In God's House (5 page)

“Okay, Francis. I’ll take this issue up with Monsignor Moroux, but make no mistake – at some point, we are going to discuss your life before you were assigned to Amalie. Either that or you will have a new lawyer. For now, we will talk only about Amalie.”

“Okay.”

“Do you understand you hurt these children in Amalie?”

“They were never hurt. I could not hurt anyone. I love those boys. They love me.”

“Father, would you be willing to help me – using school yearbooks, altar-boy rosters, things like that – in an attempt to identify every boy you were involved with sexually in Amalie?”

Dubois did not hear me. He was staring at the photographs of the boys.

“Can I have these pictures?”

I was still looking out of the window. The rage welled up again.
This man is sick
, I thought.
Whatever the pathology is, it runs deep
. Rather than feeling I wanted to kill him, I now felt I wanted to know what was wrong with him, what caused him to do these things. And I wanted to find all of his victims and have the diocese offer them anything and everything in the way of professional therapy.

Again I ignored the question about the pictures.

“You’re going to prison, Father. The question of how long a prison sentence you will serve will in great measure be influenced by how you and I conduct ourselves between now and the time you are sentenced. It is essential in my view that we identify all the victims. The diocese must reach out to them, offer them help. It’s the morally right thing to do. And it’s prudent legally.”

“I don’t understand what you are saying.”

“What I am saying is that you must act responsibly to mitigate the damage to these children, to get them expert psychiatric and psychological help from physicians of their choosing.”

“This is a lot to—”

“Francis, I know the insanity defense is the only defense available to you. In our state the only test for legal insanity is whether or not you knew the difference between right and wrong at the time of the commission of these offenses. It’s not a very good defense because I don’t see how I can argue that a man who preached about right and wrong from the pulpit every Sunday did not know the difference between right and wrong. I think if I articulate and argue that defense it may appear I’m insane.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me explain. If you want me to represent you, it is going to
be on certain conditions. First, you have got to understand that no one but the two of us will ever be involved in your case. You must never involve anyone else, discuss any aspect of your case with anyone, except doctors, and you must never lie to the doctors. And you must understand I will never plead you to a life sentence.”

“What if that’s all they offer? I can promise you, Mr. Chattelrault, if I am to get a life sentence, I will kill myself. I will kill myself. I am not going to be locked up for the rest of my life. I want you to tell me if I am to receive a life sentence, so I have time to kill myself. Can you promise you will tell me, so I can die?”

“Yes, I promise. And I promise I will never lie to you, but I don’t want you lying to me. If life without parole is all they offer, then we will go to trial. I don’t think it will come to that, but you are going to serve prison time. Make no mistake about that.”

Dubois clutched the eleven photos of the boys to his heart.

“When one relies on the insanity defense, the crimes are admitted, so we have nothing to hide about what you did, how many times you did it with how many boys. Monday you will be leaving here for a real psychiatric institution where we can begin to find out what is wrong with you. Tomorrow I can begin formulating and presenting a plan to the diocese and prosecutor wherein you cooperate in identifying each of your victims in Amalie so that help may be made available to them. There is a long roster of victims in the parish of Amalie lined up to testify against you, seventeen that I am aware of so far. There are eleven in this group and a half dozen who have settled claims against the diocese. Adding more names to the list will not make our problems worse. In fact, that might help us strategically. I think an average juror who found out what you did to one kid would want to kill you. If the same juror found out a lot of kids were involved, I think the juror would tend to want to believe you are insane as the only explanation of your behavior. I believe what you did was insane. Hopefully I can give a court expert witnesses whose testimony will support my theory.”

“I don’t think I understand anything you’re saying. What’s the best thing I can hope for?”

“If I am to be your lawyer, Father, the best you can hope for is a sentence of twenty years in a prison where you can receive treatment and therapy.” I tapped the stack of folders. “Half of these kids claim they were sodomized – they can put you away for life. Only you know how many other potential state witnesses might come forward when this is made public. The minimum sentence I would ever argue for is twenty years. It’s enough time to allow the youngest victim to grow well into adulthood before you are free again, and enough time for you to be competently treated so hopefully you are not this way on your release.”

