"Deliver Us From Evil" Ex-Priest Oliver O'Grady Arrested on Child Pornography Charges
LONDON (CBS/AP) A priest who was defrocked for molesting children throughout the 70s and 80s and whose story was made into an award-winning documentary on sex abuse in the Catholic church was arrested Friday by Irish authorities on child pornography charges.
Oliver O'Grady was detained in the Dublin area Friday morning, but Irish police did not give very many details about the exact nature of his alleged crime.
According to the Dublin Times, however, Catholic canon lawyer Patrick Wall said the convicted pedophile had mistakenly left his laptop on a plane and authorities found thousands of child pornography photos on his laptop and hard drive.
O'Grady was released on $750 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.
The 65-year-old became infamous after he was the subject of the award-winning 2006 documentary "Deliver Us From Evil." In it O'Grady spoke candidly about abusing more than 20 children as he was shuffled from one parish to another in California through the 1970s and 80s.
O'Grady was arrested in 1993 and pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual abuse with children under 14 and served seven years in a California state prison. In 2000, O'Grady was deported back to his native Ireland , reports the Lodi News-Sentinel.
O'Grady then moved to Holland and began volunteering at a parish in the city of Rotterdam until parishioners recognized him from the documentary and reported him to police.
By that time, O'Grady had already fled the country.
Further outrage erupted when the northern California's Stockton Diocese, which has been hit with a slew of lawsuits over O'Grady's actions, announced that he would receive monthly payments totaling nearly $100,000 over 10 years as part of a deal to get him to leave the priesthood.