Netflix's "The Keepers"

[Padres1969]

Unlike other true crime docuseries and podcasts, this is a victim-centered crime series, which makes it very different and very special. Here, we get the perspective of crime survivors and families of the dead - including the family of Joyce Malecki, a young woman who was killed just days after Sr. Cesnik in the same neighborhood, and was a parishioner of Fr. Maskell’s. Here, there are no narratives about hero cops, but a stark representation of how survivors are often failed in extraordinary ways.

Watching The Keepers, I was (and remain) awed by the tenacious courage of abuse survivors, even as I am angry that they have been obliged to be courageous, and of the woman who was likely killed for being their advocate.

Agreed. The women featured in the documentary are incredibly tenacious, of that there is no doubt. They clearly got caught in a web of abuse and coverup that encompassed not only the diocese but also local police and political establishments. But once they realized they were not alone, they ran with it.

And frankly one of the things that shocked me, and indeed has shocked me about some of the related abuse and cover up situations such as the well known “Spotlight” cases in Boston, was the fact that so many were being abused, yet few if any said anything. And in the far to rare instances they did, typically either no one believed “men of god” were capable of it, or they actively covered it up to prevent “scandal”. As if scandal were somehow worse than the actual crimes being committed.

 

[PeopleB4Things]

netflix.com/title/80122179

This is starting on Netflix today. Will you watch it?

I’m a member of St Mark parish in Catonsville, MD, the town featured in The Keepers. I personally know teenagers currently attending Seton Keough and adult women who attended Keough in the past. The school (an alagamation of Seton High School and Archbishop Keough High School) is closing its doors for good next month. There is a real mix of emotions here in Catonsville. We have long known that 5 accused priests cycled through St Mark, which has a K-8 school. And a friend of mine, who is in her 40s now, was a child victim while attending the school. To learn that Keough was also the center of a child abuse ring AND a cover-up involving a murdered nun just adds insult to injury. We are weary. Some Seton Keough seniors are lamenting the timing of the series relative to their graduation. But for the most part, most people here think it is good that they are closing the school. The toll of repeated and sustained abuse by priests, the blind eyed attitudes of church and school staff members and the past/recent barriers to justice put up by Archdiocese has left many here without trust or faith. Needless to say, even those in the pews are watchful and less likely to trust church representatives, regardless if they are in the pulpits or in the schools. The Catholic Church made its proverbial bed of sin. It needs to admit its heinous crimes, fall on its sword and compensate way more than it has paid out to date. The church could do away with school uniforms and instead divert the money that would have been spent on a Catholic School Sexual Abuse Fund. Same with flowers at Christmas and Easter. We dont need them. Do away with paid music performers/choir/canters, multi-church CYO tournaments, the paper printing of weekly bulletins and the archdiocese magazine, etc. Get rid of the professional cleaning service at the Archdiocese offices. Priests, bishops, lawyers. accountants and other professionals are perfectly capable of using toilet bowl brushes and dusters. Let go of personal drivers
and car fleets for Archdiocese leaders. Eliminate programs like the Apostleship of the Sea and Fishers of Men. And bring to bear all of the successful fundraising tricks the Archdiocese has cultivated thru the years. Clean-up the mess and minimize our town’s legacy by putting good after bad. Dismiss anyone from the Archdiocese who argues “why should I have to pay for someone else’s sin” because they obviously don’t get the magnitude of the Church’s sin stemming from the highly paid Archbishop all the way down to the minimum wage school aide who turned a blind eye. If they can’t be oblidged to work toward repaying the longstanding and enormous debt of their employers, it’s time to find another place to work.

 

[PeopleB4Things]

Agreed. The women featured in the documentary are incredibly tenacious, of that there is no doubt. They clearly got caught in a web of abuse and coverup that encompassed not only the diocese but also local police and political establishments. But once they realized they were not alone, they ran with it.