“Twenty years?”

“Exactly. And unless you are in agreement with this, there is no need for us to go any further.”

“I think I understand.”

“I don’t think you do understand. If I learned one of my children was a victim of yours, I may well have come here to kill you and I believe I am more restrained than some of the victims’ fathers. I don’t want your understanding, Father. What I want is your agreement. I want an agreement between the two of us that no one else will be involved in this case, all advice will come from me. And we will fight all the charges and go to trial unless we can get an agreement for you to serve twenty years. If we can get you medical treatment while incarcerated, you will accept the medical care and cooperate with the treatment regime.”

“Yes, I understand. I agree.”

“You sure you understand? Don’t ever give any statement to anyone except a physician unless I am present. Secondly, don’t ever lie to a physician about any of this.”

I was about to wrap it up and head for the airport. I had noticed an old beat-up station wagon with a taxi sign on the roof idling near the main entrance. Just as I was about to terminate the interview, Dubois laid the photos down and leaned forward, speaking in a stronger voice, with more bass.

“Everybody is gonna find out about me, right?”

I watched as Dubois writhed on the sofa. He appeared to be in pain. It was the first nearly normal reaction I had seen from him. He excused himself to go to the bathroom. The lightning strikes and thunder intensified and the sleet and rain blew horizontally, hitting the wall of the building, rattling the window panes.

When Dubois returned from the men’s room, his shirt was wringing wet. “If you wait here, I can go shower. I know the smell is bad. I smell this way when I sweat. I shower all day long. Do you want to wait while I shower?”

“I’m okay,” I lied. “Go on, Father.”

“Call me Nicky. Please call me Nicky.”

It seemed Dubois was trying to run some kind of game on me. I didn’t like it, but I let it go. “Okay, Nicky.”

I leaned back in the chair, stretched my legs, and stared at Dubois for a long time. Sweat poured out of him like water from a faucet. The stench was almost unbearable.

“I love these children. They love me too. Nobody will want to believe…”

Dubois lifted up his feet and pulled his knees to his chest. He kind of rocked to his right and back to center over and over as tears flooded out of him.

“They’re gonna make it out to be vulgar and filthy. It wasn’t that way.”

“Yes, they will make it out that way, Father.”

“Nicky. Call me Nicky. I’m not ugly or dirty, vulgar or filthy.”

In a quick motion, he straightened a leg, kicking the recorder off the table. “Confession! That’s why you’re here, just to get my confession. And then it will be over and everyone can disown me – my Church, my family…”

He collapsed back on the sofa. I righted the recorder.

“What about your family? Do they know why you are here?”

Father Dubois began to really sob.

“My momma… they can’t do this to my momma. It’s not her
fault I am like I am. I have brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. They can’t do this to them. No one knows. Nobody can know.”

“Soon the media will find out, and then everyone will know.”

“If you think everyone will know, will you tell my family, my mama, for me? Someone has to tell them. I can’t. Please tell them in person when you get home. Don’t let ’em find out from anybody else, not from the news people. My mama’s name is Iris. Please call her at this number and go see her as soon as you can.” He wrote her name and phone number in large script and handed the paper to me.

“What I came to get from you is the truth. I can’t prepare a defense in the dark. I know I didn’t get the whole truth today, Father.”

“I’m Nicky. Call me Nicky.”

“Okay. Nicky.”

“You want the truth, Mr. Chattelrault? What is the truth? That I’m a filthy, vulgar pervert? Is that the truth? Am I legally insane because I love these boys so much? Does that make me crazy? Can somebody in some clinic kill the side of me that makes me do these things? What’s the truth, sir? You tell me.”

“The truth is that the lives of a lot of children have been destroyed by your actions and probably their fathers want to kill you. The truth is the whole world is probably going to know about what you have done to these children. That’s the truth. I will always tell you the truth. It’s not my job to lie to you.”

He nodded.

“I have let you control this first interview, but it will not always be this way. Your insistence that I call you Francis and then that I call you Nicky is some kind of game I don’t understand. I don’t like you running games on me. I don’t understand why you did these things and I don’t understand why the children did these things with you for such a long time.”

