ACCOUNTABILITY

Below: Diplomatic Seat of the Holy See - Vatican City State in Rome.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND
NOTE: Some names of people still living and certain venues are changed to respect privacy.

The plot for this screenplay is taken, for the most part, from an auto-biographical book entitled " Cloudy Days Before the Sun."

The initial three parts of this television mini-series presents a traumatic saga through individual and unified lives of two people from 1960 onwards. They are Mary Ann, and, Jean-Jacques ( 'Jim' ). The story's central theme presents a journey through serious mental illness. This account also covers a Roman Catholic priest's sexual abuse of children and young people. Mary Ann, as one of his victims, carries the experience into her marriage with catastrophic consequences.

FICTIONAL ADAPTATION

Episode four ( Let the Master Answer ) links international law with factual material from the previous three episodes. Our story portrays fictional projection of what the viewer 'might like to see happen' as a resolution. This chapter chronicles advocacy by Jim for nothing less than direct accountability from the Holy See, in cases involving sexual abuse by their priests. The modern Vatican City State, founded in 1929, functions under international law via the sixteen hundred year-old Roman Catholic Holy See. As such, the Vatican City and all its officials hide behind Diplomatic Immunity to evade ultimate responsibility. 

MINI-SERIES EPISODES

(1) - "A CHILDHOOD SACRIFICED": 1960- 1975

Mary Ann : aged five in New York, USA

In November, 1960 Mary Ann's father dies suddenly at thirty-three years of age. Only eight years old at this time, she is the eldest of seven brothers and sisters in a conservative Italian-American family heavily guided by strict Roman Catholicism. For a little girl influenced by family to become a nun, life is no longer the same. 

Extended family encourage Mary Ann to emulate her father's Catholic convictions. Emotional vulnerabilities increase approaching teenage years. Yet, she displays deep intelligence and creative traits - especially her singing voice. A charismatic Catholic priest enters Mary Ann's life when she is thirteen years old. She learns to trust him like a father. But his appearance imposes calamity upon her mental health for decades. 

When eighteen Mary Ann is drugged and sexually abused by this priest. Telling no-one of her rape, the event triggers psychotic episodes. Mary Ann is diagnosed with a serious mental disorder called schizophrenia. 

This priest is conveniently transferred from New York to California. Mary Ann's mother ( and step-father ) move their entire family of nine children 3000 miles to California, one reason naively believing the priest might help her recovery. Mary Ann languishes for several weeks at a Monterey Bay psychiatric clinic. 

Mary Ann slowly recovers. Over the next four years she functions reasonably well, but suffers lingering effects of her original diagnosis. Our sex abusing priest is still regarded as a close family confidant. Yet nobody suspects his past, especially with Mary Ann. 

One fateful September day in 1975 Mary Ann meets someone while walking along a Pacific Ocean beach.

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(2) - "A WANDERING SPIRIT": 1960-1975 

Jim: aged seven (1951 ) in Ontario, Canada

In July, 1960 Jim’s father, a senior-ranking officer in Canada's air force, dies at forty-two years of age. His father’s death greatly affects Jim’s emotional well-being. Being only sixteen years old, he feels need to ‘prove being as good as his father.’ Jim's background boasts English-Irish-French origin, from mixed Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths. 

By the mid-1960's Jim ‘rebels’ against his conservative, oppressive upbringing. He witnesses cataclysmic events through several conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Now growing addicted to alcohol and drugs, resulting from his graphic visual experiences, Jim suffers the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

In 1967 Jim meets nineteen year old 'Julia' at a university in Ontario, Canada. They develop an intimate relationship. But Jim's psychological problems eventually contribute to their permanent separation in 1971, by then having taken up residence in Geneva, Switzerland. Their destinies hereafter follow different paths. Julia resides in Switzerland for the remainder of her life, while Jim moves about the planet.

From 1971-1975 Jim continues his ‘escapes’ worldwide. He survives a fatal helicopter crash in Mozambique. This tragedy leads to a mistaken identity crisis which causes his passport being rescinded for several years. Alas, he starts to use a pseudonym. By 1974 Jim exists homeless amidst crime and drug-ridden streets of New York City and Montreal. Friends find him and admit Jim to an addiction psychiatric centre in Toronto. Upon his release, thankful he survives years of self-abuse, Jim has a short-lived inclination to study for the priesthood.

Now becoming 'Jean-Jacques Marmont', he does not possess valid identity papers. A Vietnam Veterans Organization supplies Jim with a priest's false identity to enter the USA. He works in Washington, DC as a freedom of information advocate. 

By September, 1975 Jim finds himself in California where he meets Mary Ann on a Pacific Ocean beach. She is twenty-three and he nine years her senior.

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(3) - "SCORCHED WOOD STILL BLOSSOMS": 1975- 2011

California - December, 1976

Mary Ann and Jim bond together. But Jim does not realise the extent of Mary Ann's mental illness, nor intransigent forces of excessive Roman Catholic dogma upon her life. Jim knows nothing of rape by the priest, but is aware that he greatly influences Mary Ann's family.

