Father Frank Derriman: Royal Commission Hears of Priest Who Lured Girls to Sex 'Cult'

By Janet Fife-Yeomans
The Telegraph
December 15, 2013

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/father-frank-derriman-royal-commission-hears-of-priest-who-lured-girls-to-sex-cult/story-fni0cx12-1226783563578

Former Catholic priest Frank Derriman

Priest Francis Edward Derriman in 1968.

A dcreen shot of Joan Isaacs as she gives evidence and reads her statement at the royal commission.

HE called himself ''Fed Brown'' while he was leading a cult-like group of teenagers, the royal commission into child sex abuse has been told.

But his real name is Father Frank Derriman and, in his white cap and dark glasses, he was outside his suburban home in Melbourne last week as the commission listened to his history of abuse.

Derriman, 77, is still officially an ordained Catholic priest despite serving four months behind bars for indecent assault in 1998. The church did nothing about having him defrocked when he was convicted.

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge conceded at the commission that this was an ''oversight'' and revealed it was extremely difficult to remove a priest who had abandoned the ministry without his consent - even if the priest had criminal convictions and had married, as had Derriman.

The Archbishop said that in late 2011 moves finally began with the Vatican to have Derriman struck off.

Derriman's victim Joan Isaacs, 60, told the commission how she was one of a group of teenage children lured into Derriman's ''cult'' in 1967 and 1968 when he was a priest of the Archdiocese of Brisbane and chaplain of the Sacred Heart Convent at Sandgate in Brisbane.

He called the group the ''Brown'' family after the Peanuts comic character Charlie Brown, giving each of them new Christian names. Ms Isaacs said she was called ''Junkie Brown'' and the others were ''Cass Brown'', ''Krina Brown'' and ''Bas Brown''. She now realised it was a way to try to distance them from their families.

Derriman called himself ''Fed Brown'', using his initials Frank Edward Derriman. He had befriended Ms Isaacs' family and told her that he was suffering from a fatal lung condition and had to have sex before he died. The commission was told that Derriman was transferred to another parish in 1968 after Ms Isaacs told her mother about the sexual abuse and together they told Father Martin Doyle, the parish priest at Zillmere.

Father Doyle, 69, has confirmed the meeting but said he could only remember being told that ''Father Derriman was over friendly with some of the girls''.

He passed the information on to the archbishop.

The commission was told Derriman left the church in 1970 and ''later that year married another member of the group who was apparently three months pregnant''.

Ms Isaacs told the commission that she had maintained friendships with the other children in the ''Brown'' group.

''The two girls out of the group have told me that Frank Derriman also sexually abused them. One of them took steps to have him criminally charged in respect of her sexual abuse and the other girl fathered Frank Derriman's child at the age of 17 years,'' she said.

Father Doyle said he believed that relationship was over. The hearing continues.