“The children did it for the same reason I did it.”

I stared at him hard, waiting for his explanation.

“The children did it… because it feels so good.”

My head reeled with the deepest disgust I’d ever experienced. Managing to maintain my professional demeanor, I silently wished Father Francis Dominick Dubois were dead, and wondered how the God I believed in could have created this man; how a man would use his Roman collar and other clerical trappings to violate the trust of families, and inflict ritual sexual abuse on boys seven to ten years old.

I quietly gathered up my things, including the photos of the boys. All the while I was packing, the priest never moved. He sat still and stank.

As I started to leave, Father Dubois asked me, “What happened?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean… who was it? Which boy? Which family got me in this trouble?”

“I don’t know. The Church learned what was happening about a year ago – about the time you were sent for treatment, I guess.”

“I want to know what happened. If you are my lawyer, can’t you find out what happened, how it happened? Can’t you?”

“I don’t know if we will ever know exactly what happened,” I said.

I did not want to hear anything else he might have to say, and I could hardly stand the smell of him. I turned and left.

Holding my heavy briefcase in two hands above my head, I sprinted out of the Saint Martin Center, ran through the storm to the taxi, opened the door and tossed the case across the back seat. The battered old Chevy wagon was a religious rattletrap. It had a makeshift altar glued to the wide dashboard: little figurines and a scattering of symbols associated with some eastern religious sect were bathed in the soft green glow of a colored bulb in the dome light. There was a trace scent of incense. As I closed the door, the green dome light went out, leaving the altar in silhouette. The words “Free Tibet” were hand-lettered on an envelope taped to the glove box.

The driver wore a turban and a faded red robe. As the car engine sputtered then smoothed out and we started for the road, he looked straight ahead. “Would like to stop for coffee? For something? Before turnpike?” His soft, high-pitched voice was lilting and soothing.

When I got out of the cab under the awning of a gasoline station store and stretched, I realized the rain had let up. The wind was still with us, but its gale force was giving way to gusts. Tapping on the driver’s window, I asked whether I could get something for him. He rolled down his window, showed his gentle face for the first time and smiled. “No thank you. Fasting.”

We rode in silence to my hotel in Boston. The meter showed a hundred and sixty-five dollars. I handed him two hundred-dollar bills and said, “Thank you.”

The driver bowed slightly. “You keep,” he said, taking one bill and handing the other back to me. “Too much.”

“It’s okay. Please.” I offered the money again, and the driver bowed again, gently touching my hand, pushing the money away. Then he took a small, light-copper-colored medallion from his pocket, and put it in my hand. “You keep this.”

I took the coin.

With his eyes shut tight, the taxi man said, “Go home, sir, go back home.”

When I reached my hotel room, I was exhausted. I knew the man in the turban was right. I should go home. A part of me felt like I’d never make it home again.

As I undressed, I emptied my pockets and the copper medallion fell to the desk. I picked up the little coin and examined it. On one side was an intricate design I didn’t recognize, and the other side was engraved in a kind of script I’d never seen. I held it tightly in my fist, and walked to the window. The storm had intensified and was raging now. I knew the storm would last a long time.

Fear is the first and last feeling we experience in life. It is the only feeling which occupies every molecule of our being; the only emotion which has its own scent. That night in Boston, I felt fear. I realized my tiredness and the conflicts within me contributed to the feeling, but understanding the origin of one’s fear does not make it dissipate.

I now knew Francis Dubois’s sins, the details of his crimes. As I stood at the window, I reviewed my interview with Dubois in my mind. I was still unnerved by his apparent comfort, the “oneness” he felt with the horrible crimes he had committed, while still appearing to inhabit the clothes of a priest. Doctor Kennison’s covering letter had used the phrase “vile depravity” in describing the perversions of the priest. The heinous nature of his crimes was something I believed was beyond the comprehension of most people. Was it, in fact, evidence of the existence of absolute evil on earth?

I did not believe anyone could understand or provide an explanation of Dubois’s behavior. But I knew that if I was to represent this man, I would not only have to understand his behavior, I would also have to explain it to a jury, defend it.