Jim legally changes his name as well as attain legal help to regain a Canadian passport. After marrying Mary Ann in December 1976, three little girls are born within five years. Meanwhile, Mary Ann's rapist leaves the priesthood to marry one of her younger sisters. This marriage lasts just a few years. Sexual abuses he commits before and after leaving the priesthood are exposed. He disappears from everyone's lives. 

Jim migrates his family to several countries on initial pretense of their being able to experience different cultures. Yet sub-consciously he senses a need to move his wife far away from a dysfunctional environment of her extended family. This geographical change does not prove entirely fruitful. Mary Ann's emotional health remains periodically erratic. She tries best to be a good mother and enjoy her daughters. But they are sometimes adversely affected by their mother's mental illness. 

Notwithstanding, each overcomes their pasts by pursuing new goals. Despite being 'scorched wood,' they attempt to 'blossom.' That objective proves the greatest hurdle for Mary Ann, with 'disordered thinking' often impeding her efforts. Jim achieves a dream of his youth by pursuing academic studies to the PhD level. 

In time Jim realizes Mary Ann sought a father-image more than a husband when they married. He accepts the lasting, debilitating destructive force this rapist priest has upon her life. Why has this man never been prosecuted - wonders Jim ? Perhaps understandably so, many prefer to privately move on from their painful wounds caused by this priest. Jim tracks his whereabouts through public records. 

By 2005 the Marmont family has been living in Oxfordshire, England for several years. There are now grandchildren. Stress between Mary Ann and Jim becomes so intense, they mutually decide a divorce. But Jim never abandons her needs. They remain close within their family environment of daughters and grandchildren.  

In 2008 Mary Ann suffers the worst schizophrenic relapse Jim ever witnesses her endure. Trauma  triggered by recollections of the infamous priest's transgression against her and others seems a main cause. Hospitalized on several occasions, Mary Ann's life henceforth succumbs to needing regular medications. Dementia also gradually surfaced in Mary Ann's personality. Her illnesses draw their immediate family closer together. Mary Ann is now officially disabled, being cared for by Jim with support from their daughters. 

Meanwhile, Jim and Julia sometimes wonder what happened to each other. Through an old mutual contact they learn in 1988 that both are married with families. Jim coincidentally finds Julia via the internet in 2004, by then living apart from her spouse. In 2007, after thirty-six years, they meet again in Switzerland.

Jim resolves important closure with a difficult part of his past. Interestingly, dominant stresses in each others lives are remarkably parallel. Julia cares for her adult daughter who suffers from a serious psychiatric disorder, partially caused by her daughter being sexually abused in youth.

Jim and Julia communicate as friends thereafter via phone and email. Contact becomes less frequent as time passes. It ends completely by 2011. 

Julia - 2008 - Switzerland

As for our infamous  sex-abusing priest, he is now over seventy-five years of age residing peacefully near Yosemite National Park, California. Jim plans a highly public and international retributive mission against the institution that harboured this character's psychopathy and abusive actions long ago. 

Mary Ann - 2010 - England

Jim - 2010- England

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(4) - " LET THE MASTER ANSWER " - 
       ( fictional depiction ): 2011- onwards 

Vatican City State Coat of Arms

"Respondeat superior" ( "let the master answer" ) is a legal doctrine stating that employers are responsible for actions of their employees performed within the course of official duties. With that principle in mind, Jim believes the Vatican ( via its diplomatic arm the Holy See ) is liable to his wife for the wrongs committed against her in youth.

 

Jim Marmont in St. Peter's Square

at Vatican City, April, 2012

The Vatican is a signatory of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. But the Holy See generally eludes culpability on many issues due to its not being a full member of the United Nations. Nor is the Vatican aligned to many world organizations and international treaties. Nonetheless, Jim launches a vast sophisticated campaign to have the Vatican legally acknowledegable for sex abuses committed by its clergy via advisory jurisdiction at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Upon personal reflection, Jim does not wish financial compensation. He demands radical change and resolution from an institutional anachronism. To this end he follows complex legal paths. These concern securing the Vatican's direct responsibility for his wife's rapist via Italian courts, and have his case ultimately reach the European Court of Human Rights ( ECHR ). The Vatican is not a signatory to this convention. Italy is so, and has unique Accords with the Holy See dating back to 1929.

It is a time when the Vatican witnesses a sitting Pope's resignation, the first in 600 years. Jim's main antagonist is an American-born Cardinal  who is the Holy See's  Secretary of State and a front-runner for consideration as new Pope. This cardinal's own dubious history surfaces as Jim secretly finds his connection with the infamous rapist priest at a New York Monastery decades earlier. What develops ?

Via civil, criminal and canon law Jim openly challenges the entire issue of not allowing priests to marry, and, that practice’s direct relationship with rape and sexual abuse committed by so many priests. Jim is careful to not target spiritual norms of the Catholic faith itself. 

Nevertheless, ACCOUNTABILITY is the tale of an ascending quest for redress, restorative justice and reform from an antiquated, authoritarian autocracy that is armed with centuries of entrenched despotic power.

Lightning strike on top of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome 

during summer storm, 2012.

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