Review: Horrendous - but necessary - reporting
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 25, 2011
Not being a Catholic, the controversy and anger over the issue of pedophile priests and the church officials who either shelter them or keeping moving them from one church to another has always seemed somewhat removed from me. Yes, molesting children is vile - espcially when done by an authority figure in the child's life - and it is morally reprehensible to protect pedophile under the mantle of the priesthood. But beyond that, I was content not to tell the Vatican how to run it's church as long as the church didn't try to tell me how to live my life.In David Margolick's Kindle Single A Predator Priest, the issue is brought front and center and presented not as something that takes a toll on the victims, the priesthood and the church. Margolick's work shows the very human toll priestly pedophilia exacts. On one side of the story is Tommy Deary, one of 13 children in a Catholic family. On the other is Fr. Bernard Bissonnette, who is inordinately fond of fishing trips with the teenage sons of his church members. On these trips (and at every opportunity) Bissonnette is fondling the boys and often moving beyound mere touching to oral and anal sex.Despite rumors of his behavior (this was the early '60s when priests were trusted unconditionally) Bissonnette's superiors moved him from one church to another, finally moving him from Connecticutt to Arizona. Throughout it all, Bissonnette continued to molest young boys ... homing in on the most vulnerable with an almost sixth sense. One of his victims before he left Connecticutt was Tommy Deary who suffered for years as the result of molestation at the hands of Bissonnette. It took Deary years to finally admit what had happened to him. By this time the molestation has already taken a toll on Tommy's relationships, family and even at times his sanity. It ended up taking his life, too, as he connected a hose to his car's exhaust and died in his garage clutching a Bible.To find peace and make sense of their brother's suicide, three of Tommy's brothers set out to find Bissonnette in Arizona. If they hoped to find remorse and repentence in the old priest, they were disappointed. Bissonnette remained defiant, claiming that Tommy (and presumably hundreds of others) seduced him. The victimizer attempted to play victim.This is not an easy work to read. Neither is it a work that allows the reader to sit passively on the sidelines. But it is a work that challenges authority and holds that authority responsible for what can only be called a great evil.