Crimes of the Father

by Tom Keneally

  He became less and less secret with his body after that. He instructed her in the risk of conception, too, and generally pursued pleasures that made it unlikely. For this she was at least thankful; for with conception she could not become a nun – or so she was convinced.

  14

  Monsignor Shannon Prepares for Battle

  April 1996

  Monsignor Shannon, Peter Callaghan and Pat Lennon, CEO of the Catholic Church’s insurance company, were waiting for their barrister, Mr Roger Kermode, to return from court to his chambers in Phillip Street. It would not be a long wait, the secretary assured them. The three had time to start a conversation about why barristers’ chambers were so austere while the big companies of solicitors displayed expensive art in their offices, when a secretary told them that Mr Kermode and his junior were ready to see them.

  They entered Kermode’s room. As well as a desk laden with files, Kermode had a settee and chairs, and a coffee table at which they all sat. He was tall and thin and the corners of his mouth were tucking themselves into a sort of smile, a smile that said, all right, get it out – but I’ve already heard it before. This was a very useful characteristic, Monsignor Shannon surmised. Kermode’s junior was Ms Marissa Zoldak – obviously a Polish daughter of the Church. She had an almost wilfully sculpted look, a rehearsed severity she probably thought junior barristers needed to maintain.

  Kermode announced that Dr Devitt had offered to come to terms for a payment of $200,000 and the removal of the confidentiality clause. If the Church accepted the terms, it meant, Kermode said, the media would be on to Devitt immediately for an interview, with the result that many of those who had already agreed to the terms of In Compassion’s Name would themselves set up a cry for a new settlement. It was worth meeting again with Devitt’s solicitors, said Kermode, to try to come to an arrangement, even though Devitt seemed fixated on circumventing any confidentiality clauses.

  ‘We know what the result will be,’ the eminent Kermode declared, ‘if the Church publicly yields to Devitt. It will be in danger of more and more legal confrontations, and larger and larger payouts, all at great peril to the archdiocese and the Church’s repute.’

  The severity of the challenge was clear. Of course, Devitt must be fought. It was sharply apparent to the monsignor. It was a holy war. Even so, he was always surprised by the issue of money. Two hundred thousand dollars was a modest claim for a man who claimed to have been so badly hurt. It was clearly meant to signify Devitt’s lack of avarice yet his desire to damage the Church in the public forum, or a civil court. For Monsignor Shannon knew by his own experience that any sum was dwarfed by a supposed murder of a soul. Whenever he had suffered guilt for having gravely harmed another soul, he had gone to confession. Absolved, he felt restored to himself, and to the light, and his purpose to amend was always there. But in the case of fallen humankind, and the version of it that he was, amendment was not always adequate. He knew he had a weakness. He knew that even had he paid out all he possessed in compensation, there was no adequate sum. His own sins were such that only Christ was able to take them on his back.

  Even so, the victims did carry on! As if they were determined not to get over it. And ignorant journalists and pop psychologists claimed that the so-called abuser knew no guilt. There had been a period twenty years before when Shannon had heard Father Guest’s confessions, and he knew that the man’s sense of guilt, his repentance and concern for his victims were acute. Guest was aware of God’s displeasure. He was aware of the potential ruin of young souls; that the assault on souls was too vast an issue to have a price tag.

  The thing was that Guest could not stop. Shannon still hoped he had. His sins had been intermittent, his repentance sincere. His criminality was not established.

  Ms Zoldak distributed copies of Devitt’s filed applications to the Supreme Court. They sought, despite the Limitation Act, to sue the archbishop and the trustees of the archdiocese for the abuse he had suffered a little more than a quarter of a century earlier at the hands of Father Guest.

  Kermode took them through the sections of the claim. Psychiatric treatment in Devitt’s early thirties, after a crisis in his scientific career and his marriage, suggested it was only then that he began to attribute his difficulties to the abuse he had suffered from Father Guest. By this time Devitt was deputy director of a research team and was using his laser expertise to work on the creation of nanowires, which apparently would make the computers of the future super-fast, beyond the limits of conventional conductivity.

