GOODBYE, FAREWELL. AMEN!

Only one in ten Australians thinks Peter Hollingworth should return as Governor-General -- according to a new public opinion poll-- and more than fifty per cent thought he should have resigned rather than stand aside earlier this month over his mishandling of child abuse cases. And add to that his continued employment of a known paedophile priest who is now in jail.

Not to mention the rape allegations which he managed to get suppressed.

We have seen an unprecedented vote of No Confidence in Hollingworth in the Senate and a savage cover story in The Bulletin magazine carried the insulting cover line:” Goodbye, Farewell, AMEN.”

That confluence of events prompted me to go back to my files and read two letters. They are damning, wretched, tragic letters about child abuse.

I wish I had published them in full earlier. I wish the Governor-General had read them. Or reads this now.

One was from a victim of a paedophile priest. The other, coincidentally, was from the former policeman who years later arrested that same child-molesting cleric.

There is a continuing suppression order over naming the priest because of current or future court actions, which shows to me there is a pattern of suppressions and secrecy whenever the Church is allegedly involved in such behaviour.

But I can verify the identities of the letter-writers and have not changed a word of their damning epistles.

You wonder about the fairness and compassion of our courts when a former Detective Sergeant writes to me and says things like:

“If my memory serves me correctly I carried X (Hinch censorship) and his brother in and out of that court several times. Often they were in tears and it was me he vomited on at least once.

“This was brought about by the appalling conduct of the trial judge who continually allowed the defence counsel to badger, bully and verbally abuse both boys”.

And then, from this member of the thin blue line, came this piece of advice which makes you despair about justice for abused children even in 2003.

“I would never advise the family of an abused child to allow the matter to go to Criminal Court. Our Courts were then, and I believe still are, incapable of dealing with sexual crimes committed by members of politically influential groups. Groups like ‘ the Catholic Church’ or, more topically, ‘ the Church of England or ‘ the legal profession’.

The vomiting victim the policeman carried in and out of court during brutal cross-examination was 12 years old at the time.

In his letter to me he remembered it this way:

“The trial was really just another form of child abuse. It was absolutely soul-destroying as a 12-year-old to have to tell all those strangers what happened to me.

“Then have the indignity of having them call me a liar and plant ideas into my head that it was me that instigated all that happened and when this pillar of society didn’t give me what I wanted I made up all these stories to get even. Now it seems absurd in the extreme to think that a boy at that age could even imagine that sort of thing.”

Nearly two decades later the trial still haunts him.

“I remember Mum telling me that he initially got off. To me that was just more reinforcement that it was my fault for letting it happen and that I was to blame for him not going to jail because I was not believable or worthy of listening to.”

Apparently after the trial, and even before the trial, nobody in the young victim’s family talked about what had happened.

“Some members of my family still do not know. If I had been in a car accident or bitten by a dog then everybody around me would have been told. They all would have expressed their outrage and sense of injustice to me and would have placed the blame fairly and squarely on those that deserved it.

“However, because it involved what I understood to be sex, no-one talked about it and this just further reinforced to me that I was somehow at fault and should feel embarrassed and ashamed.

“I have started seeing a counsellor in the past 12 months and we have spoken at length about the trial and how I interpreted what happened as a young boy. Your theme is ‘ Shame, shame, shame’. Unfortunately it was me that ended up taking on the shame.”

(Then X wrote some flattering things about how relieved he was once I got involved in a headline-making child abuse case for which I went to jail and in his story and “ how relieved I was that someone, a stranger, and an adult who was impartial, actually believed my side of the story”).

He then came up with a comment that I have cut out and saved:

“It is one thing to read about something in the paper and be annoyed but to actually go out of your way and outside your comfort zone and take on the system and to criticize those who deserve it, is something else”.

As Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth didn’t venture outside his comfort zone. Not one iota. He did not take on the system. He WAS the system.

He put the church’s money before morality. He let a paedophile priest keep his job. He gave a pay rise and a promotion to a school principal who knew one of his teachers was molesting 12-year-old girls.

He virtually told a couple of other victims to “ get over it”.

And on national television he protested that the sexual seduction of a 14-year-old schoolgirl by her then 27-year-old married housemaster at a church boarding school wasn’t child abuse. I think he said “ far from it”.

She asked for it! Well, Dr. Hollingworth, YOU asked for it. Your behaviour asked for that magazine front-page headline-- Goodbye, farewell, AMEN.

May 25, 2003

.©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002