The Keepers 

I’ve just finished watching The Keepers. I would advise everyone to try and see this extraordinary seven part docuseries. It seems to tell the story of the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik in 1969. But really it also reveals a painful and terrible legacy of sexual abuse, perpetrated principally by Father Joseph Maskell, on a variety of female students at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore. This legacy of sexual abuse is corroborated by Charles Franz, a male child victim of Maskell’s. Horrifically, we learn as the documentary progresses that his corroborating story was specifically and maliciously kept from Jean Wehner, when she and another victim sued the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1994 for $40 million.

The documentary follows Abbie Schaub and Gemma Hoskins, two students who did not suffer sexual abuse themselves, but who wanted to find out who killed their beloved Sister Cathy, as they uncover this story of pedophelia within the Catholic Church.

As I watched this docuseries with incredulity and with pain flowing through every fibre of my being, I listened with disbelief as these courageous middle-aged women talked calmly and rationally about the unspeakable acts that had been perpetrated on their bodies as vulnerable teenage girls.

The Catholic Church is without doubt one of the flagship institutions of our paternalistic society. The unrealistic expectation which they continue to perpetuate that priests cannot express their sexual natures has led to all manner of abuse against vulnerable children. It is not normal for most adult males not to have sex their whole lives, and therefore it is to be expected that as a result of denying their physicality, some of them become warped human beings. Father Joseph Maskell is just one among many in the Catholic priesthood whose sexual frustration turned him into a monster. But perhaps worst of all we learn that the white men at the head of Archdiocese were fully aware of Maskell’s predatory nature when they moved him to the Archbishop Keough High School, and were therefore fully complicit in his subsequent crimes.

This docuseries made me realize once again how many women and children continue to be victims of a paternalistic society.

Until we are prepared to fully and equally include women in the ranks of the Catholic priesthood, the United States Congress and all of our global institutions, they and our children will always be vulnerable to the assaults we witness in this heartbreaking docuseries.

This work of fiction by Felicity Harley is a well researched futuristic depiction of the struggle to survive on an earth that has been devastated by climate change. Alternative living environments are being created to sustain life until such time as the surface of the earth can heal itself and again become habitable.

This is the setting in which the story unfolds with it's conflicts, challenges, and compelling cast of characters exhibiting the best and worst of human nature. Beyond the story itself is a cautionary tale. This could be our story if we don't take our stewardship of the earth much more seriously.