CHURCHES, JUDGES IN UNHOLY UNION by CHRISSIE FOSTER

CHURCH, JUDGES IN UNHOLY UNION

by Chrissie Foster, 13 January 2020

I see red when I think about the Red Mass. The Red Mass is a Catholic mass said at the end of each January for the legal fraternity marking the beginning of the legal year. The Red Mass is a European tradition dating back to the year 1310 in England and earlier in Paris – 1245.

An invitation to attend the Melbourne Red Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral appeared on the Victorian Bar website. The Victorian Bar is a “professional association of barristers”. The invitation reads: “As this is Archbishop Comensoli’s first Red Mass since becoming Archbishop of Melbourne, it is important for the legal community of Melbourne to welcome His Grace with as many members of the profession in attendance” as possible.

This is the same archbishop who recently said he would defy new child protection laws rather than report admissions of child sexual abuse made in the confessional. Victoria recently passed legislation removing clergy exemption from mandatory reporting of a reasonable belief that a child has been sexually abused. Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he would rather go to jail than obey the new law.

Why should our legal profession “welcome” such a man? A man who publicly announced his intention to commit a crime? And not just any crime, one that disobeys child safety laws? The archbishop is the highest-ranking cleric of the Catholic church in Victoria. Many clerics obey and follow him. Priests have promised obedience to him. Comensoli’s words and actions are replicated in communities all over Victoria. Why should the legal fraternity welcome someone who dictates that priests should commit a criminal offence by failing to report to the police information about child sexual abuse?

The new law lifting the secrecy of confession was debated in the Victorian parliament last August 29. It was an extraordinary day in parliament. At least 15 members of parliament rose and stated how shocked they were that the Archbishop of Melbourne would choose to protect paedophiles rather than children. Their anger was palpable. And angry they should be, for the reality of Comensoli’s words is to knowingly allow adults to continue to rape and sexually assault children. The archbishop is apparently happy to hear admissions of crimes against children and just let child molesters and rapists go unpunished, unchecked and uncured. This failure to obey the law would allow sexual crimes against children to continue for decades.

In 2003 Catholic priest Michael McArdle swore an affidavit stating that during confession he had disclosed more than 1500 times that he was sexually assaulting children. He made this confession to 30 different priests over 25 years. Not one of those 30 priests stopped him. For decades they just forgave him. This is precisely the situation Comensoli says should remain. What finally stopped McArdle was not the church, but a child going to the police. The church could have reported him to the police decades earlier and saved countless children.

The Red Mass invitation also states: “A procession of judges, magistrates, tribunal members, judicial registrars, court officials and barristers will precede Archbishop Comensoli into the Cathedral”. That is a powerful line-up to honour and respect the Archbishop. It concludes: “After Mass the judiciary, members of the legal profession, staff and their families are invited to join Archbishop Comensoli for morning tea in the Cathedral Presbytery”.

What message does this send to our community? What faith should we have in the legal system when there are public displays of support by the legal fraternity for particular institutions?

Cardinal George Pell was the archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 until 2001. Pell would have conducted his first Red Mass in January 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral. As archbishop, he would have presided over any judges, magistrates, tribunal members, judicial registrars, court officials and barristers in attendance. While the legal fraternity was honouring Pell with its presence and socialising with him afterwards, the reality was that he would later appear before them in the courts. He was subsequently convicted of sexual offending against two boys about the time of the Red Mass.

In Australia the child abuse royal commission established that of all complaints of child sexual abuse in religious institutions the Catholic Church attracted most with 61.8 per cent of the complaints. The next worst was the Anglican Church with 14.7 per cent. The Cathlic Church has had a much larger problem with child sexual abuse than any other religious organisation in Australia.

After everything we have learnt through first the Victorian parliamentary inquiry and then the royal commission, I would rather our judiciary did not honour and support Catholic clergy with its presence. We all now know the shocking truth of the church’s history of widespread sexual abuse of children and the cover-ups. Why should the legal fraternity demonstrate public support for such an institution?

