Friday, August 12, 2011

Passion play that shocked a nation

"Did you see yer one with Gaybo, talkin' on the Late, Late Show.

She was tellin' us about the things that happened long ago

How she loved the bishop and he loved her just as well

Only God knows will he go to Heaven or to Hell"

From 'Howya Julia' by The Saw Doctors

THE picket-fenced suburbia of Southern California might seem an unlikely endpoint to one of the greatest sex scandals in recent Irish history, but it is here that Annie Murphy, one-time lover of former Bishop Eamon Casey, now makes her home. Perhaps because it was among the first scandals to emerge -- the tale of the priest, his American lover and their son riveted a nation and still resonates down the years.

Murphy's health has not been great in recent years -- she has said she suffers from a wasting disorder -- but she's probably more content than she was when her face was emblazoned across tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic.

Life has been kinder to the divorcee.

On the East Coast, with its more deep-rooted Catholic communities, where she raised her son Peter and lived most of her life, she was a figure of some notoriety. Here, in the sun and smog, the 63-year-old passes completely unnoticed. 

Partnered with Thaddeus Heinchon, a painter of some renown, she prefers not to talk about the events that defined her life, at least publicly. 

A phone call to Heinchon's home was answered by a woman who when asked if she were Annie Murphy replied "Is this about Eamon?" and then politely declined to comment much further.

Peter, who is understood to live in Boston, may have as much to do with that as any pressure the embattled Church could bring to bear. After his family's story became international news, he bemoaned the fact he and his mother had become "D-List celebrities". 

Perhaps aware he could only forge a relationship with his biological father away from the media's glare, Peter has not spoken about his family's story. 

But Annie has confirmed that in recent years he and the former bishop have forged a better relationship. "Eamon is in contact with Peter. He talks to him a lot. Things are much better."

If life has merely allowed her a little peace, history seems to have redeemed Murphy entirely. 

The time when her mere existence was regarded as an act of brazen defiance seems very far off indeed. 

In 1992, when her shaky voice was heard on Morning Ireland, people pulled over their cars on the Stillorgan dual carriageway to listen in shock and awe. 

Later, she would be inspected by a curious nation on The Late Late Show. 

The questions she faced then, whether on television or on radio, seemed tinged with the suspicion that she had somehow snared this clerical charmer in her divorcee talons.

In a country that had not yet legalised divorce, her very Americanness seemed to be regarded as an affront, and the sexual detail of her book a product of the tawdry confessional culture she came from. 

We weren't ready for the mention of anyone's semen, let alone a bishop's.
 
Casey was a hypocrite to be sure -- even then, we all saw that. But he was also one of our own, a big-hearted charmer brought low by his human weakness and regarded, for that, with a sort of chivalrous pity. Cardinal Connell spoke of the "wave of compassion" that he enjoyed. 

As far as Murphy was concerned, we were, in the main, hostile witnesses.

In hindsight, we can now trace a line back from Enda Kenny denouncing the Vatican (and being likened, by one priest, to Hitler) to that moment when it emerged that Bishop Casey had left Ireland for New York in abject disgrace. No less than 

The Flight of the Earls, it was an exit that signalled the beginning of the end.

A schism between Church and state was opened -- and with every octogenarian cleric heckled on his way to a courtroom and every Bible-thick report into decades of abuse, it widened ever more.

As "a vocation" became seen as somehow being synonymous with paedophilia, a generation of quiet, young men shied away from the priesthood and the older ones lost touch even more with young people in the country.

It made us realise that more than anything the Casey scandal was not in itself the End of Days, but the almost pathetically innocent beginning to a story that would soon turn much darker.

It must have seemed an innocent enough moment when the handsome young priest with his brogue and looks charmed the people of Connecticut. Murphy, then just seven, was introduced to him -- she is his second cousin once removed. 

They were related through her mother (three of her grandparents were Irish). 

The two did not meet again until April 1973, when she was 24, a lapsed Catholic and recovering from a failed marriage of two and a half years. 

Her father, a surgeon at a hospital, had remained in contact with Casey over the years, set up a visit to Ireland to help get her mind off her marital problems. 

As Murphy recalled it, Casey, who was then serving as the Bishop of Kerry, told her father: "If Ireland has nothing else, it has serenity, so send Annie to me. I'm sure she'll find something special."

"Special" wasn't the word. From the moment the young divorcee clapped eyes on her clerical saviour, there was a frisson between them. "I felt it immediately," she later wrote. "I can't describe it. I was bewitched, I was bewildered ... Like two children, we grabbed my bags and went off to his car. Once we started he didn't drive; he flew. The scenery was captivating; patches of lush, green fields speckled with white curly lambs, jagged brown mountains and searing cliffs to the sea. That's the way it started and it continued that way for some time."

