Article by Chrissie Foster in the Australian on Friday 7 April 2017
RIGHT TO THE VERY END, THE
CHURCH WASN’T LISTENING
Final royal commission
hearings revealed the ugly truth of indifference to victims
It is difficult to stop crying.
A child sexual abuse expert from the U.S. 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 week of the hearing 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.
The 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 archbishop 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.
We have lost count of how
many victims have taken their lives.
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 those 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.
Anthony Foster died on Friday 26 May 2017 when he was taken off life support.
The following is probably the last tweet he made – a few
weeks ago:
Anthony Foster @Anthony Foster_.Apr 6
“RIGHT TO THE VERY END, THE CHURCH WASN’T LISTENING” By
Chrissie in today’s Australian tinyurl.com/zrqspx7#caRoyalComm @australian
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