In God's House (14 page)

A circular table in a private room at Antoine's was set for Bishop Reynolds, Monsignor Moroux, Jon Bendel, Joe Rossi, and me. The bishop was eating a dozen oysters with different sauces and hardly looked up as Rossi and I entered the room. If the group had been talking before we arrived, they stopped as soon as we sat down.

“You need to try the oysters,” Bishop Reynolds said.

I turned to a waiter. “Vodka rocks.”

Menus were passed around the table.

Monsignor Moroux spoke for the bishop. “Renon, the bishop has been asked to file a more detailed supplemental report with the papal nuncio in Washington, Archbishop Carlo Verriano. The canon lawyer in the nunciature in DC, Father Desmond McDougall, is calling me every day. I must include something about the status of the criminal case. What can you tell us from your visit with Father Francis?”

The waiter set my drink before me. Lighting a cigarette and taking a long drink of vodka, I considered what I would say. I decided to skip a report on Father Dubois's state of mind, which I knew no one was really interested in, and get straight to what I wanted to know.

“There was an area I did not cover in my discussion with Father Dubois. He absolutely refused to talk to me about anything other than what happened in his last church parish, Our Lady of
the Seas in Amalie. He said that you, Monsignor Moroux, ordered him not to talk about anything but Amalie. You hire me one day to represent your priest. The next day you act to sabotage my defense of Dubois, to keep me from getting important factual information from my client. I want to talk about what happened in the parishes he was assigned to before Amalie.”

Jon Bendel stood and addressed me. “Renon, I hate to keep asking you to step out of rooms with me, but I feel we need to confer in private.”

“That's fine, Jon. I don't mind you asking. But I am not stepping out of any more rooms with you. We're all on the same side, aren't we?”

Jon spoke smoothly in his patented pacifying tone as he sat down. “Of course, I did not mean to offend you by asking to speak privately. I did not want to bore the others with lawyer talk. That's all. However, I am going to now tell Bishop Reynolds and Monsignor Moroux that I do not want them discussing anything with you relating to what knowledge anyone within the diocese may have had at any time – what they could have known, may have known, or should have known about the activities of Father Dubois in Amalie or anywhere else.”

I nodded my understanding. Then I addressed the bishop directly. “Bishop, the law is clear, unmistakably clear. Kane Chaisson's Rachou suit is going to be made public next Monday. There is no authority in the law that supports the argument that a civil lawsuit should remain a secret from the public.”

Bendel said, “And what do you suggest we should do about this?”

“I think it is imperative that all of us prepare pre-emptive strikes and deliver public statements to the media Sunday morning in advance of Chaisson's hearing on Monday. The diocese could issue a letter from the bishop to be read from the pulpit at all Masses and released to the media, and I could issue a short written statement confirming that Dubois is confined, not free, and that he is undergoing medical treatment and is not
simply on leave. That would assure everyone he is no longer a threat to their child or any child, and it would lay groundwork for his insanity defense. We must define the issues ourselves. We cannot wait for Kane Chaisson to define these things in the public mind.”

Bishop Reynolds looked at Monsignor Moroux and Moroux looked at Bendel, but it was Joe Rossi who handled the response.

Rossi said, “Don't be so sure that we cannot keep a lid on this in court and in the media, Renon. We've got a good judge on the case now.”

“If we don't believe that all of this is going to be public… Well, I mean, of course this will all be public,” I said. “It's just a matter of time. If this local judge rules for the diocese, an appeals court will force the trial court to break the seal and make it all public. I'd like to see the diocese and Dubois get some footing before Chaisson starts shooting at us in the press.”

I drained my glass and let the vodka race through my veins, soothe my sagging spirits. I continued, “I'll go back up to see Father Dubois if I have to. I want to know the answer to the basic question of who knew what about Father Dubois's actions and when did they know it. The whole world is going to know the answer one day, and I think you hiding it from me is nonsensical. If we are not going to cooperate with each other, then what are we doing here today?”

