Netflix drama The Keepers stirs memories of school murder

By Justin Burke
Australian
June 21, 2017

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/broadcast/netflix-drama-the-keepers-stirs-memories-of-school-murder/news-story/637070d060ae809a8293d6b7e6e780a0

Sydney teacher Denise ­Imwold, who moved from Baltimore to Australia in 1971 at the age of 19. Photo by James Croucher

Father Joseph Maskell, the chaplain of Keough High School in Baltimore.

Sister Catherine Cesnik, who was murdered in 1969.

Denise Imwold’s yearbook photograph.

The seven-part documentary, aired on Netflix, focuses on the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a teacher at a Baltimore high school. Ms Imwold was taught English and drama by Cesnik at the school in the years ­immediately preceding her death.

“After watching the first four episodes, I got an emotional hangover,” she said. “Sister Cathy was my teacher, and seeing the school corridors I had walked up and down so many times, and the faces I knew, I felt like I’d gone in a time warp, thinking: did all this ­really happen?”

The series explores the theory that Cesnik was killed to ensure her silence about students being sexually abused at the school by Father Joseph Maskell, who died in 2001. Jean Wehner, a classmate of Ms Imwold’s younger sister, is featured claiming that Maskell took her to see Cesnik’s body in the woods and telling her: “You see what happens when you say bad things about people?”

While Netflix refuses to confirm viewing figures, the low-key series is believed to have been in the top 10 most streamed shows alongside Orange is the New Black and House of Cards.

Ms Imwold says she had no notion of sexual abuse going on at the school, known as Keough, but she remembered Cesnik, then in her early 20s, as a passionate teacher and a gifted writer.

“Six months before she died, she directed me in a production of The Sound of Music; the irony was she was basically in the same position as the character Maria, about to embark on a leave of ­absence from the convent.”

She added that during this time Cesnik was “troubled” and “not herself”. “I personally think that Maskell was involved and the mastermind of it (the murder) but didn’t get his hands dirty,” she said.

Since the early 1990s, former Keough students have laboured to uncover facts about the unsolved murder, and support the victims of clerical sexual abuse. Ms Imwold said she and other former students had used their ­Keough yearbook photos as their Facebook profiles to show solidarity.

Coming in the wake of Australia’s royal commission into child sexual abuse, and the looming ­decision by Victorian police whether to charge Cardinal ­George Pell over allegations of historical sexual abuse, Ms Imwold, a dual citizen who has lived in Australia since 1971, described her empathy with the local Catholic community.

“I still believe in God but I wouldn’t consider myself a ­religious person … but I don’t think I could recommit to the church when the hierarchy has so much to answer for,” she said.

Despite the sad legacy of ­Keough, which has recently closed, Ms Imwold’s career as a book editor, freelance writer and now creative writing tutor is an enduring legacy to Cesnik’s inspirational teaching.

“I truly hope that Cathy’s case will one day be solved,” she said.