TORONTO (CANADA)
CBC News
April 15, 2019
Director Matt Gallagher says it was an ’emotional’ experience taking on this documentary. (CBC)
It’s a documentary that Windsorite director Matt Gallagher has been aspiring to create for about 15 years — and now, his film Prey about sexual abuse by Catholic priests will premiere at Hot Docs, Canada’s largest documentary film festival later this month.
The film focuses on one perpetrator in particular, Father William Hodgson “Hod” Marshall, a retired priest and teacher, who several years ago pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 16 boys and one girl at schools in Toronto, Sudbury and Windsor.
Featured in the film is Windsorite Patrick McMahon who, as a boy, fell victim to Marshall.
McMahon has been using his voice to speak out and protest in an effort to hold those within the church accountable.
“It’s something I feel passionately about….I will continue to speak out until people who cover this up are brought to justice,” he said.
He stressed he hopes the documentary will help make people aware these are not just crimes of the past.
“There are priests today who are still doing this. There are priests being investigated now. There are enablers covering this up,” he said.
“We all together have an obligation to make that stop.”
McMahon has been represented by Rob Talach, a lawyer based in London, Ont. — known as “the priest hunter” — and he too is a prominent figure in the film.
How a sexual assault victim’s lawsuit set a precedent that alarmed the Catholic Church
Gallagher reached out to Talach in an effort to focus the documentary on a case that was unfolding in the present, and so they were able to identify one of Talach’s clients who was taking his case to trial, and that’s where the documentary begins.
‘White knight work’
Having tackled more than 400 cases in his career so far, Talach says after 17 years of representing individuals who have been abused by Roman Catholic clergy, he’s become a “six foot tall callus” emotionally.
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