Directed by Amy BergFor the first five minutes of Deliver Us From Evil, Amy Berg's new documentary about the recent sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, the camera never shows Father Oliver O'Grady's face. The notorious priest, whose victims ranged from a nine-month-old baby to several married women, is only shown from a distance, or in extreme close-ups of his hands or eyes, but that doesn't matter. By the time the audience sees his face, they know who he is: a man who claims that he wants "to make reparation" for his crimes, but who, when confronted about the abuse, still says "I would label it love and concern" or "being affectionate" with children, unable or unwilling to call his offenses by their correct name.

Deliver Us From Evil is most effective when the camera looks directly into the faces of the people involved, which include both O'Grady and the families who agreed to appear on camera. O'Grady is a terrifying and bizarrely captivating creature, a monster who doesn't know he is one. He describes molesting a young boy early in his career, and when he noticed that the boy seemed upset-"I thought at one point he was going to cry"-he made a stern resolution: "I made a decision right there and then-I was not going to do that again with this boy." Later, when O'Grady is asked whether he himself was abused as a child, the audience is desperate for him to answer "yes," desperate to have some explanation, any explanation, for his warped behavior.

The devastated families struggle for words to explain O'Grady's poisonous legacy. "My father won't walk me down the aisle [at my wedding] because he won't set foot in the church. I'm 39, and it's still not over," says Ann Jyono, who was abused by O'Grady between the ages of five and 12. Adam, whose mother carried out an affair with O'Grady while her son was being abused, still suffers almost 20 years later from violent flashbacks that leave him unable to be sexually intimate.

The film loses some of its force in its last 15 minutes, when it attempts to sketch a vast, worldwide Catholic conspiracy to conceal child abuse. While there may be a valid case to be made, these somewhat last-minute allegations against the Vatican only confuse the point-that a terrible crisis has occurred, and through incompetence more than malice, nothing has been done to ensure it never happens again.

Dr. Mary Gail Fawley-O'Dea, a psychologist who studies pedophilia, says, "The Vatican is looking for a way to say 'we've solved this problem'" by effectively "scapegoating homosexuals, when "most men who molest children are heterosexual."

In fact, Monsignor Cain, O'Grady's superior, told one of his victims, "We knew that you were being abused, but you were a girl." If she'd been a boy, he told her, that would have been a different story. Unfortunately for that young woman and for thousands of children like her, it's a story that doesn't look like it will end anytime soon.