Free God's Spy by Juan Gómez-Jurado Page A

He was nineteen years old by then, and it seemed that he had been reformed. We
know almost nothing about his stay in the seminary, except that he
studied until he almost made himself ill, and that he was profoundly
sickened by the institution’s openly homosexual environment.
Conroy insisted that Karosky was a repressed homosexual who denied his true nature, but he was wrong. Karosky isn’t a homosexual
or a heterosexual. He doesn’t have a definite orientation. The fact
that sex isn’t an integral part of his personality is what, in my view,
has caused such grave damage to his psyche.’
‘Care to explain yourself?’ Pontiero asked.
‘I may as well. I am a priest who has made the decision to remain
celibate. But that doesn’t stop me from being attracted to Doctor
Dicanti,’ said Fowler, gesturing towards Paola, who couldn’t help
turning red. ‘So I know I am heterosexual, but I choose chastity
of my own free will. I’ve integrated sexuality into my personality,
although I don’t exercise it. Karosky’s case is very different. The
profound traumas of his infancy and childhood provoked a split
down the middle of his psyche. Karosky clearly rejected the part of
his being that is sexual and even violent. He both hates and loves
himself, simultaneously. This has resulted in outbreaks of violence, schizophrenia, and finally in the abuse of minors, duplicating his father’s abuse. In 986, during his pastoral year, Karosky had his first incident with a minor. 6 The victim was a young boy, fourteen years old, and there were kisses and petting but nothing else. We believe the minor did not consent to it. In any case, there’s no official proof that the bishop heard about this episode, and in the end he ordained Karosky as a priest. From that day on, Karosky had an unhealthy obsession with his hands. He washes them between thirty and forty
times a day and takes exceptional care of them.’
Pontiero searched hurriedly among the hundreds of macabre
photographs spread over the desk until he found the one he was
looking for and spun it through the air to Fowler. The priest made
an effortless two fingered catch, an elegant move that impressed. ‘Two hands, severed and washed, placed on a white cloth. In the
church, white cloth is a symbol of respect and reverence. There are
many references to it in the New Testament. As you know, Christ
was covered with a white shroud in his tomb.’
‘Not so white now,’ Troi jested.
‘I’m sure you would be delighted to apply your gadgets to the
shroud in question,’ Pontiero commented.
‘No doubt about that. Please continue, Fowler.’
‘A priest’s hands are sacred. With them he administers the sacraments. This fact stayed very firmly in Karosky’s mind, as we’ll see.
In 987 he worked at a school in Pittsburgh, where the first cases
of abuse took place. His victims were young boys aged between
eight and eleven. Karosky had never experienced any type of adult
consensual relationship, homosexual or heterosexual. When the
complaints began to reach his superiors, they did nothing at first.
Later they transferred him, from parish to parish. Very soon there
was a complaint of an attack on an altar boy, whom he struck in
the face, but still there were no lasting consequences . . . Finally he
arrived at the Institute.’
‘Do you think that if he’d begun to receive help earlier, things
would have turned out differently?’
Fowler’s whole body was tense, his hands twitching. ‘We never
helped him in the slightest. The only thing we achieved was to liberate the killer lurking inside him. And then we made it possible for
him to escape.’
‘It was that bad?’
‘Worse. When he arrived, he was a man overwhelmed as much
by his uncontrolled emotions as by his violent outbursts. He felt
remorse for his actions, though he denied them many times. He
was simply unable to control himself. But with the passage of
time, the wrong-headed treatments, and his close contact with the
dregs of