Джек Геоган: священник и серийный насильник детей

American Catholic priest and child rapist

John Joseph "Jack" Geoghan ('/ɡ//eɪ//ɡ//ən/ GAYgən; June4, 1935August23, 2003) was an American serial child rapist and Catholic priest assigned to parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston in Massachusetts. He was reassigned to several parish posts involving interaction with children, even after receiving treatment for pedophilia. The investigation and prosecution of Geoghan were one of the numerous cases of priests accused of child sexual abuse in a scandal that rocked the archdiocese in the 1990s and 2000s. It led to the resignation of Boston's archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, on December 13, 2002. Law lost the support of fellow clergy and the laity after it was shown that his response to allegations against dozens of priests consisted of assigning them to different parishes, thus allowing sexual abuse of additional children to take place. Geoghan was convicted of sexual abuse, laicized, and sentenced in 2002 to nine to ten years in Souza Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security prison. Less than a year later, he was murdered there by Joseph Druce, an inmate serving a life sentence. The Boston Globes coverage of Geoghan's abuse opened the door for public knowledge of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston and Catholic churches nationwide in general. This coverage is a key plot element of Tom McCarthy's film Spotlight (2015).

John Joseph Geoghan was born in Boston on June 4, 1935, to an Irish Catholic family. He lost his father when he was only five years old, and was subsequently raised by his maternal uncle, Mark Keohane, who was a Catholic priest within the archdiocese of Boston. Geoghan attended local parochial schools. Intending to become a priest after his father's death, he attended Cardinal O'Connell Seminary. An assessment in 1954 noted him as having a "very pronounced immaturity". That December, he talked a man out of committing suicide from jumping off the Mystic River Bridge. While Geoghan was assigned to Blessed Sacrament, Anthony Benzevich allegedly told church officials that the junior priest was observed bringing boys into his bedroom. Benzevich would later deny this allegation. In 1998, Benzevich told reporters he was branded as a troublemaker for reporting Geoghan, and that church officials hinted that he might be sent to Peru if he persisted. In 1995 Geoghan admitted to having molested four boys during his tenure at Blessed Sacrament. On November 28, 1990, Banks recommended that Geoghan return to the parish, but left the decision up to Cardinal Law and another bishop. On October 23, 1991, the church received a complaint about Geoghan "proselytizing" with a boy at a pool. He was prosecuted in Cambridge for charges of molestation that took place in 1991. Geoghan was defrocked in 1998 by Pope John Paul II. He was found guilty on February 21, 2002, of indecent assault and battery for grabbing the buttocks of a 10 year old boy in a swimming pool at the Waltham Boys and Girls Club in 1991, and was sentenced to nine to ten years in prison. After initially agreeing to a $30 million settlement with 86 of Geoghan's victims, the Boston archdiocese pulled out of it, finally settling with them for $10 million. Boston's Suffolk County prosecuted Geoghan in two other sexual abuse cases. One case was dropped without prejudice when the alleged victim decided not to testify. In the second case, a judge dismissed the conviction of Geoghan in two rapes, after hotly contested arguments, because the statute of limitations had run out. The Commonwealth's appeal of that ruling was active at the time of Geoghan's death. Remaining charges of indecent assault in that case were still pending prosecution.

On August 23, 2003, while in protective custody at the maximum security Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster, Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death in his cell by inmate Joseph Lee Druce (born Darrin Ernest Smiledge; April 15, 1965) Druce was serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for killing a man who allegedly made sexual advances toward him. Geoghan was trapped in his cell by Druce, who jammed the door closed so correction officers could not reach him. Druce then strangled and stomped Geoghan to death. An autopsy revealed Geoghan's cause of death to be "ligature strangulation and blunt chest trauma." Druce was said to have planned the murder of Geoghan for more than a month, considering him a "prize". Druce was sexually abused in a boarding school as a child. Also, since Geoghan had taught another inmate how to sexually abuse children, Druce's crimes were partly due to the fact that he felt he had to take revenge on all child sexual abusers. The press raised questions about prison officials' judgment in placing these two men in the same unit for protective custody. In addition, they had been warned by an inmate that Druce intended to attack Geoghan. It was noted while two guards are normally stationed in the unit where Geoghan and Druce were being held, there was only one officer in the unit at the time – one had left temporarily to escort another inmate to a medical station. Union officials had noted there were staffing cuts previously at the prison, which they feel led to the prison being a more dangerous and volatile place. It has also been suggested Druce had been offered money to kill Geoghan, or Druce thought he would gain prestige from fellow prisoners for doing so. In June 2007, The Boston Herald received a handwritten letter signed "Joseph Lee Druce", stating "The truth about officer involvement in John Geogan's (sic) death", along with an address for a YouTube video. The address contained a video taken by security cameras inside of Souza Baranowski Correctional Center, made during the murder. The 10 minute video shows the attempts made by correctional officers to open the cell door (as many as five pulling at one time) along with videos showing resuscitation efforts on Geoghan by emergency personnel. Inmates at Souza Baranowski do not have Internet access. Department of Correction officials were investigating who posted the video, as it is from an internal security camera. A video showing several corrections officers trying to open Geoghan's cell door, which Druce had wedged shut while he attacked the former priest, was released on YouTube in June 2007. Officials claimed not to know how the videos, recorded by the prison surveillance systems, were made public. Geoghan was buried in Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts, on August 28, 2003.

Robert Joseph Banks, then an auxiliary bishop in Boston, had recommended in 1989 that Geoghan remain as a parish priest despite receiving an assessment that he would likely continue to act on his pedophilia. Banks was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay in 1990. He retired in 2003, having reached the church's mandatory retirement age of 75 years.

John Michael D'Arcy, who had written an unheeded letter of warning to Cardinal Law about Geoghan's behavior, was transferred from Boston to Indiana on February 26, 1985, and ended his career as bishop of the Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend. D'Arcy retired in 2009 and died in 2013.

After Cardinal Law resigned as Boston's archbishop in December 2002, he relocated to Rome in 2004 where he served as archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, the largest Catholic Marian church in Rome. It was "commonly believed that he would live out his retirement in Rome" after he retired at age 80 in 2011. Law died in Rome on December 20, 2017.

Canadian punk rock band Billy Talent's song "Devil in a Midnight Mass" from the album Billy Talent II (2006) addresses Geoghan's story from a victim's perspective. Bob Rivers recorded a parody of "Keep Your Hands to Yourself", originally by The Georgia Satellites, about Geoghan. The 2015 film Spotlight depicts the Boston Globe investigation into the Boston Archdiocese, spurred by Geoghan's trial that would lead to his eventual imprisonment. Geoghan is briefly depicted in the film in a scene taking place in 1976 at a Boston police station, played by an uncredited actor.