that some people in the parish began to get suspicious. Geoghan’s past continued to haunt the archdiocese. On July 24, 1982, Ralph and Maryetta Dussourd, Margaret Gallant, and Fran Dussourd (both sisters of Maryetta Dussourd) met with Bishop Daily to demand that Geoghan be removed from ministry. They reported that Geoghan met one of the boys he had molested and took him out again for ice cream.54Memo to File from Rev. Brian M. Flatley, July 11, 1996. Cardinal Medeiros’ response was to send Geoghan to Rome for a two-month sabbatical with $2,000 expense money.55Letter from [Humberto Cardinal Medeiros] to Rev. John J. Geoghan, August 26, 1982.

 

In August 1982 Margaret Gallant wrote to Cardinal Medeiros to report that she had been asked to keep silent so as not to hurt the boys – which, she remarked, was “absurd” because the names of minors are protected by law. She pointed out that a layman who has abused children would be confined and exposed so as to warn parents and children. Abuse by Geoghan was worse than abuse by a layman because it “hits the very core of our being in our love for the church.” Gallant, a better diagnostician than the family doctor and the psychiatrist, wrote “I do not believe he is cured; his actions strongly suggest he is not, and there is no guarantee that persons with these obsessions are ever cured.” She expressed compassion for Geoghan, but sought action for “the children in the church.” The child victims were invisible to Medeiros and the other bishops: “My two sisters and my niece have never as much as received an apology from the church, much less any offer of counseling for the boys. It embarrasses me that the Church is so negligent.” Gallant remembers that Father Damian of Molokai, the leper saint, “went after a child molester and beat him up.” She claimed “we…have the right to expect service from the Ordained.”56Letter from Margaret Gallant to Cardinal Medeiros, August 16, 1982; Betrayal: The Crisis of the Catholic Church, pp. 214-215. Medeiros replied to Gallant that he was worried about scandal and pleaded for Christian forgiveness.

 

After Geoghan returned from Rome, the pastor, Lane, eventually found out about the abuse, and Geoghan lost access to the children of St. Brendan’s. Cardinal Law came to Boston in March 1984. In September 1984 Margaret Gallant wrote to Cardinal Law to warn him that Geoghan was again “seen in the company of many boys,” that she has been trying to keep the abuse secret and to calm her family, but that she is concerned with her “fellow members of the Body of Christ who are left in the dark as to the danger their children are in.”57Letter from Margaret Gallant to Cardinal Law, September 6, 1984.  Despite Geoghan’s 1980 admission of sexual abuse and further complaints from St. Brendan’s, in November 1984 Law assigned Geoghan to St. Julia’s Church in Weston – and waited a month to get doctors to sign off on a statement that Geoghan was medically cleared.58On December 14, 1985, Dr. John H. Brennan wrote to Rev. Robert J. Banks, “Father Geoghan has been under my care for the past seven years. His emotional condition is stable and very satisfactory. There are no psychiatric contraindications or restrictions to his work as a parish priest.” According to Dr. Robert W. Mullins, after the “unfortunate traumatic experience” (that is, getting caught), Geoghan has had “a brief, but beneficial, respite,” and “is able to resume full pastoral activities without any need for specific restrictions.”59Letter from Dr. Robert W. Mullins to Rev. Oates, October 20, 2994; Betrayal: The Crisis of the Catholic Church, p. 218. 

 

Msgr. Francis Rossiter at St. Julia’s was told of Geoghan’s past and promptly put Geoghan, an admitted pedophile, in charge of three youth groups. Bishop John M. D’Arcy was not happy with this arrangement and wrote to Cardinal Law, asking him whether this assignment was a good idea, because of Geoghan’s “history [note the word and its implications] of homosexual involvement with young boys.”60Letter from Most Rev. John M. Darcy to Most Rev. Bernard F. Law, December 7, 1984; Michael Rezendes and Globe Staff, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, 2002. D’Arcy was shortly thereafter (February 1985) sent off to South Bend, Indiana, although he had to leave his dying mother behind in Boston. He claims his transfer had nothing to do with his protest against Geoghan’s assignment.

 

In 1986, two years after his “full recovery,” Geoghan demonstrated why he was so eager to return to ministry.  He heard that the father of a family he had known at St. Andrew’s Church had committed suicide. Geoghan immediately offered help. Geoghan took 12-year-old Patrick McSorley out for ice cream.  Then Geoghan “patted his [Patrick’s] upper leg and slid his hand up toward his crotch. “I froze up,” McSorley said, ‘I didn’t know what to think. Then [Geoghan] put his hands on my genitals and started masturbating. I was petrified.’ McSorley added that Geoghan then began masturbating himself.”61Michael Rezendes and Globe Staff, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years,” Boston Globe, January 6, 2002.

 

 

 

 

Footnotes

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