Sure to excite controversy, a strong indictment that turns over large stones and finds hellish serpents underneath.
An ugly true tale of pastoral wrongdoing by lapsed Catholic and accomplished reporter van der Zee (The Gate, 1987, etc.).
In the diocese of Santa Rosa, California, until very recently, the corruption began at the top, with a sexually predatory bishop who responded to charges that one of his priests had been embezzling funds by embarking on a years-long affair with that subordinate, diverting yet more dollars from the church into the priest’s bank account to secure his silence. Though victimized, the priest deserved little sympathy; he was in essence a con man practicing religion without a license, and he found himself in an ideal position to blackmail the boss. In the meanwhile, van der Zee chronicles, other priests and monsignors in the remote diocese—a place to which clerics who had committed crimes or sins elsewhere had long been banished—were busily preying on teenage boys, siphoning funds, and otherwise doing things holy men are not supposed to do. Not that this is a surprise, van der Zee writes in one of his analytical asides; citing a study by a former Benedictine, he estimates that only half of all priests practice celibacy, while of the rest “ten percent have homosexual behaviors, five percent are problem masturbators, four percent are ephebephiles—involved with adolescent partners—two percent are pedophiles and one percent are transvestites.” Regardless of the soundness of those figures, it’s clear to van der Zee that the sexual scandals now embroiling the Church have much to do with the exclusion of married heterosexuals and women from the priesthood—and with a culture that, as in the Santa Rosa diocese, protects its persistent sinners rather than exacting confession and punishment.
Sure to excite controversy, a strong indictment that turns over large stones and finds hellish serpents underneath.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56025-471-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
This exacting book adds a cogent historical investigation to the relatively few intelligent books about the father of all serial killers. Sensationalistic distortion and overimaginative theorizing have been part of this anonymous criminal's history since the first contemporaneous tabloid stories on the Whitechapel murders and continue in the inquiries of modern ``Ripperologists.'' For example, the letter signed ``Yours truly, Jack the Ripper'' that christened the legend was probably a journalist's headline-grabbing forgery, perpetuated in more hoax letters from the Ripper-crazed public. British historian Sugden corrects such myths and errors with donnish competitiveness, spending only a little time dispatching the more bizarre hypotheses (such as the recent Ripper diary hoax, the fanciful implication of the royal family in the murders, and the innumerable post-Victorian pseudo-suspects). Avoiding the penny-dreadful archives of Ripperology, he diligently approaches the voluminous police work and forensic evidence on the ``canonical'' four victims, all prostitutes, and an equal number of possible ones. Drawing on previous research and his own, he reexamines the eyewitnesses' testimony, inquest reports, newspaper accounts, and police leads (and red herrings). Although the material is still compelling and timely after a century, Sugden's sometimes sluggish prose and narrative do not bring to life the panicked atmosphere of the East End or the tensions within the police department. In the end, though many inconsistencies are swept away and many ambiguities left warily intact, Sugden produces an approximate modus operandi around which a convincing psychological profile can be constructed. His examination of suspects exonerates previous favorites, such as Michael Ostrog, whom Assistant Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten called a ``mad Russian doctor''; but with even his preferred suspect, a Polish con man and poisoner, he reaches the verdict ``not proven.'' Sugden's factual treatment of the murders provides a meticulous and reasoned profile for readers and future detectives. (Photos and maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-7867-0124-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
The murderers are still among us, but Zuroff, coordinator of Nazi war crimes research for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and others like him continue to hunt them; retelling the story of this quest ought to be more exciting. Fifty years after the Holocaust, hundreds, perhaps thousands of the men who committed mass murder are now living peacefully in the United States, England, Canada, and other democracies, writes Zuroff, ``and almost nothing was done to bring them to justice'' until about 15 years ago, when pressure by journalists and former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman led to the creation of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Zuroff traces his own path from grad student at Hebrew University to staff member at the Wiesenthal Center to Israeli point man for OSI, then back to the Center. He walks readers through the mechanics of three investigations in order to give some of the flavor of the Nazi war crimes researcher's tedious day-to-day work. This is not the cloak- and-dagger stuff of The Odessa File, but grinding paper-shuffling reminiscent of investigative reporting or academic research. By one estimate, some 10,000 war criminals were admitted to the US alone, mostly East Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis at the local level but whose role in the Holocaust is incontrovertible and underreported. Zuroff insistently hammers at the facts of local participation in mass murder and takes readers through cases in several countries in excruciating detail. Regrettably, the book reads like a series of essays, with a great deal of repetition and too much time spent on the minutiae of political wrangling in courts and with unresponsive governments. As a result, Occupation: Nazi-Hunter is sadly ineffective in presenting its brief for the continued prosecution of these war criminals. Despite compelling material, Zuroff's sludgily bureaucratic- academic prose style manages to stifle much of this important book's impact.
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1994
ISBN: 0-88125-489-4
Page Count: 385
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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