Former priest Geoghan opened abuse floodgates

BOSTON -- Long before the public became aware of former priest John Geoghan, clergy sex abuse had cast a shadow over the Roman Catholic Church with claims of molestation and rape, multimillion-dollar settlements and exhaustive publicity.

But it was the case of Geoghan, who allegedly abused nearly 150 young boys entrusted to his care over more than three decades, that shook the foundations of the church in the United States and revealed the extent of its cover-up of allegations of abuse.

"Geoghan personified the pedophile priest," said Jim Post, president of Voice of The Faithful, a lay reform group organized after the abuse scandal broke. "And what people saw in the handling of Geoghan was the twisted logic, in which a church that is supposed to protect the innocent and punish the guilty protected the guilty and punished the innocent."

Geoghan, 68, was killed by another inmate Saturday at the maximum security Souza-Baranowski Corrections Center in Shirley where he was serving a nine- to 10-year sentence for assault and battery on a 10-year-old boy, officials said.

Geoghan's death drew mixed reactions.

"He's never going to hurt anybody again, and at the same time he still had a lot of penance to do on Earth," said Michael Linscott, who says he was abused by Geoghan from 1967 to 1972 in Hingham.

Worcester County District Attorney John Conte said Geoghan appeared to have been strangled, though an autopsy was scheduled for Monday. The suspect, Joseph Druce, 37, was serving a life sentence for a 1988 murder.

Charged with murder

Conte said Druce will be charged with murder. Department of Correction spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Druce was placed in isolation after the killing, and that the department had begun an internal investigation of Geoghan's death.

Geoghan had been in protective custody since being transferred to Souza-Baranowski in April. Nantel would not confirm whether Druce was also in protective custody, but said those inmates typically only have contact with one other.

Known as Darrin Smiledge before changing his name, Druce is a member of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nation, according to published reports. He pleaded guilty in 2002 to sending a letter containing fake anthrax to a federal prosecutor in New Hampshire, and reportedly admitted sending similar letters to lawyers with Jewish-sounding surnames around the country.

Geoghan, one of two children born to a religious Boston family, traced his desire to become a priest to the death of his father in 1940, when he was only 5, according to a 1995 evaluation. He said he experienced no abuse as a child.

He was described as immature and a poor student by the rector of St. John's Seminary, where he enrolled in 1954, and was able to stay on only through the intervention of an uncle, the late Monsignor Mark Keohane.

Following his ordination in 1962, Geoghan was assigned to a parish in Saugus, starting a 34-year career that took him to five other parishes and created a legacy distinguished by the trail of allegations of predatory abuse of the boys he was expected to shepherd to adulthood.

Geoghan often targeted boys from broken homes, ingratiating himself during visits or outings. Some said he molested them while visiting their rooms at bedtime to tuck them in.

Despite mounting evidence of compulsive pedophilia, and periods spent at treatment centers, he always was allowed to return to pastoral service. His last assignment, following his removal from a Boston parish because of abuse allegations, placed him in charge of various youth groups.

Cardinal Bernard Law granted Geoghan early retirement in 1996 and praised him for an "effective life of ministry, sadly impaired by illness."

But as legal troubles mounted, Geoghan was ousted from the priesthood in 1998, and in December 1999 he was charged with rape and molesting three boys.

And amid the mounting scandal stemming from Geoghan's case and others, Law resigned last December.

Molestation scandals had been hitting the church in America for nearly two decades, with notorious cases involving priests and dioceses in Lafayette, La., in 1984, at Fall River in 1992 and in Dallas in 1993.

But in January 2002, the church's role in the handling of priests, long sealed by courts, came to light as Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney ordered the release of documents in civil cases against Geoghan.

"It was the first time objective evidence was produced to show that the Archdiocese of Boston, through its supervisors, allowed the abuse to continue," said Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who has represented 147 alleged victims of Geoghan.

"I think the Geoghan case helped the public, parishioners and victims understand that there was a moral responsibility within the Catholic Church," Garabedian said.

In the months that followed, lawyers representing hundreds of alleged abuse victims of other priests brought new cases, forcing the church to turn over tens of thousands more documents and revealing the scope of the church's cover-up in Boston and nationwide.

Geoghan's name remained synonymous with the scandal, said Stephen Pope, chairman of theology department at Boston College.

"He was kind of the Jack of the Ripper of pedophiles, in the imagery of the public world," Pope said. "The shift was a seismic shift from trusting all priests to trusting very few."