“Having lunch,” the bishop said flatly. “My treat.” His eyes remained on the food he was devouring. Already I felt the bishop disliked me, but he did not seem to like anyone else at the table either. “This is my favorite restaurant,” the bishop said, “and I wanted you all here today. The bisque is exceptional and I recommend the grilled pompano with crabmeat topping. These people understand that a fish is to be baked, grilled, or fried. There is nothing fancy, no pretensions. This is where we hosted a dinner for the Holy Father – in the Rex Room. They have everything you could want here except lemon pound cake. You fellows don't have to talk law or argue. We ought to just have lunch.”

The bishop reminisced some about his childhood in New Orleans and how Antoine's was never open on Sundays and how right that was, that all businesses should be closed on Sunday. After the meal, when coffee was served, Rossi asked the waiter to close the door and leave the silver pot of coffee on the table. The bishop asked that a bottle of cognac and glasses be brought.

Joe Rossi spoke first. “We have something really important to talk about and I think this is the time. Bishop?”

Cued, Bishop Reynolds began. “I have done nothing wrong, Renon. Nor has Monsignor Moroux or any of the other priests of the diocese. I don't deserve this.”

Now, for the first time, I looked properly at the bishop. I stared into his distorted, oversized face with its milky eyes sunk into flabby, splotched flesh. His eyebrows looked like thorns.

“No, sir, I did nothing wrong. This man… this Father… uhhh, Father…”

“Dubois,” I volunteered.

“Yes, uhhh Dubois… He has a duty. He has a duty to me, his bishop, to Holy Mother Church. We cannot allow him to disgrace the priesthood, the Church, our diocese or my office. No, sir. I will not have it. We cannot allow the sick actions of one disturbed man to bring scandal to the diocese and Church.”

Monsignor Jean-Paul Moroux gave me an inappropriate half-smile and advised, “As I said, I must file a supplemental report with the canon lawyer for our papal nuncio in Washington. In this report I will need to present the problems in more detail, and I will also need to present the solutions as well. It seems our papal nuncio and the Vatican have never seen a situation quite like this one where already millions have been paid, more millions are being sought, and both criminal and civil cases are involved, not to mention the threat of a widespread public scandal.”

Moroux stopped talking when the waiter returned with the bottle of cognac and tray of balloon glasses. As soon as he had gone, Moroux continued.

“Is Father Francis ready to acknowledge, admit and atone for his sins, and accept his punishment?” Monsignor Moroux asked.

I remained silent.

Bendel placed his napkin on the table, reached for the coffee pot and poured, looking at his cup as he spoke. “Is this man ready to plead guilty to whatever Sean Robinette charges him with and accept whatever sentence the court gives him? This is the only solution – to use your phrase, the only effective, pre-emptive strike. It will be clear to all who are concerned that the priest is a sick criminal who has accepted his punishment and the bishop and diocese have done nothing wrong. That Father Dubois alone is guilty.”

“Was I hired to represent this priest or was I hired to convince this priest to throw himself on his sword, to use your phrase from our first lunch, to spare embarrassment to the bishop, avoid a scandal to the Church?”

Bendel almost shouted, “Don't go putting words in my mouth or anyone else's mouth.”

“It's what you said at the Old Bishop's House a week ago, Jon. Fall on his sword.”

Joe Rossi pushed away from the table. “Are we going to have to fire you?”

“You can't fire me, Joe. Read my letter of employment that Monsignor Moroux signed. The diocese is not my client.” Looking at Bendel, “I have no attorney–client relationship with the diocese, Jon. The diocese is only the financial guarantor of my fee agreement with Father Dubois. The diocese is liable for payment of my expenses and fees. Father Dubois is the only one who can fire me and I don't think he's going to do that.”

Bendel stood. “Your Excellency, I will get the check. This lunch is over.”