She lived at the bishop's summer residence in Inch, Co Kerry. "I spent the first nights talking into the wee hours of the morning. Eamon was a firm believer in no more than five hours of sleep -- it was only a waste of life." At the summer residence, the bishop would entertain the great and good of Irish society.

By now a couple, he and his American friend made some effort to be discreet, but not always. During a car ride back from Dublin with two other priests sitting in the front seat, they canoodled in the back. "Eamon loves to live on the edge. That was part of the fun."

Her parents took a holiday in Dublin in August 1973 and rented a flat in which they lived with Annie. 

The bishop would visit her once a week and she would go down to see him in Inch once a month. 

She got a job in the Burlington Hotel, and after her parents left, another young woman moved into the flat with her. 

Murphy did not use birth control when the bishop visited. 

"It must have been mid to late October when I became pregnant," she later said, but she only found out at the end of November.

She broke the news to Casey. "He said little, just squeezing my hand and whispering 'this is a terrible, terrible shame'." 

His more considered response was to implore her to have the child and put it up for adoption as a way to "cleanse" herself. While these discussions went on, she moved to his residence in Inch, where she was introduced to his friends and relatives as "an American girl in trouble". 

Casey would read to her from religious books at night, which she found confusing since she'd left the Church at 17.

She refused to put the child up for adoption, and their relationship became so strained that Murphy moved from Casey's residence to a private home outside Dublin that helped unmarried mothers. 

It was part of a scheme whereby Murphy could move in with a "mixed Protestant-Catholic family and take care of her infant son". 

"In the beginning, having the solitude of my own thoughts and being able to enjoy my pregnancy was enough. But soon there was the nagging worry of less than a month 'til my baby was due and still no one knew at home, just my sister, and I had only £150 to my name."

Peter Eamon Murphy was born at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin on July 31, 1974. It was a transformative event for his mother, obliterating all her doubts. 

"The minute I laid eyes on and held my son, I knew there was no way I was going to give him up," she later wrote. After Peter was born, Casey made frequent, tense visits to the hospital, often with adoption papers in hand, in an effort to get Murphy to change her mind. According to her, he would say: "I think you are losing sight of what needs to be done for this child. If you'd only read what I sent you, you can keep closer to God."

She said that when she told him she had no intention of allowing an adoption, he replied: "It is normal to feel this way but you have no right. It is a child of God and must be given the best life has to offer, not an unwed mother barely able to take care of herself." 

During one visit to the hospital, Casey became so emotional that a nurse was called and he was asked not to return -- which would itself have been a shocking act of administrative defiance in those years.

The pressure did not abate though. 

Other clerics visited her and tried to talk her into giving up the child. 

One became quite aggressive, leaning in to shout at her, his flecks of spittle landing on her face. 

Her sister advised her to simply pack up and return to the US, but she was afraid of her father's anger.

She did, however, eventually give in and in the autumn of 1974 she bade farewell to Ireland and the bishop. 

"Looking up at Eamon, I saw him clenching the metal rails tightly and I waved for the last time. I was sorry that what had started as a mystical blending that had happened so magically could end up in a battle leaving us ravaged and torn apart."

Returning to the US with her infant son, Murphy took a job as a telephone operator at a hospital in Connecticut. 

Though her parents had known nothing about the pregnancy until she got off the plane and presented them with their grandson, they were upset but supportive. 

Casey, however, was not. He offered her only $100 per month in child support -- a derisory sum for a man of his means. When Murphy threatened to make the child a ward of the Church, and made plans to travel to Rome, she says he upped the monthly amount to $175.

In 1978, after he was appointed Bishop of Galway, Casey started contributing $285.

On the surface, there was no hint of the scandal to come. 

In the 1980s, Casey basked in the afterglow that came from John Paul II's triumphant 1979 visit to Ireland. A polished media operator, he denounced sin from the pulpit but retained an activist link to the country's youth that set him apart from the fusty Catholic hierarchy.

He became a staunch critic of the US government's policy in Latin America

When Reagan visited Ireland in 1984, the bishop refused to meet the former US president. 

It was no surprise that when he was convicted of drunk-driving in London in 1986, his flock forgave him; the man was human, charmingly so.

Throughout the early and mid Eighties, he had little contact with Murphy, who held down two jobs as a secretary, and none at all with his son Peter. 