I had lived long enough and experienced enough to know some things have no meaning at all. Nevertheless, tired as I was, I searched for some way to make sense of these things. Until that night, I had never believed in the existence of hell, much less Satan. I had always believed all evil on earth was homemade, handmade, manmade. Now, as I stared into the storm, I began to countenance the possibility that an ageless, graceless, godless force did perhaps walk the earth among us, an Antichrist who was the author of absolute evil, one with many names and disguises.

I had always believed that the frightening and diabolically malevolent creatures that have existed and do exist in the mind of man – terrifying beasts like the werewolves and vampires of Eastern Europe, the zombies of Haiti, the horrifying grotesques represented by the stone gargoyles that adorn great cathedrals, and even Satan himself – were either control devices invented by religions or the products of creative literary and artistic minds. I had always believed that they were no more real than the Satyr or the Minotaur.

I knew that in the distant past writers, painters and sculptors interpreted ancient folk tales told down the centuries. Villagers would invent monstrous villains, mutants and strangers to any known species, often in order to explain crimes committed by their neighbors and kinfolk.

In the enlightened era we live in, we have devised a legal defense of insanity to which courts and society retreat when confronted with acts that cannot be explained rationally or when society cannot accept that a human is capable of such savagery. We use this technical, scientific, medical defense today in place of inventing beasts or invoking possession by a demonic force. It is our way of attempting to reconcile ourselves with that which is irreconcilable.

Crimes against children have always been the hardest for any society to deal with. In one mountainous region of what is now Lithuania, a child would disappear from one of several idyllic, walled mountain villages every year in late fall, when the first snow fell, only to be found again during Easter week, lying on the village ramparts, head facing the east, fairly well preserved but missing its heart. Over time a tale evolved about a vicious beast without a heart that had to eat the heart of a child every year in order to survive the winter. Centuries later, a journal was found under the stone floor of an old house that had once belonged to the head of the village in the valley below. The diary recorded all of the murderous deeds he had carried out against children hundreds of years earlier, part of a demented, secret, sacrificial rite in which he buried their hearts near a cave where he believed his angry ancestors still existed, suspended between life and death. The man would keep the children’s bodies in a high cave that was sealed by an ice shield through the winter, returning them in advance of Easter so that the bodies could be committed to a family crypt and the souls sent on to the heavens on Resurrection Sunday. Even in the face of that evidence, and despite the detailed confession by the crazed man in his own handwriting, the tale of a heartless beast still persists in the region today and there are lithographs of the imagined monster in the archives of a local museum.

I once read a book entitled
The Animal In Us All,
a historical, anthropological view of atrocities committed by our species against our own; abominations which were committed not in war, but in wickedness. The author recounted a series of macabre acts that were chilling to read. That these acts had happened on all of the continents and island chains defied classifying them in a cultural context. After listing the horrors, he examined the theories which have been offered through the ages to explain man’s ability to act in such an inhumane way. One of the theories ascribed responsibility to an Antichrist. The writer accepted the possibility that an Antichrist existed but dismissed the notion
that the Antichrist could be responsible for the Holocaust and other savage acts ending in death. He argued that all available writing about the Antichrist made it clear the Antichrist never kills; the Antichrist considers human death a kindness and the Antichrist is not kind enough to kill. Everyone touched by the Antichrist is allowed to live and touch others in the same fiendish way he or she was touched.

Doctor Kennison’s covering summary noted that there was a very real danger the child victims might grow to be adult perpetrators of sex abuse. This was cited in addition to a long list of probable and possible problems that might visit victims throughout their lives. He had written: “Because one is a victim of sexual crimes such as these, it does not necessarily follow that the child will himself become a pedophile who will victimize children of approximately the same age. However, medical literature is replete with evidence that almost all adults who sexually molest children were victims of sex abuse when they were children. They do to children what was done to them.”

I knew I would not be able to sleep. The raging storm outside mirrored my interior landscape. A single phrase reverberated around my conscious mind. Everyone touched by the Antichrist is allowed to live and touch others in the same fiendish way he or she was touched.