Chrissie Foster... 12:00AM April 7, 2017
It is difficult to stop crying.
A
child sexual abuse expert from the US, Bruce Perry, simply picked a
random example. He spoke via video link to the Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse; he was one of 36 experts
in the field who gave evidence last week at the final public hearing of
the royal commission, titled Case Study 57: Nature, Cause and Impact of
Child Sexual Abuse. Perry’s example was of “a little five-year-old
child and somebody is raping you”, and he talked of what it does to the
young mind.
They were painful words to
hear because that is what happened to our little five-year-old Emma and,
not long after, to our six-year-old Katie. To hear what their infant
minds had to deal with was crushing — a dreadful add-on to the vision of
rape by the priest, which already haunts us.
It was like a knife to the heart.
That
priest was Kevin O’Donnell; he was 66 years older than Emma; he was our
parish priest, with access to the primary school and its 300 children
where I, as a Catholic, sent our girls. He went to prison in 1995 for 14
months for sexually assaulting children (rape charges were dropped in a
plea bargain). I believe that from 1958 until he was arrested, he
sexually assaulted at least 100 children.
Memories
haunted our girls. Emma took her life aged 26 after a traumatic teenage
and young adult life filled with despair, self-harming and drug
addiction. Katie began binge drinking and was hit by a car while drunk.
She spent 12 months in hospital and now, 18 years later, still receives
24-hour care, as she always will. Childhood sexual abuse was the cause
and self-destructive behaviour was the impact.
Four
weeks before came Case Study 50, titled Catholic Church in Australia, a
three-week hearing during which Australia’s archbishops gave
disturbing testimony.
In his evidence,
on three occasions Hobart Archbishop Julian Porteous said the reason
they did not act to stop child sexual abuse was because “nobody
understood the seriousness of the effects of sexual abuse on children”.
This common, if absurd, excuse has been used by the hierarchy, both
here and overseas, since 1994. In using it, they admit knowing about the
crimes. And not stopping them. Crimes that attracted the death penalty
until 1961.
Brisbane Archbishop Mark
Coleridge stated: “I have no right to go to a priest, who is not an
employee of mine, and say, ‘Excuse me, are you in a sexual
relationship?’ ” What if that “sexual relationship” was with a child?
When,
on a panel of five archbishops, one described the forced, often
violent, rape of thousands of children as “misbehaving”, not one of them
said a word. God almighty, what is wrong with these sanctimonious men
of religion?
What do they need to make them understand?
Another $450
million royal commission?
I once handed
my most precious treasure, my three children, to the Catholic Church
for their primary school education and at that school was the pedophile
O’Donnell. The archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, knew about
O’Donnell’s crimes by then. Evidence before the royal commission has
told us that in 1986, the year before Emma started school, Little
received a letter from a nun informing him that O’Donnell had sexually
assaulted a boy over several years.
Little did nothing — an act of criminal neglect.
This
was not the only time Little put his priests before the safety of
Catholic children. In 1978 a magistrate and a barrister approached him
about a boy in their parish who had been sexually assaulted by priest
Bill Baker. The archbishop yelled at the two men to leave his office.
But he acted: days later he transferred Baker to another parish, where
his crimes were not known. As adults, some of his victims went to
police. Baker was jailed for a few of his crimes and then lived on a
generous church pension.
Further royal
commission evidence shows the Catholic hierarchy was told in 1958 that
O’Donnell was raping children. They did nothing and he raped others
freely for another 34 years until retiring with an honorary title from
the church.
Can today’s archbishops be trusted with the safety and lives of your children?
We don’t have to look far for the answer.
Last
year some parents in Melbourne tried to remove from their parish a
priest after newspapers reported that the church had made a $75,000
payout to a victim of his sexual abuse. The royal commission has
established that the maximum of $75,000 is only awarded in the very
worst cases. Tellingly, the church sided with the priest, who denied the
abuse, against the parents. Eventually, he was transferred. His new
parishioners complained. He was moved again. His present location is
unknown.
We have lost count of how many
victims of priests have taken their lives. Of course, the crimes
devastate parents and grandparents of victims, siblings, spouses and
children of victims, and loving friends. Emma’s closest friend, Lu, took
her own life five months after Emma.
Where
were the church hierarchy representatives at this final royal
commission hearing? There was much they stood to learn about the damage
their colleagues had done to the 4445 victims in their care. They might
have better understood these blighted lives, perhaps even developed some
empathy for them. But no. They stayed away. All of them.
They didn’t care then and they don’t care now.
My
husband, Anthony, and I have attended 108 days of royal commission
hearings and seen many other days of evidence via webcast. We are
grateful to the royal commission for seeking truth and justice about
these crimes. Without it, victims would still be fighting a losing
battle against a powerful and once influential institution.
The
royal commission will release its findings on December 15 but these
will go nowhere unless politicians act on them. We hope they vote for
the safety and protection of voiceless, innocent children and not cave
in to the untrustworthy churches and their manipulative lawyers and
lobbyists.
Implementing the recommendations will help make Australia the safest country in the world for children.
Who doesn’t want that?
Chrissie Foster is the author of Hell on the Way to Heaven with Paul Kennedy.