  He was given indefinite leave when complaints emerged from his team members that he had begun to direct fits of rage at them, and at the personnel of government, and private research organisations as well. There were outbursts of rage against his wife, too, and she was frank about the fact their marriage had nearly collapsed.

  Devitt claimed that in the early phase, when his nature first seemed to be undergoing a change for the worse, he had not attributed it to the abuse. This claim, said Mr Kermode, explained why Devitt needed leave to sue now, in spite of the Limitation Act; why he had not sought legal relief earlier.

  The limitations matter was not all the judge would be asked to address. The crucial question was whether the archbishop and the trustees of the archdiocese could in fact be sued.

  Kermode said, ‘There is a clear reason why Cardinal Condon can’t be sued – namely, he was not archbishop of this archdiocese when Guest committed these crimes. Even at the time of the later crimes, for which Father Guest served a gaol sentence, he was not archbishop then either. He cannot be personally responsible. And that is the least of our arguments.’

  Callaghan, Kermode, Lennon and the monsignor discussed for a while the cardinal archbishop’s professional insurance with the subsidiary of Catholic Insurance, of which Monsignor Shannon was so proud. The cardinal’s insurance, as head of the archdiocese of Sydney, had been taken out originally, Lennon said, in case of people slipping on the cathedral steps in wet weather and breaking an ankle or a skull. He suggested now that the monsignor should take a look at it and consider upgrading it, even at some expense, against the possibility that the Supreme Court might permit Devitt to sue the cardinal.

  ‘The Church trust and the trustees are a different matter,’ said Kermode with a legal gravity he was not even aware of. ‘A trust has continuous responsibility for past liabilities even if the trustees change. So the present trustees cannot in law say, “We weren’t there!” But as my friend Mr Callaghan has pointed out to me, there is considerable common law to show that trustees whose concern is the administration of Church assets cannot be sued as if they were employers of a miscreant priest. The culprit is Father Guest, and nearly all his savings went on his funeral, though his sister received a sum of three thousand seven hundred dollars from probate, along with the share of a beach cottage. Understandably, Devitt does not plan to sue Father Guest’s estate. The other actionable party can only be God, given that the “man”, as in “man-of-God”, is deceased and God isn’t.’

  A few dutiful chuckles were contributed. Satisfied, Kermode went on. ‘However, maybe the trustees who run Church land, who can be envisaged to run Church land in the manner of a body corporate … Maybe it could be decided they, the body corporate, the trust, were somehow responsible for Father Guest’s behaviour, especially if it can be proven that the Church had knowledge of Guest’s activities.’

  ‘So,’ said Shannon, ‘the law that shelters us is also the one that may betray us?’

  ‘We don’t know. There haven’t been many cases like this one.’

  A solemn sense of the historic settled in the room.

  ‘Now,’ Kermode continued, ‘to the arguments his lawyers offer for his seeking relief from the Limitation Act. Dr Devitt’s university appointed an emeritus professor of clinical psychology to enquire into the problems Devitt began to suffer earlier this decade. You will find her report as Annexure Two in their papers. You will discover that it demonstrates both the rese
arch team’s sense, and Devitt’s, that his behaviour changed during the nanowire project. Until then he had a demeanour some associate with unworldly scientists, and it was considered part of his character – he was a sort of kindly eccentric. This changed when he married. Marriage was a great challenge to him, according to the report. Devitt himself frankly told the university’s psychologist as much – that his anxiety levels mounted before and after his marriage. And then suddenly, in May 1993, there were atrocious screaming matches with colleagues at the laboratory …’

  ‘Do you intend to argue that his psychological problems themselves make him an unreliable claimant?’ asked Shannon, pleased to be nobody’s fool.

  Callaghan held up a hand in warning. ‘Surely it could be alternatively and equally argued that the problems Dr Devitt has had with the research team and with his marriage are a sign of the scale of damages he has suffered?’