Outside the front door, I pulled Rossi's suitcase out of my car and put it on the sidewalk, telling the doorman to be on the lookout for a short, fat guy and to hand him his luggage. I drove off alone, headed for my home, Coteau.

I was beginning to feel like I lived in airports. I was back in the east again, in the lobby of the Stalder Institute, a psychiatric facility on the outskirts of Morristown, New Jersey. I had Francis Dubois move here a week ago, after his time in Saint Martin’s in Deerfield. A slight, handsome man identified himself as Father Francis Dubois’s physician and walked me to his small office.

“Doctor Dobson, I really only want answers to a few questions. Father Dubois has told me he will kill himself if he is sentenced to life in prison. Do you believe this?”

The doctor looked through the patient file.

“Well, let me ask you a question, Mr. Chattelrault. Are we talking about an abstract hypothetical here or is this the actual scenario we are dealing with? Is he going to receive a life sentence from the court?”

“Were he to plead guilty to the crimes the grand jury will charge him with, he would receive multiple life sentences.”

“So he has been charged with nothing yet?”

“Well, the exact list of his charges will be determined by a Grand Jury – a group of ordinary citizens chosen from the voter roll. They will hear the testimony of the children, and, guided on matters of law by the DA, will return an indictment charging Father Dubois with a laundry list of serious crimes, many of which are likely to carry life sentences.”

“So would you advise him to plead guilty to a life sentence, before going to trial?”

“No. Even though a life sentence may well be the result of a trial, the process has a lengthy pre-trial phase, as there are motions both the defense and prosecution can raise. My hope is that I will be able to return Dubois here for treatment while he awaits the trial itself, and that could be a year or even longer.”

“What is the best possible result your client might hope for, in your opinion? Realistically?”

“Realistically, I think he will end up in prison for the remainder of his life. If some miracle occurs between now and the trial date, then maybe I can strike a plea bargain with the District Attorney that would allow him to serve time in a clinical environment like this rather than a penal institution where he would never be treated for the condition that afflicts him.”

“So you’re asking me whether, if forced to accept a life sentence immediately, the patient will commit suicide? In my opinion?”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s my question.”

“Well, if forced to answer the question you put to me, if I had to answer it in one word, it would be the same answer I gave the monsignor.”

“The monsignor?”

“Yes. You are not the first person I’ve spoken with about this.” Doctor Dobson flipped back four or five pages in the file. “Yes, yes. Just after Father Dubois was admitted, we got a call the same day from a monsignor in his diocese. He called about the financial responsibility forms and we discussed the patient’s condition. I cannot make out the monsignor’s name – Morrow, I think it is.”

“You told Monsignor Moroux what you’ve told me?”

“Yes, that would be right. I told him basically what I told you. I got a clearance from the patient to discuss him with his superior. I told Morrow the patient was on suicide watch and was talking about ending his life if he had to go to prison for the rest of his life.”

“And… so, you believe he will kill himself?”

“One never knows about suicide. But in a word, I’d say, yes. And I feel he is resourceful enough to accomplish that in any setting, even in here.”

“You know that just from him being here a few days?”

“He had an extreme paranoid episode that began shortly after he was admitted and it’s just beginning to abate this morning. He believed he’d been tricked into locking himself up here and would never be free again. He kept saying you were paid by the diocese to make him disappear. We let him use the phones. He told us he had talked to a powerful judge and everything was going to be okay. He was that delusional.”

“So, you think—”

“He’s heavily medicated. The emotional and mental strain on such a shame-based personality where there really is no true self present, no integrated personality, poses a real risk of suicide. These factors are counter-balanced perhaps by the fact that he is such a narcissistic personality, if a borderline personality at that; thus destroying himself may prove difficult to impossible. But he is totally removed now from an environment where he can access his addiction – children. We are considering administering the drug Depo-Provera, which will lower his testosterone level. I believe he will begin attempting to take his life the day he is told he is to serve a life sentence, the day it dawns on him that he will forever be denied access to his addiction.”