And frankly one of the things that shocked me, and indeed has shocked me about some of the related abuse and cover up situations such as the well known “Spotlight” cases in Boston, was the fact that so many were being abused, yet few if any said anything. And in the far to rare instances they did, typically either no one believed “men of god” were capable of it, or they actively covered it up to prevent “scandal”. As if scandal were somehow worse than the actual crimes being committed.

Things like this do rock your faith. And the fact that Catonsville had mutiple abusers at multiple locations who were protected thru the years leave those of us still here devastated. There are so many victims of church abuse working, living, and worshiping among us. It’s not a far distant history. They are living here and now. My friend, the one abused by a priest while at St Mark, refused to let her abuser steal her faith. At the same time, she takes no guff from anyone when it comes to her faith. She once trusted in people who proclaimed to know more about the Catholic faith than her. She knows better now. Our church currently has a priest who demands strict adherence to rules and regs. He gets little compliance because the Archidiocese has taught us that hubris is often the cover for abuse.

Abuse of catholic children has created a generation of catholic adults less attached to the cathecism and more attuned to their inner spirtuality. In that way, I guess turning to the Holy Spirit rather than to sinful humans is the silver lining to this horendous national and international tragedy.

 

[7_Sorrows]

I am watching this now. I am on episode 4. it is fascinating and sad.
I was a teenager in the 60’s and many of us were very passive. you didn’t talk about things. you kept secrets.
after going through that type of sexual abuse and invasion of privacy, how could you have a normal life. I would think these memories would have surfaced earlier - like in their 20’s.
I am not saying I don’t believe these women, because obviously there are so many other than the 2 who tried to bring the lawsuit.
I am sure what these women are claiming actually happened. very disturbing accusations.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I decided to watch mostly because we lived next to Catonsville for a long time. I know pretty much nothing about Seton-Keough though as we did not have any children in the schools in that area and I myself grew up / attended Catholic school in another state. Any interaction I had with the Catholic Church when we were living near Catonsville was pretty much confined to my own parish churches which were not in Catonsville.

 

[7_Sorrows]

I finished The Keepers last night. It was definitely worth watching.
I really hope someday the two murders will be solved. So many years have past.
It seems too much of a coincidence that Sister Catherine Sesnick and Joyce Malecki
disappeared days apart and were both murdered. Both were Catholic and had connections to Maskell.
Perhaps this show will jog someone’s memory or someone’s conscience.
I thought it was well made though.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Watching now and discovered that this alleged sexual abuser Fr. Maskell was assigned to a church close to our home during the time I was planning my wedding a few decades ago. At the time I had considered asking to have the wedding in the church that Maskell was apparently running. I knew nothing about Maskell or these scandals and just liked the church building because it was very old and historic, as opposed to our own parish church, which was very modern.

As it turned out I was so overwhelmed with the task of doing all the planning - my husband-to-be spent most of that year out of the state traveling on work assignments, and for various reasons my family weren’t very helpful - that it was easier to just plan the wedding for our own parish church than jump through the hoops to move it to the other church. Although we had a beautiful wedding, a beautiful weather day, and the modern church unlike the old one had a lot of light coming in through the windows to the joy of the wedding photographer, I have always felt a little disappointed in myself that I did not make the effort to schedule the wedding in the “historic” church.

I now see that our wedding at that “historic” church would have been happening right smack in the middle of the scandal with Maskell resigning from that church. God is good. He spared us that stress of having to deal with that upset, or having to remember Maskell as our wedding priest. We had my stern, sometimes difficult, but uncontroversial pastor from my parish church a few miles away, instead. Thank You Jesus.

 

[Shining_star86]

My question is, did the Vatican know? Has the Vatican ever been fully aware of sexual abuse within Catholic Churches all over the world and just didn’t speak out about it? I’m very curious.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

My question is, did the Vatican know? Has the Vatican ever been fully aware of sexual abuse within Catholic Churches all over the world and just didn’t speak out about it? I’m very curious.