In 1988, Murphy's then partner, Arthur Pennell, a Scotsman, flew from the US to Ireland and confronted the bishop. Casey denied paternity of the child, saying the father could be "her ex husband or Paddy the Porter".

Pennell returned to the US and in the following years there was correspondence between Casey's solicitor in Listowel and Annie Murphy's lawyer in New York, Peter McKay.

These included two cheques, marked "re: Murphy vs. Casey". One was for $90,000 made payable to Annie Murphy.

Another was for $25,000 to Mr McKay. 

In a (later) statement, Casey claimed the majority of this money had come from his personal funds and the portion that came from Church funds had since been repaid with interest.

He flew to the US, where he was involved in negotiations for an out-of-court settlement with Murphy. 

Casey also agreed to see Peter for the first time since just after his birth, though the meeting did not go well. 

"He was kind of cold and distant," said Peter, who worked part-time at a local grocery store. 

"He just asked how I was doing, where I would like to go [to college]. It was something you would talk to your guidance counsellor about, but even a guidance counsellor would have a more personal conversation."

There was a sense that Murphy was preparing her trump card -- going public. When she met Casey at a hotel in New York in 1991, she arranged to have him secretly filmed. 

In 1992, Casey's refusal to deal with his son directly lead to a move by Murphy and her then partner to become involved in discussions for a further $150,000 to be put in a trust for Peter's education. 

The negotiations were unsuccessful; the bishop could not raise the money. 

At the time, Pennell claimed that Murphy was still in love with Casey: "She'd marry him in the morning."

Murphy and Pennell eventually decided to go to the press. 

A local US TV station turned down the story, telling her they thought they would become an IRA target if they covered it. 

The family then got in touch with Irish media, which had some trouble in confirming Casey's paternity: it seemed he had never admitted in writing that he was the father of Peter Murphy.

In the meantime, events were moving quickly. Murphy got into a big row on the phone with Casey and called the Galway diocese, informing Casey's secretary that everyone had better get ready for a big shock because the bishop has a son. 

Sensing perhaps that the only thing left was a paternity test on live TV, Casey made his way to Rome, where he tendered his resignation. It was May 6, 1992. 

A few days later he announced that he was Peter Murphy's father and admitted that the funds used to support the young man had come from Church coffers, but had since been repaid "by several donors".

The reaction in Ireland was one largely of regret, especially when Casey was speculated to be hiding out in Latin America. Sympathy for Murphy, who in 1993 published her account of the affair, was thin on the ground. 

"I wish that he'd stayed," the journalist Nuala O'Faolain wrote. "I think his being here would have prevented some of the ugliness which has rushed to fill the vacuum in the overall account. There's the vicious misogyny, especially on the part of older Catholic women. 'The bloody bitch,' I've heard Annie Murphy called. 'Villain. Money-grabber. Whore.'"

In the Nineties, Casey worked as a missionary in Ecuador before eventually moving to England, where he worked as a parish priest.

In 1993, in an interview with Veronica Guerin, Casey expressed his sorrow at how things had turned out. 

"I regret deeply the hurt I have caused to many people, especially Annie and Peter," he told her. 

Asked if he was happy, he replied: "Well, yes I am. Obviously, there are things I need. For instance, I want to be able to go home a free person."

By 2002, a majority of people in Galway were polled as saying they wanted the "prodigal son" to return home. Casey, meanwhile, was reincarnated in popular culture as an Irish rogue.

He was the subject of Martin Egan's song Casey, performed by Christy Moore, and The Saw Doctors' musical ditty Howya Julia.

The endless reports of child sexual abuse by priests in Ireland and across the world set Casey's indiscretions into sympathetic relief. 

The revelation of Fr Michael Cleary's love child with his housekeeper, Phyllis Hamilton, further inured a weary public to priestly scandal.

It seemed inevitable that Hollywood would begin sniffing around the story.  

John Boorman, who made The General, was said to have been interested.  

Annette Bening was being mentioned for the role of Murphy, and Peter, who had worked in film, declared his support of the project, although it ultimately never got off the ground.

It was February 2006, however, before Casey returned for what was "a quiet homecoming". 

Decades-old allegations of child sexual abuse made against him by a Limerick-born woman were dismissed after an investigation by the DPP and he settled into what has become an unofficial retirement.

The now 84-year-old has lived in east Galway since. 

His health has been poor in recent years -- he has suffered a series of strokes and he is still not allowed to say Mass. 

Along with his son's forgiveness, it is probably the redemption that Casey would most wish for before he dies: one last chance to address his flock and the people who have stood by him. 

And surely nobody, not even a certain divorcee in California, would begrudge him that.