I didn’t understand the jargon, and asked him to restate in language I could understand.

“It’s tough to explain in a few words, but a shame-based personality is normally associated with a lack of nurturing as a child which manifests itself in feeling unlovable and worthless. Defense mechanisms are developed, including exuding false self confidence or attaining a position in life where people look up to you, but feelings of shame prevail – and that is not the same as guilt. We feel guilt about what we do – and a healthy person feels guilt when they act outside their value system. Shame is about what we feel we are. Obviously, it’s easier for one who feels
worthless to take his life than it is for one who feels real
self-worth
.”

“So how does that connect to a borderline personality disorder?”

“BPD is also a condition where one feels worthless inside and fundamentally flawed. It’s my belief that some BPD people act in ways that are fundamentally flawed, as some sort of validation of themselves. Many tend to have love–hate relationships or no relationships at all with peers. Addiction is common, gambling, drinking, drugs, sex. And suicidal behavior is a prominent symptom of BPD.”

“You told this to Monsignor Moroux?”

“No, no. Not nearly in this detail. I informed him that his priest was on a suicide watch here and I believed he would kill himself if he became convinced he would be forced to serve the rest of his life in prison.”

“Doctor Dobson, before I leave for Louisiana, I will drop off a document for you with Father Dubois’s signature to the effect that no personnel at this hospital are authorized to speak with anyone except me about any aspect of Father Dubois’s condition or care, and specifically no one associated with the Catholic Church will be permitted access to Dubois or any information pertaining to him. Only his family and I may speak with him on the phone or visit him in person, or someone I authorize, or someone he authorizes who is not associated with the Church.”

With a lackadaisical manner, almost yawning, Doctor Dobson closed the file and asked, “Is that it?”

“One more thing, if you would. In layman’s terms I can understand, could you tell me Francis Dubois’s diagnosis and prognosis?”

“Your client is a fixated, ego-syntonic pedophile; garden variety, if you will. We see a lot of them. In layman’s language, we apply the term pedophile to an adult who has sex with
prepubescent
children, kids without any secondary sexual characteristics such as pubic hair, hair under their arms, stuff like
that. In the case of little girls, an absence of developing breasts would be important to a pedophile. To be fixated means to be focused on victims within an age range of approximately three years generally. Could be four to seven years of age, or six to nine years, et cetera. To be ego-syntonic means the perpetrator or patient, depending on whether it’s the law or medical profession viewing the pedophile, has no response of conscience, regret, remorse, guilt or other appropriate response to their behavior which might provide a motive or desire in them to want to change or alter the behavioral pattern of their life.”

“Is there a cure, Doctor?”

“That’s for another discussion.”

“In a word, is there hope?”

“In a word? Well… no. There is no hope of a cure for a pedophile.”

“Doctor, have you treated other priests for the same condition?”

“That would be confidential.”

A staff orderly escorted me from Doctor Dobson’s office, along a maze of corridors through a series of locked double doors to the unit where Father Dubois was on a suicide watch. It was a comfortable ward, different to what I’d expected.

Dubois was in a lounge area, wearing jeans, a tee-shirt and jogging shoes, appearing younger and more relaxed than when we first met. He actually looked like a different person from the man I had met in New Hampshire one week earlier. Even his hair was combed differently, and his posture was relaxed.

“Hi, Renon Chattelrault,” Dubois said casually as he glanced up from a magazine. “You want a Coke or something? There’s a machine down the hall. I have money at the nurses’ station.”

“Maybe later. How’re ya feeling?”

“Great.” Dubois grinned. “Been pilled up pretty good since I got here. At the other place in New Hampshire there were no doctors, no prescriptions. Here I am taking all kinds of drugs. A guy down the hall calls them worry pills because he says if you got
a worry and you take these pills you not only stop worrying, you can’t even remember what it was you were worrying about. But I can remember pretty good. I spoke with my mom. She liked you.”

