ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the child abuser in the context of the institutions that allow his deviant masculinity to express itself in countless crimes. I examine Amy Berg's notable documentary on Father Ollie O’Grady, Deliver Us from Evil (2006), and the film on the Larry Nassar scandal by Erin Lee Carr's At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal (2019) (also secondarily Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk's Athlete A (2020)). The films show that the American Catholic Church and USA Gymnastics sacrificed the welfare of children to protect the careers of powerful men and the aims of each institution. The male authorities allowed the abusers, actually men of secondary importance, to prey serially on hundreds of children, silencing their crimes to protect the prestige of the institution. O’Grady and Nassar are proof that the worst abuser is not a stranger but a man who knows how to gain the trust of the families and the children. Because of their psychopathology, the abusers themselves misunderstand the damage they inflict on their victims. Although they are possibly aware that their masculinity is abnormal, they fail to see, unlike the powerful men shielding them, why it is problematic.
