Ireland Sentences O'Grady

By Zachary K. Johnson
The Record
January 31, 2012

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Oliver O'Grady

Disgraced ex-priest, who once worked in S.J. and Lode, gets 3 years for child porn on laptop

STOCKTON - A notorious pedophile who preyed on children while a priest in the Diocese of Stockton before serving seven years in California prison is headed for three more years behind bars, this time in his native Ireland.

Defrocked and deported when released from an Ione prison in 2000, Oliver O'Grady found himself in trouble with the law again in 2010, when authorities reported he possessed thousands of pornographic images and videos of children on computers and other electronic devices.

Some of the confiscated pornography depicted victims as young as 2 years old, according to the Irish Times newspaper.

O'Grady had pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing the materials last year in Dublin Circuit Court before Monday's sentencing, according to the Times.

O'Grady was a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Stockton before his 1993 arrest. He was a priest at St. Anne's Catholic Church in Lodi, the Church of the Presentation in Stockton, St. Andrew's Catholic Church in San Andreas and other churches. Over the years, the Diocese of Stockton has spent millions of dollars to settle more than two dozen lawsuits brought by O'Grady's alleged victims. As recently as 2010, the diocese settled with a brother and sister who said they were sexually abused by O'Grady while they were students at Presentation Catholic School.

When news of O'Grady's sentencing reached the United States, victims' advocates responded.

Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called O'Grady "... one of the most notorious serial child molesting Catholic clerics in California history" in a written statement released on Monday. "Oliver O'Grady sexually assaulted boys and girls in and around Stockton for years," she wrote. "He clearly remains a danger to kids. We hope he's put behind bars for the rest of his life."

O'Grady remained a threat to any child that crossed his path, even though he had been exposed to the world in the documentary film, "Deliver Us From Evil," said Sacramento attorney Joseph C. George, who has represented alleged victims of O'Grady.

In the award-winning film from 2006, filmmakers taped O'Grady talking about sex crimes he had committed.

Sometime after the film's release, O'Grady made his way to the Netherlands. Authorities were led to him again in 2010 when he returned to Ireland but left a laptop with pornographic images on his returning flight, according to Irish news reports.

Record librarian Delailah Little contributed to this report.

Contact: zjohnson@recordnet.com