What is the purpose of the Red Mass get-together with the judiciary? Why is it necessary? Does the Catholic hierarchy hold a Red Mass for housewives? Or apprentices? Or unmarried mothers? Or students? Or doctors? Victims of cleric abuse need know the judiciary is impartial.

Perhaps judges, magistrates, tribunal members, judicial registrars, court officials and barristers should reconsider attending this event.

Instead, consider the thousands of Australian children caught in the clergy machine – a tag team of offenders with friends in high places, such as archbishops, to protect them. Instead, think of the ordinary members of our community who want our justice system to give them confidence in the idea that we are all equal before the law.

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Chrissie Foster is a victim advocate and author (with Paul Kennedy) of Hell On The Way To Heaven.

ANTHONY FOSTER DIED ON 26 MAY 2017 - AND WE ARE ALL DEVASTATED!

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

It was almost prescient! But very tragic for everybody.

OBITUARY FOR ANTHONY FOSTER

PELL AND HART DO MORE FOR ATHEISM IN AUSTRALIA THAN DAWKINS, HITCHENS AND OTHERS COMBINED!

George Pell and Denis Hart appeared at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Their behaviour was appalling, their demeanour and utterances even worse, and their patronising, condescending - and ultimately evasive responses showed that they cared nothing about the victims and everything about the reputation of their religious organisations.

Presumably they will also put in appearances at the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, and, as they did in Victoria, they will blame others fairly and squarely for the responsibility of their organisations for the appalling and illegal behaviour which was the culture - and presumably still is - of the people they are supposed to serve and protect and teach about humanity and respect.

What a tragic joke!

Chrissie and Antony Foster and their families have suffered more than most people suffer in a lifetime of the horrors inflicted on them and their families by the organisations in which they put so much faith - if that is an appropriate word under the circumstances.

Here is Chrissie's latest article on the issues which appeared in The Age newspaper on 6 June 2013:

Why these two men are still part of the problem

June 6, 2013
By Chrissie Foster

High-ranking clerics must answer for the smokescreen they created in protecting criminal priests.

Cardinal George Pell. Photo: Joe Armao

On the last two Mondays in May, we heard the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, and Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, give testimony to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sexual abuse in religious organisations. They spoke on the sexual abuse of hundreds of "innocent people" – known to the rest of us as children – committed by priests and brothers in Victoria.

Discussion, debate and analysis have followed their evidence. I must add to this argument. I bear personal witness to experiences with both Archbishop Hart and Cardinal Pell which contradict their limited vision of events. Space limits the attack I would like to launch, so I will refer to just two instances, one relating to the cardinal and one the archbishop.

I first locked horns with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in 1996, and the protection of children has meant I have not stopped challenging them since. In March 1996 I discovered that my eldest daughter Emma had been sexually assaulted by our parish priest, Father Kevin O'Donnell, who at that time was in prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting children from 1946 to 1977. Emma's disclosures and, later, those of our second daughter, Katie, took his offending to his retirement in 1992 – amounting to 50 years of raping, sodomising and sexually assaulting, most likely, hundreds of children.

Archbishop Denis Hart. Photo: Joe Armao

In Cardinal Pell's written submission to the parliamentary inquiry, he stated: "Although he [Father O'Donnell] brought shame upon the priesthood and the church, he was buried with other priests in Melbourne. Had he been laicised before he died, this would not have occurred." Seemingly the cardinal is lamenting that a career child rapist was not laicised before he died so, sadly, a criminal priest is "buried with other priests". This sounds a noble and reasonable lament for a pious and forthright cardinal.

Yet on February 18, 1997, I and 44 other distressed parents met with then Archbishop George Pell in Oakleigh. At this meeting we asked the archbishop that the then living and imprisoned Father O'Donnell be laicised. Pell smiled condescendingly and said "we can't do that" – just as the canon lawyer had said and done to our same request only months earlier.

