Unforgivable
An Abusive Priest and the Church That Sent Him Abroad
What is it like to be a survivor? Have we truly reckoned with the scale and scope of clergy sexual abuse? What can church leaders do differently to support victims and their families? As a researcher who has worked with Catholic survivors for the past 15 years, these are some of the questions that I sit with each day. And so it was with deep appreciation that I found them centered in Kevin O’Neill’s latest book, Unforgivable: An Abusive Priest and the Church That Sent Him Abroad.
The book is a case study of Father David Roney, a Catholic priest who escaped accountability by fleeing from Minnesota to a rural mission in the Indigenous highlands of Guatemala. Unforgivable highlights the Catholic Church’s callous practice of shuffling priests not just within dioceses but also across international borders. The story revolves around Roney, several of his victims, and a small cast of bishops, nuns, and priests who were feckless in their limited attempts to halt his predation. Roney was one of at least 25 toxic priests in the United States who bishops dumped into the Global South.
Unforgivable is organized chronologically. After describing Roney’s formation and early pastoral assignments in Minnesota, O’Neill takes readers to New Mexico, where the Catholic Church ran an infamous treatment center for pedophile priests. Next, the author outlines Roney’s retirement in Guatemala, where he adopted a young Indigenous orphan named “Justina” (a pseudonym) and lived until his death in 2003. O’Neill then explains how the 2002 scandal in Boston transformed the legal landscape for White American survivors. The book’s final section, which is written as a first-person narrative, recounts O’Neill’s extensive efforts to find Justina and then—over the course of several years—to guide her to recognize her father as an abuser, imagine herself as one of his victims, and hire a law firm on her behalf.