  Kermode beamed. ‘Yes. Given that he is seeking an exemption from the Limitation Act, we are better placed arguing that he has made contradictory statements about the onset of his symptoms and about his awareness that the damage came from Father Guest’s abuse. We can show, I believe, that he could have made the claim earlier. Because we also have a published case study – without names, of course, but it is a study of Devitt – as he consulted a psychiatrist in 1988, in the days of his graduate studies. Devitt admits the case study is of him, and in it he speaks of problems that had arisen as a result of Guest’s abuse, the details of which the psychiatrist at the time could have heard only from Devitt’s own lips. Thus he was aware of the impact of the abuse at that stage, yet took no legal action, even though he could have done so within the terms of the Limitation Act.

  ‘What was the difference between then and now? Guest was still alive then. Now we have Father Guest’s sister, who says she can remember Devitt turning up at Guest’s quarters in the presbytery all the time, pushing himself on the man, offering to run errands, et cetera. I believe Devitt did not want Guest to explain that in defence. Altogether, Devitt is, in our opinion, not the sort of man who can be trusted to know his mind. The operation of the Limitation Act should not be suspended to accommodate such a contradictory and volatile character.’

  Leo Shannon admired the force of this argument but saw that even though Callaghan knew the reality of legal practice, he was uncomfortable at the idea; at the use of a man’s own reticence and mental illnesses to skewer him.

  Kermode nonetheless continued. ‘The defence has some thing, though, that I must bring to your attention now. If you turn to Claim 9 …’

  There was a sigh and scrape of turned pages and some mutual consultation on where it was. ‘You’ll see that the plaintiff has a witness – a young man a few years younger than Devitt. His name is Moore, as you see. Moore claims under statutory declaration to have been abused by Guest, his abuse commencing after Devitt reached sixteen and was suddenly of less interest to the priest.’

  The monsignor knew what was coming.

  ‘I believe, Monsignor, that you met with Mr Moore? You too, Mr Callaghan.’

  ‘No,’ said Callaghan. ‘Mr Moore’s case didn’t reach me.’

  Leo Shannon thought it best to combat the embarrassment head-on. It could only be countered by an air of confidence on his part and a combination of claimed compassion and good sense.

  ‘Mr Moore came to me at the cathedral for an introductory interview, the kind I often gave prior to taking a case on to the board. Moore had his own accusations against Father Guest.’

  ‘And you received him in your role as vicar advising the cardinal?’

  ‘Yes. It was one of the earliest cases of this nature thrust on me. I listened to Moore, a highly intelligent young man like Devitt – at least we gave them all a good education – and was afterwards concerned about what to do. The organisational details of In Compassion’s Name were being finalised at that stage. Father Guest was still in good health, and the abuse of which Moore spoke had ended ten to twelve years before.’

  ‘He claims,’ murmured Kermode, ‘that you took an arguably inappropriate option, Monsignor. You know what the evidence he’ll give consists of. He claims that on his second visit to you …’

  Monsignor Shannon believed, again, in intercepting bad news.

  ‘Yes, I know what he claims. That on his second visit, I brought in Father Guest to meet him, and after I reintroduced them, I left them in my office alone. I expected Father Guest would make a statement of repentance as I’d earlier suggested to him, and between the two men there would be a reconciliation. Since those times, of course, we have had a fast learning curve in managing such confrontations, or even in considering the wisdom of them, but, as I say, In Compassion’s Name had not yet been put fully in place, and I was still learning.’

  ‘According to Mr Moore, he was petrified at being left in a room with his abuser, and he fled.’

  ‘Yes, I returned to find Father Guest on his own in the office.’

  ‘Moore is on record as saying that his unwillingness to confront the Church any further was due to your actions, Monsignor.’

  ‘I regret that. I don’t quite see how …’

  He was not sure to whom he was apologising, because Kermode’s manner was clinical and did not actually apportion direct blame. Yet he felt a strange prickling of the flesh. He could not deny he was embarrassed, all the more so since the incident might produce an uncomfortable question in court.

  ‘If Dr Devitt’s claim succeeds,’ mused Kermode, ‘I believe Mr Moore will not be far behind in taking a writ. Another example of a delayed desire to make the Church pay and do public penance. Things will then become very busy for all of us. Devitt has the capacity to begin a gold rush from plaintiffs alleging past abuse.’

