WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Alex Gibney’s documentary about the priest sex-abuse scandal at St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis was among the winners of the 2013 Peabody Awards announced Wednesday morning.
“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” — which examines the actions of Father Lawrence Murphy, who abused more than 200 deaf students at the school from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the Catholic Church’s efforts to keep the scandal quiet — was called “harrowing and infuriating” by the Peabody committee.
The film, which had its U.S. premiere at the 2012 Milwaukee Film Festival, aired on HBO in 2013. Much of the story is told in compelling fashion by some of Murphy’s victims — including a home movie of the now-grown victims confronting the priest.
“It was such a powerful piece of footage, we had to find a place in the narrative to make room for it,” Gibney told Journal Sentinel film critic Duane Dudek before the 2012 Milwaukee Film Festival.
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