Many journalistic reports over the years have indicated that it was likely that the Vatican was very aware of a good many (if not all) of the reports of abuse, especially the ones that involved high profile clergy or a large number of victims over time. There were abuse scandals (sexual and physical abuse of minors) going on countries other than USA too. Large amounts of money has been paid in settlements to victims, and the news media has been giving significant coverage to these stories since at least the 1990s, which is when I saw the first story on sex abuse in the Catholic Church on the “60 Minutes” news program. In view of all this, although we don’t have perfect insight into what the Vatican knew and when, it seems probable that they knew.

From a victim perspective, it is difficult to understand why the Church didn’t seem to “speak out” or do more, etc. From a legal perspective and also considering that knowledge about child predators, how they operate, the damage they do, the fact that they can’t be easily treated, why victims don’t report right away, etc has increased greatly over the last few decades from what it once was, I can understand to some extent. I am not excusing the fact that abusers were allowed to continue on their way for so long but I can to some degree understand why it happened.

We must also remember that those who run the Vatican are human, they make mistakes, and it is also a large organization and suffers from the bureaucratic issues of large organizations. Again, not excusing it, but stating the facts.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I finished watching the last episode today. Most of it was very believable, sadly. I hope the show galvanizes the state and federal agencies into making more efforts to solve the two murders, especially Joyce Malecki’s murder which it seemed no one was investigating at all and the FBI was being less than responsive to FOIA inquiries.

Like many of these types of documentaries, this is a victim-focused program where the emphasis is on the emotions of the victims. In so doing, these shows always give pretty short shrift to the legal issues involved. Obviously it is much easier for the average viewer who does not have a law or enforcement background to connect to the emotional story, and such viewers may well believe that the victim’s plight trumps any sort of legal concern. Such stories also tend to be pretty one-sided because victims are relatively free to speak, while the “accused” side is going to take its attorneys’ prudent advice to not comment so as not to risk making a bad situation worse. I have understanding and empathy for victims, but whenever the story got into the legal aspects I could also see some logical reasons why the prosecutor, lawyers, state legislators, etc. might take certain positions. As one example, the final episode makes much of Maryland not increasing a statute of limitations for civil lawsuits in child sexual abuse cases, but Maryland did pass an extension law for that in 2003 which allows more time for victims to report than a number of other states currently do. (Maryland also has no statute of limitations for criminal felony charges of child sexual abuse.)

Still, it was better than other victim-focused documentaries I’ve seen (notably “Dear Zachary” which gave me zero insight into the legal reasoning and even made fun of the judges).

 

[Padres1969]

I finished watching the last episode today. Most of it was very believable, sadly. I hope the show galvanizes the state and federal agencies into making more efforts to solve the two murders, especially Joyce Malecki’s murder which it seemed no one was investigating at all and the FBI was being less than responsive to FOIA inquiries.

Like many of these types of documentaries, this is a victim-focused program where the emphasis is on the emotions of the victims. In so doing, these shows always give pretty short shrift to the legal issues involved. Obviously it is much easier for the average viewer who does not have a law or enforcement background to connect to the emotional story, and such viewers may well believe that the victim’s plight trumps any sort of legal concern. Such stories also tend to be pretty one-sided because victims are relatively free to speak, while the “accused” side is going to take its attorneys’ prudent advice to not comment so as not to risk making a bad situation worse. I have understanding and empathy for victims, but whenever the story got into the legal aspects I could also see some logical reasons why the prosecutor, lawyers, state legislators, etc. might take certain positions. As one example, the final episode makes much of Maryland not increasing a statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, but Maryland did pass an extension law for that in 2003 which allows more time for victims to report than a number of other states currently do.

Still, it was better than other victim-focused documentaries I’ve seen (notably “Dear Zachary” which gave me zero insight into the legal reasoning and even made fun of the judges).