This time we were talking to the boss, so we persisted. We told Archbishop Pell that his own canon law said it was possible. The archbishop replied that canon law was hard to understand, hard to interpret. We produced a copy of the 1152-page book of canon law and read aloud law number 1395.2 – it clearly stated a priest could be laicised for the sexual abuse of a minor. Taken aback, with the evidence of the book and its clear language, the archbishop back-pedalled, saying he would have to get back to us about it. He never did. Later in the meeting, we again asked that O'Donnell be laicised; again it was denied.

So despite his 2013 public show of disappointment that Father O'Donnell was not laicised before he died, it was in fact George Pell, as Archbishop of Melbourne who, 16 years earlier, refused to laicise O'Donnell. Pell as archbishop had from July 1996 until O'Donnell's death in March 1997 to laicise the imprisoned criminal "before he died". But even when asked to laicise O'Donnell he refused, claiming ignorance of laicisation protocols when in fact he had served, for nine years at that time, on the body that oversaw the laicisation of priests in Rome – the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. We did not discover this fact until 12 years later, in 2009.

While Archbishop Pell denied our request in 1997, he now appears to lament the fact that Father O'Donnell was not laicised before he died – as though he had nothing to do with it. Cardinal Pell should face the truth: that in 1997 he was happy for O'Donnell to be "buried with other priests in Melbourne"; he ensured it happened. Yet Cardinal Pell now presents to Australia a misleading impression of regret that O'Donnell is buried with other priests, when he played a major role in bringing that reality about. Cardinal Pell's failure to act meant one of Australia's worst child rapists kept his privileged title of Father and was buried honourably with other priests. In Archbishop Hart's oral evidence to the parliamentary inquiry, he stated that when victims decided not to accept the church offer of compensation, it had "walked with them" through the court system to "more generous payouts". Later, he stated that "no victim had made it to court". So how could the church have possibly walked with victims through the court system when it has never happened? You can't have it both ways.

In addition to this, we personally sued Archbishop Hart in our attempt to reach court, him being the current leader of the Melbourne Archdiocese. Hart never contacted us. He did however send us a message. Instead of acting out his words of apparent compassion in "walking with victims", he set his lawyers on us for years, engaging, directing and paying them to strenuously defend the church to the point of claiming Father O'Donnell's innocence – even after their independent commissioner, Peter O'Callaghan, had found sexual abuse had taken place with both Emma and Katie. Astoundingly, their attack negated Archbishop Pell's earlier written apology to Emma.

Also Archbishop Hart, if you and the church hierarchy are happy to "walk with victims" to achieve "higher payouts" as you say, why not simply remove the cap you hold in place to control and minimise payouts? Your heart, like that of others in the hierarchy, is bent on preserving church wealth instead of restoring broken lives. None of your actions, in any way, resemble your claim of "walking with victims". It is time for honesty, Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Hart, not smokescreen words for personal cover-ups. Your words are manifestly misleading to all who hear them, and therefore you remain part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Chrissie Foster is the co-author of Hell on the Way to Heaven.

PELL SIMPLY REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE PICTURES - BOTH BIG AND SMALL!

This article appeared in The Age newspaper on Saturday 17 November 2012. Chrissie Foster and her family have waited a long time for this to happen. Now that it has been announced by the federal government, let us hope that the terms of the royal commission will not be full of weasel words that allow the Catholic church an out to escape the blame and responsibility of all these decades of obfuscation and hiding behind their "traditions" such as confessionals and the like. Pell defrocked? Now that would be something to behold!

