AUSTRALIA
The Australian
June 22, 2017
JUSTIN BURKE
JournalistSydney
@justinburke
For Sydney teacher Denise Imwold, the recent true-crime series The Keepers was a traumatic viewing experience.
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.”
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