  There was silence. Callaghan growled, ‘I’m sure that if the monsignor takes into the witness box the same candour and measured response he has shown us, the influence of this witness, this Moore fellow, will be diminished.’

  ‘And if the plaintiff Devitt is given leave to take a representative action against the cardinal and the trustees,’ said Kermode, ‘I think we are on fairly hopeful ground. But best we defeat that plea at the beginning, by referring to the contradictions in the plaintiff’s evidence.’

  Callaghan gurgled. ‘Yes, we have the evidence that seems to show that Devitt had a strong sense of damage done him when his case study was produced by a psychiatrist nearly a decade ago. Why indeed didn’t he advance his claim then? But it seems to me a plaintiff does not have to be a perfect, sensible sort of fellow to have a true claim for damages. There’s the question, too, of whether the Church would demean itself by arguing his character instead of putting forward the other persuasive issue: that the Church as a trust cannot be sued. That’s an issue that would rule out suspending the Limitation Act.’

  There were glances between the parties again. Callaghan is a decent man, Leo Shannon mentally conceded. Loyal to the Church, papal knight, careful counsellor. Doesn’t like going to town on Devitt.

  ‘If you’ll forgive me, Peter,’ Kermode said to Callaghan, ‘I think it is clear that it’s in the Church’s interest to do everything they can to discredit this claim.’

  ‘Except we have already acknowledged the justice of his case. That’s the thing I’d say, at the risk of repeating myself.’

  ‘Your acknowledgement of his grievance,’ said Kermode, ‘was meant to restore him to the Church. When he rejected the deal, that changed.’

  ‘Well, I know that much,’ said Callaghan with an air of chastisement. Then he smiled, ‘You see I don’t have the gift for head-kicking that I once possessed.’

  Kermode reassured him. ‘Peter, my dear fellow.’

  ‘I think we should talk over the weekend,’ said Callaghan. ‘I agree we can win. Without crucifying him.’

  A snatch of scripture arose in Shannon’s mind. It is expedient for one man to die for the multitude.

  He said, ‘The Church cannot contemplate losing this case.’


  15

  Docherty Visits the Breslins

  July 1996

  Theirs was a middle-class home in Sydney, with long views of the embayments of the Harbour and the Parramatta River, as broad here as most lakes, and complicated in geography. Beneath sandstone ledges, a beach glimmered sunstruck and saffron. This was the inheritance of the Breslins, and it was an exhilarating place.

  There was peril in being here. If Docherty desired any woman on earth, it was Maureen. He cherished her in an enduring way. Damian knew it and had forgiven it. Docherty wondered which of them would open the door. It was Maureen. Though he had seen her on his previous visit, he was thrown further back, to when he had first left Australia for Canada, when feelings between the three of them were still very raw. So now at the door their history of shame and longing caused them to pause, to give themselves a chance to measure how things had been then, and to reduce these emotions to the present scale of accommodation between the three of them.

  After this assessing pause, Docherty kissed Maureen’s cheek. What fine northern European skin she had. Even the Australian sun had not marred it.

  ‘Well …’ she said. ‘Yes, I was nervous, and you were, but no need to be now the door’s been answered. So fit all that into the enigma of longing, and let’s have breakfast.’

  She led him through the house and onto the sundeck. There, tall Damian Breslin walked to meet Docherty with a stoop that was more a mannerism than an ailment and bespoke a tense wish to make his visitor welcome.

  Maureen filled in Docherty about the three Breslin children. Rosie was living in Sydney with her husband and they had a daughter. She’d wanted to call around to see him but had had to go to Adelaide as her father-in-law was seriously ill. Niall was in London doing something financial Damian did not quite approve of; and their third, Joe, was an academic, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Maureen smiled with her relief that the business of being a parent had come good. She asked Docherty about Canada and again he found himself describing the Arctic winters in his pleasant stretch of Ontario close to the Great Lakes. She asked him about his work, but seemed half-distracted, her attention drifting mid-sentence.