So much heartbreak, so much pain, it's about time

November 17, 2012
By Chrissie Foster

Happy bedtime: Chrissie Foster with Aimee, Emma and Katie before their world was shattered.
I COULD never stand to live in a world without justice and truth: at last there will be a platform for both. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's announcement of a royal commission on child sexual abuse has brought to an end the cries from victims and victim supporters. Of course, there have been many tears this week. More will be shed. But the royal commission is a cause for celebration.
For my family, the struggle to achieve this breakthrough began 16 years ago, on March 26, 1996. This was the day my daughter Emma, after almost a year of starving her 13-year-old body to an emaciated 41 kilograms, numerous self-harming horrors and attempts to take her own life, disclosed that our parish priest had sexually assaulted her. Not once, but on many occasions over her primary school years.
Fifteen months later more horror and heartbreak surfaced through a half-finished suicide note from our second daughter, Katie. She had hidden the note in a shoebox. It was written in her very neatest handwriting. Katie had been another victim of our parish priest.
There was no cure for my much-loved daughters. The pain never leaves. After years of subsequent torment, Emma took her own life at the age of 26. Katie, while drunk after binge drinking, was hit by a car in 1999 (she was 15) and still receives 24-hour care as a result of her injuries.
There are many of these stories. Ours is not rare. The Prime Minister's announcement was a godsend, proof that our many voices have been heard and believed, at long last. It feels like justice. The burning truth has ignited a light and we must shine it on the Catholic Church because of its cover-up. The Catholic hierarchy fiercely lobbied against a royal commission. But a royal commission had to be called. The claim from the hierarchy and biased commentators - that the Catholic Church is no different to other organisations in relation to child sex crimes and cover-ups - is nonsense. On the first day of the Victorian parliamentary inquiry I sat and listened to the evidence of Victoria Police and three professors.
All stated they would speak only about the Catholic Church. They based their submissions on records and research. Facts. Catholic Church sex offenders committed six times more sexual assaults on children than all the other religions combined. At least one in 20 Melbourne priests was a child sex offender, but the real figure was probably one in 15. There was a systemic obstruction of police inquiries over five decades.
Officers in two police forces - Victoria and New South Wales - have made allegations of extensive church interference with investigations. The royal commission should look closely at this. It should examine the influence of the religious leaders on police and governments.
Why did state governments allow the church's flawed and destructive Melbourne Response and Towards Healing schemes to exist unchallenged for more than 15 years? At his media conference on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell, ignoring the Victorian inquiry's expert evidence, chose to blame the ''press'' for a ''smear'' campaign against the Catholic Church. But the media is not the problem. Along with brave victims willing to go to police despite their trauma, the ''press'' has helped find a solution. If journalists had not written and broadcast stories of crimes and cover-ups, the likes of Father Gerald Ridsdale and countless other convicted criminal priests would still be celebrating Mass in Australia's Catholic parishes.
One thing is certain: the priesthood never lifted a finger to protect children from ongoing sexual assaults and rapes. Rather, the church paid for the paedophiles' legal defences. Not one priest or brother did it help jail.
Cardinal Pell said the confessional seal was ''inviolable''. I say the lives and bodies of our children are inviolable. Why should a foreign state law - the Vatican's Canon Law - override our Australian laws in protecting our children?
To understand why the confessional seal must be broken to protect children, we need only look at evidence given to a Queensland court in 2004. Father Michael McArdle, after pleading guilty to and being convicted of child sexual assault offences, swore an affidavit. In it he stated he had confessed to sexually assaulting children 1500 times to 30 different priests over a 25-year period.
Every one of those ''good'' priests, as if of one mind and voice, said to the criminal: ''Go home and pray.'' Is that what they are taught to say to each other when told of such crimes? Not one of the 30 priests urged him to get help or go to police. Nor did they report his crimes. The victims were abandoned to become hurting adults, their lives shattered. Distraught. Suicidal.
This is a rare insight into the secret world of paedophile priest confession. We must learn from it. The church system was designed to protect the priest and church from scandal. It was not established to consider the futures of Australia's children. We must not be distracted by the confusion and side issues thrown our way by the church hierarchy.
If mandatory reporting had been enforced at McArdle's first confession, then the next 25 years of pain and suffering for children would never have occurred. The guilt of which he was unburdened though confession only served him to reoffend within the same week. Cardinal Pell said he welcomed the royal commission. Why then did he deny its need just the previous day and the 20 years before?
Recently he spoke of a ''cancer'' in the church. He is part of that cancer. Perhaps it is time for Cardinal Pell to step down and hand over to another cleric who possesses some empathy and compassion for children.
As for the royal commission, the government must strive to write the best terms of reference that encompass the essential need to expose child sexual assault and its cover-up in organisations.
Justice and accountability are needed for past crimes against children. Though it will not help my daughters, this will ensure change and safety for all future children. Only with this reality will victims become survivors.
Chrissie Foster is the co-author of "Hell On The Way To Heaven".