Well to be fair in this case it does appear the “emotional angle” is about all the victims have left. Even if they solve the crimes definitively, which given time and evidence lacking seems unlikely, an emotional victory is the only victory they’d be able to get. As the pedophile priest and alleged killers involved all appear to have died if I’m not mistaken. This is a series of crimes with no perpetrator left to convict. Best the victims can do is tell their story, and make sure no one remembers the perpetrators fondly but as the snakes in sheep’s clothing they really were in life.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Well to be fair in this case it does appear the “emotional angle” is about all the victims have left. Even if they solve the crimes definitively, which given time and evidence lacking seems unlikely, an emotional victory is the only victory they’d be able to get. As the pedophile priest and alleged killers involved all appear to have died if I’m not mistaken. This is a series of crimes with no perpetrator left to convict. Best the victims can do is tell their story, and make sure no one remembers the perpetrators fondly but as the snakes in sheep’s clothing they really were in life.

I understand, and this is a good point. I just found myself at times going “well duh” when the documentary was presenting something the Church did with the lawyers or the courts, such as trying to settle cases, as being a bad or underhanded thing. The law - not just the law for child sexual abuse, but all law - is designed to favor and promote private settlement of disputes. There are also good reasons for statutes of limitations in general. However, like I said these points are really for those of us who sit around reading law and police journals, not for Joe Average viewer.

 

[Padres1969]

I understand, and this is a good point. I just found myself at times going “well duh” when the documentary was presenting something the Church did with the lawyers or the courts, such as trying to settle cases, as being a bad or underhanded thing. The law - not just the law for child sexual abuse, but all law - is designed to favor and promote private settlement of disputes. There are also good reasons for statutes of limitations in general. However, like I said these points are really for those of us who sit around reading law and police journals, not for Joe Average viewer.

Well I mean the law does like settlement. But in this case the settlement wasn’t just to placate that desire of law, it was to avoid church scandal. It rarely if ever got to the point of court involvement for that exact reason, the church did everything it could to keep it under wraps. And to that end they far too often neglected to openly discipline or expel priests that were involved with it. That I think goes to the heart of why so many were so hurt by the scandals, particularly in the RCC. It wasn’t simply a matter of doing what the law favors, it was being done to save face. And in doing so they prolonged the abuse for decades, and made it that much worse when it finally came to light.

In trying to avoid scandal, they created one of the larger religious scandals of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Certainly the largest in the Catholic Church of the last century+

As for statue of limitations on such crimes, those are being extended in many jurisdictions for this exact reason or eliminated entirely depending on the type of crime.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Regarding statute of limitations, as I said in the previous post, Maryland has a longer time window for civil cases of this type - 7 years past the child victim turning 18 - than many other states currently do. And it has no statute of limitations for a criminal prosecution of felony child sexual abuse, so that’s already been “eliminated entirely”.

I fully agree with you that the Church mishandled all of these cases for decades, badly. The first report I saw on Catholic clergy sex abuse was in the early 90s on 60 minutes and I said to my husband “the Church is going to have a big big problem with this down the line” and I was right. The worst part is there are some churches where they had several of these guys over the years. One would get transferred out and another one would come in and do the same stuff. I hope and pray the worst of this is over. I consider myself lucky that no priest I ever knew was accused of harming children although a couple of them got in trouble for drinking or carrying on with adult women.

 

[Padres1969]

Regarding statute of limitations, as I said in the previous post, Maryland has a longer time window for civil cases of this type - 7 years past the child victim turning 18 - than many other states currently do. And it has no statute of limitations for a criminal prosecution of felony child sexual abuse, so that’s already been “eliminated entirely”.

I fully agree with you that the Church mishandled all of these cases for decades, badly. The first report I saw on Catholic clergy sex abuse was in the early 90s on 60 minutes and I said to my husband “the Church is going to have a big big problem with this down the line” and I was right. The worst part is there are some churches where they had several of these guys over the years. One would get transferred out and another one would come in and do the same stuff. I hope and pray the worst of this is over. I consider myself lucky that no priest I ever knew was accused of harming children although a couple of them got in trouble for drinking or carrying on with adult women.

Consider yourself lucky. The pastor and two other priests at my childhood parish were caught up in both child abuse and adult sex scandals as was my first high school religion teacher. It was extremely damaging to my and many I know’s faith. My brother and sister both served at the altar with the pastor in question and a family friend had the worst of the lot over to weekly dinners. All of both families children left the church (and other than myself Christianity completely).

