Credits

A reply letter from the institute reports: “The probability that he would act out again is quite low.
However, we cannot guarantee that it could not reoccur.”
Yet the archdiocese was hit with more complaints in 1991, 1992, and 1994, although the 1992 accusation
was dismissed by church officials as “hearsay and vague.”
Law finally removed Geoghan from parish duty in January 1993.
Midway through his treatment with Messner, Geoghan was returned to St. Luke in January 1995.
His diagnosis after that 10-day stay was far less optimistic than earlier judgments. “It is our clinical
judgment that Father Geoghan has a longstanding and continuing problem with sexual attraction
to prepubescent males,” his evaluation reads. “His recognition of the problem and his insight into
it is limited.”
Therapists at St. Luke advised that Geoghan have no unsupervised contact with minor males and
return for residential treatment, although Geoghan resisted the latter recommendation. Instead, he
was sent in July 1995, to Southdown, an Ontario treatment facility, where he stayed for four to six
months.
In 1996, Blais, too, submitted a pessimistic evaluation. “Treatment of such a chronic and deeply ingrained
condition would need to be lengthy,” he wrote.
Geoghan was removed from the priesthood in 1998.
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