Detective told child abuse victim she must have been 'asking for it', inquiry hears

By Melissa Davey
Guardian
November 24, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/detective-told-child-abuse-victim-she-must-have-been-asking-for-it-inquiry-hears

Julie Stewart, now 40, gave evidence before the royal commission that she was repeatedly abused by a parish priest in Melbourne. Photo by Tracey Nearmy

A detective told a teenager who was repeatedly the victim of sexual abuse she must have been wearing a “neon sign” above her head “asking for it”, and that there was not enough evidence to investigate her case.

Julie Stewart, now 40, gave evidence before the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse on Wednesday that she was sexually abused by a family member between the age of five and eight.

She was then sexually abused by the parish priest at the Holy Family church in Doveton, Victoria, Peter Searson, from when she was in year three, the commission heard.

Stewart told the commission Searson would force her to sit on his lap during confession, rather than on the other side of the confessional barrier, and would ask her to kiss him and tell him that she loved him.

This progressed to him touching her genitals, she said. Her previous abuse at the hands of a family member, for which her father blamed her, made her reluctant to tell anyone what was happening, she said.

“I understood that what he was doing was sexual and it was wrong,” Stewart told the commission. “I would wear tracksuit pants or stockings to make it harder for him to touch me.”

When she went to confession in year four with the rest of her school class, Searson placed her on his lap “so I could feel his erection on my backside”, Stewart said.

“He pushed me hard against him. It hurt. He whispered; ‘You are a good girl. The Lord forgives you’. I snapped. I ran out of the confessional ... sobbing and hyperventilating. I was making a lot of noise.”

But Stewart said she could not recall her teacher asking her if she was OK or what had happened, and she refused to go back to confession. In 1986, when she was in year 5, Stewart began at another school, in Dandenong.

Stewart said in 1990, when she was about 15, she was contacted by a detective from Victoria police who told her he was from the child abuse squad, and that someone had put her name forward as a potential victim of Searson’s. She agreed to be interviewed by him in her family home.

“I initially felt comfortable, so I told him I had also been sexually abused by a family member,” Stewart told the commission.

“He said; ‘Oh my God, what, were you wearing a neon sign above your head saying come and get me?’. I felt that he was blaming me, which was hard, because I blamed myself.”

Stewart told the commission that she shut down, and was told by the detective there was not enough evidence for him to do anything.

In 1996, Stewart learned that the then archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, had appointed Peter O’Callaghan QC to investigate complaints about sexual abuse by Melbourne diocesan clergy.

She told the commission that in 1997 she agreed to attend what O’Callaghan described to her as an informal hearing about Searson’s abuse.

It was a process she said retraumatised her. She was made to face Searson in the hearing, she told the commission, and faced lengthy cross-examination from Searson’s lawyers. She left the hearing and broke down, she said.

“In 1998 I received a cheque from the archdiocese for $25,000 and a letter of apology from archbishop Pell,” Stewart said. “I had never asked for a letter or for an apology. I felt that the whole process re-traumatised me.”

On Tuesday, the commission heard complaints had been made about Searson from his time as a parish priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Sunbury in 1977, to the decade when he was a parish priest at Holy Family parish in Doveton. In 1997 he was charged with unlawful assault of an altar boy, and was released on a good behaviour bond without conviction after pleading guilty.

Over the next fortnight, the commission is focusing on the conduct of eight priests, including Searson, and how the archdiocese and police responded to complaints against them.

Stewart said she now suffered from depression, and still mourned for her lost childhood. She attempted suicide when she was a teenager.

“I still cry for the little girl that I once was, the little girl that never got to be a normal little girl doing all the things that little girls should do,” she said through tears.

“Nothing could ever give that back to me. It is a life sentence, and every day I make a choice to keep going. It is important to me to tell my story now, because I want peace for myself.”

Graeme Sleeman, a former principal at a school in the Doveton parish, also gave evidence to the commission on Wednesday and said he was told regularly by staff that Searson was “crazy” and “mad”.

“Every day I turned up at school from the first week, there would be a phone call put through to me and the secretary would say, ‘They want to talk to you about the parish priest’,” Sleeman said.

“I was told on regular occurrences that he had strange financial keepings, and I was told that I had to be very, very careful because he was able to misappropriate school funds. Also there was innuendo and comments that he had strange relationships with young boys and girls.

“Way back then, innuendo from a number of places and a number of people said to me, ‘hey, this guy’s not squeaky clean’.”

The hearings continue.