 

[oneofmany]

But why should we abandon Christ for what Judas does? The church is made up of sinners, all of us. Imperfect people who can’t know who is doing what all the time. I think the church is getting better with this but it will never be perfect like other institutions are not perfect, not in this life.

 

[Shining_star86]

But why should we abandon Christ for what Judas does? The church is made up of sinners, all of us. Imperfect people who can’t know who is doing what all the time. I think the church is getting better with this but it will never be perfect like other institutions are not perfect, not in this life.

While this is a good point, it still has me questioning just how much the Church is covering up. I’ve never been anti-Catholic by any means and have felt led to the Church, but there have been coverups after coverups and it leaves me wondering what else they are trying to cover up.

 

[Padres1969]

**But why should we abandon Christ for what Judas does? ** The church is made up of sinners, all of us. Imperfect people who can’t know who is doing what all the time. I think the church is getting better with this but it will never be perfect like other institutions are not perfect, not in this life.

It’s not that simple when it’s a priest. They act “in persona Christi”, as in they are Christ’s representative on Earth. When they’re also the one engaging in heinous acts… Well lets just say it calls many’s belief into question that someone who is supposed to be acting in place of Christ is also abusing children in unspeakable ways. For many it is akin to Christ himself engaging in the abuse. And if you view Christ as abusive… would you really want to hang around him any longer? This to me is the biggest issue with these disgusting priests who engaged in this behavior, not only were they abusing the children, but they were abusing Christ and those children’s faith in him.

Add on to that an organization that claim’s to be Christ’s one true church on Earth, even if made up of sinners, acting in a manner akin to a multiple stage government coverup ostensibly for no reason other than to “avoid scandal” as if what has been going on isn’t a vile scandal already. It’s not that they didn’t know what everyone was doing at all time, it’s that they didn’t act when they did become aware of it. Any priest accused of abuse should have been reported to the authorities and taken out of his church indefinitely while it was investigated, and when abuse was found, they should have been summarily thrown out of the priesthood. Not sent to “treatment centers”, quiet payoffs made, and then put the priest back in circulation to engage in the behavior again. Even an imperfect and flawed institution should know to not do that.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Consider yourself lucky. The pastor and two other priests at my childhood parish were caught up in both child abuse and adult sex scandals as was my first high school religion teacher. It was extremely damaging to my and many I know’s faith.

I know I dodged a bullet. I have looked up the online lists of accused priests for the dioceses in which I lived. None of my own parishes had any problems while I was attending there. In one diocese, two other parishes in proximity to ours each had a child abuser and in the Baltimore diocese, our parish had had one some years before I arrived, plus two of the parishes in proximity (one of which was St. Augustine’s from the series where Maskell was assigned and the other was St. Mark’s that someone mentioned earlier in this thread) had multiple abusers over the years. A church that I now attend regularly as it’s near my work just had a priest arrested for child porn a couple years ago before I began attending there, and it has a large elementary school. At least he was quickly arrested with a lot of newspaper publicity so it wasn’t swept under the rug in any way.

 

[Padres1969]

I know I dodged a bullet. I have looked up the online lists of accused priests for the dioceses in which I lived. None of my own parishes had any problems while I was attending there. In one diocese, two other parishes in proximity to ours each had a child abuser and in the Baltimore diocese, our parish had had one some years before I arrived, plus two of the parishes in proximity (one of which was St. Augustine’s from the series where Maskell was assigned and the other was St. Mark’s that someone mentioned earlier in this thread) had multiple abusers over the years. A church that I now attend regularly as it’s near my work just had a priest arrested for child porn a couple years ago before I began attending there, and it has a large elementary school. At least he was quickly arrested with a lot of newspaper publicity so it wasn’t swept under the rug in any way.

Yeah never did find out what happened to any of the accused priests at my old Catholic parish. They were shuffled off in the old style and hidden away before the RCC really started taking action on the issue. However the Diocese assigned the Diocesan exorcist to my old parish as the new pastor. Make of that what you will after 3 accused priests were removed.