CHRISSIE FOSTER: THE SILENCE OF THE CLOTH UNDER SIEGE

The silence of the cloth under siege
Chrissie Foster

March 10, 2012

Chrissie Foster and her husband, Anthony, with a portrait of their family, torn apart from church sex crimes. Photo: Craig Sillitoe

FORGET religion. Forget God. This is about the safety of children.

The landmark Protecting Victoria's Vulnerable Children inquiry, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, Philip Cummins, has made powerful recommendations about Victorian churches' handling of child sex crimes.

Citing the Catholic Church's system as an example of inadequate child protection, the Cummins report said: ''Any private system of investigation and compensation which has the tendency, whether intended or unintended, to divert victims from recourse to the state, and to prevent abusers from being held responsible and punished by the state, is a system that should come under clear public scrutiny and consideration … Crime is a public, not a private, matter.''

The inquiry believes the closed doors of the Catholic Church need to be opened. Recommendation 48 declares: ''A formal investigation should be conducted into the processes by which religious organisations respond to the criminal abuse of children by religious personnel within their organisations. Such an investigation should possess the powers to compel the elicitation of witness evidence and of documentary and electronic evidence.''

For a long time, victims and their families have been arguing for a royal commission on the Catholic Church's mishandling and cover-ups of child sex crimes. We were pleased with, indeed much relieved by, the findings of the Cummins report.
It is frightening that the church's so-called Melbourne Response, and the similar rest-of-Australia scheme ironically called Towards Healing, have been operating unchallenged by the state for 16 years. In that time the church has minimised payouts to victims and locked away the truth that could make for a safer future for children.

Church authorities keep the facts to themselves. But let us consider, on the evidence that is available to us, just how damaging these schemes have been.
We know that between 1993 and 2011, 65 Victorian Catholic priests and brothers have been convicted in the courts. A further 53 different Catholic priests and brothers have been involved in out-of-court settlements.

That is a total of 118 clergy offenders in Victoria alone. But 118 is not an accurate number. It is a minimum. Many more clergy offenders have eluded media scrutiny and still more have been secreted away in the church's self-serving internal systems.

Only the church knows the true number of offenders. It is time for us all to know.
The career paedophiles of the Catholic Church, who had trust, authority and access to endless numbers of Victorian school children, were living the dream of every paedophile. History tells us the only sanction paedophile priests faced if discovered to be criminals was relocation to another parish. Never laicisation. Never police intervention.

Sexual assaults are costly both to the child and society. Victims suffer directly, and taxpayers foot the bill in supporting and repairing these broken lives.
But the highest price of all is suicide. Clergy childhood sexual assault costs lives. Victoria Police investigations over the past 10 years have shown 35 suicides, most from just two clergy. There are other suicides from other clergy offenders; my daughter is one of them. Sometimes I wonder if these suicides are murder.

In July 2010 the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, wrote a pastoral letter, stating: ''Since 1996, we have introduced procedures to protect parishioners and children against sexual abuse, and processes have been developed and applied.'' But only seven months earlier, my husband and I had wanted to visit the shower room in the school hall where our paedophile parish priest had raped our five-year-old daughter. We learnt that, 20 years later, the priest was still the only person possessing a key to this secluded room.

Archbishop Hart's letter to parishioners also announced: ''Seminarians are required to undertake study of the church's code of conduct for priests.''
I had to wonder what effect the church's ''code of conduct'' - mere words on paper - would have in deterring a paedophile.

In the past, no threat of the wrath of God from God's law, no threat of laicisation from canon law and no threat of prison from civil law - all words on paper - had ever worked.

But now, time is up for the church. The cries for justice for Victoria's children must be heard. The state government must say yes to a state-led inquiry, as called for by the Cummins report.

Our state must protect our children. We must have a royal commission now.

Chrissie Foster is the co-author of Hell on the Way to Heaven (2010).