“That’s good.”

“So, what brings you here so soon?”

I felt grateful to find him in this frame of mind, even if it were drug induced. “We have some things to talk about. The first thing will be the hardest.”

“What’s that?”

“We have a new problem. The diocese, everyone involved in that end of things, sees you as both the problem and the solution.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is going to break wide open soon, probably Monday when the Rachou boy’s lawsuit is unsealed and the media gets it. The Church wants to convince the world when this all breaks loose that you’re the whole problem – only you; that the problem begins and ends with you. Maybe the problem does begin and end with you. I’m here to find out.”

“I’m confused.”

“The solution to the problem, as they see it, would be for you to immediately disappear into a faraway prison for the rest of your natural life, never to be heard from again, or just plain disappear, period. It’s not easy to come here and talk this way to you, but you gotta know what we’re up against.”

Dubois put his head in his hands. He stayed that way for a few minutes. I sat quietly.

“This scares me. A lot of people take comfort in the Church. But it can be a scary place if you are on the inside as a priest. It’s not just people like me who find themselves locked inside the walls of the Church who are scared. On the inside it can be a house of horrors.”

You’re hardly in a place to speak about horrors
, I thought. The man speaking those words was not the Father Francis Dubois I had been introduced to only six days earlier at the Saint Martin Center. A dramatic personality shift had transpired. I wondered
if the medication could account for the change, or if, in fact, the man could change his personality at will. It was not just that this person in front of me was well spoken, thoughtful, objective, but that he was also calm, assured. The erratic figure I’d confronted in New Hampshire had clearly been attempting to manipulate me as he shifted from being Father to Francis and then Nicky. Was this another attempt to manipulate me? How many more personalities could Dubois show me?

I said, “Only one thing is clear to me.”

“What’s clear?”

“What’s clear to me is that the diocese knows some things about you that they want no one else to know. About whether you were involved with children in other church parishes before you were assigned to Amalie. They threatened to fire me when I asked them about these things. They can’t fire me. Only you can fire me. They don’t want me to know, but I am going to know because you are going to tell me right now.”

Dubois rose, walked to a window and stared through the bars into the early evening sky. When he turned toward me, he asked me if I wanted to smoke. “I remember you smoke quite a bit. There’s a room past the nurses’ station. The one with the pool table. Let’s go there.”

Dubois started talking as soon as we walked into the smoking room. “I made a promise to Monsignor Moroux when he visited me in New Hampshire. He was with the archbishop’s lawyer, a Mr. Finlan or Quinlan or something. What they said made sense to me. The lawyer and Jean-Paul said what I was being accused of in Amalie was bad enough, but if anyone ever found out there were other boys before, then they would not be able to save me. I promised them I would never talk about the other times, the other boys. Moroux made me promise again on the phone the night before I met you.”

“Look,” I said. “Look straight at me.”

Dubois was very intent as he looked at me, more focused than I had ever seen him.

“As long as Monsignor Moroux and the Church lawyers have no problems of their own, they can screw with us. If they have problems of their own, they will be busy fighting to save their own asses. Once they’re in the deep end with us, they gotta swim too. And I think the new lawyer for the Rachou family, Kane Chaisson, is about to put their collective asses in a sling. I have to know the truth about whether they have any real problems themselves.”

“Problems?”

“When did the Catholic Church first know about your problem, your proclivity to have sex with little boys? Now, Father, if you are going to lie to me about this or anything else, just let me leave.”

“I won’t lie.”

“Then tell me. When did the Church first know about your problem?”

“There were complaints from an orphanage in New Orleans when I worked there one summer while I was at Saint John Seminary. The rector then was a Monsignor Billadeaux who belonged to the Diocese of Thiberville. He questioned me and counseled me about this and said something would be placed in my file.”

“When was this?”

“Over twenty years ago.”