Desperate cry for help falls on deaf ears

By Joanne Mccarthy
Newcastle Herald
January 12, 2015

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2812107/desperate-cry-for-help-falls-on-deaf-ears/?src=rss

JOHN DENHAM

TOM BRENNAN

TWO victims of John Denham attempted suicide while still students at St Pius school, court documents show.

One of the students was hospitalised after taking barbiturates at age  16 ‘‘with the intention of dying’’, he said in a statement that formed part of the brief of evidence against Denham in 2010.

He shared the barbiturates with another student.

He told police he was bullied ‘‘almost from the first day I went to the school’’, and given alcohol by Denham before he was sexually abused, at times at Charlestown presbytery. Because of his background, which was well known to Denham and principal Father Tom Brennan, he was vulnerable and isolated.

When he turned to Brennan for help, the priest provided some comfort, but sometimes massaged the boy’s shoulders in his office, and took no action about the bullying or Denham’s abuse.

‘‘I took the tablets with the intention of dying as I was sick of the bullying that had been constant over four years,’’ he said.

‘‘I was a child, who was used and taken advantage of, probably because of my lonely, isolated existence. I think about how my life might be different today had I not been subjected to the abuse and bullying while I was at school.’’

THE mother and teenage brother of a 13-year-old Hunter Catholic high school student who died in his bedroom in October 1974 were the only people who attended an inquest a few weeks later.

They were assured by coroner Reg Radford that there would be no publicity.

During a short hearing, where police detailed how the boy died that night, a short time after having a bath and telling his mother he would be studying in his room, Mr Radford questioned his mother and brother about him.

He was a happy boy, but sensitive, they said.

A serious accident earlier in the year that had left his father in hospital for weeks, with long periods away from the family throughout the year, had possibly affected the boy more than other family members, Mr Radford was told.

But on the night of his death he showed no sign of distress when he closed his bedroom door while his mother ironed in the loungeroom, and his brother watched television.

At the end of the inquest Mr Radford found the boy died by hanging himself at his home, but he did not use the word suicide. He also did not say it was an accident.

‘‘Whether he died accidentally or otherwise the evidence adduced does not enable me to say,’’ Mr Radford said.

Church representatives told students at his school that the boy’s death was accidental.

The boy’s mother and brother support an investigation into his death, and the deaths of other former Catholic high school students, because of information that has become available in recent years.