'No one listened' to hundreds of complaints about priest, says principal

By Melissa Davey
Guardian
November 25, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/no-one-listened-to-hundreds-of-complaints-about-priest-says-principal

A royal commission hearing into the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne this week.

A former principal of a school in Victoria has said he received and passed on “hundreds” of complaints from parents and staff about the inappropriate behaviour towards children of a parish priest, Peter Searson.

But Graeme Sleeman, then the head of the Holy Family Parish school in Doveton, told the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse on Wednesday that none of those complaints, made across two and a half years between 1984 and 1986, had been acted upon by senior parish staff, including the then archbishop Frank Little.

Complaints came in from parents daily, Sleeman told the commission in Melbourne. They ranged from concerns about Searson sexually abusing children to his bizarre way of running confession by having children sit on his lap. He passed all of them on to an educational consultant at the Catholic Education Office, Allan Dooley.

“I just couldn’t believe I could make so many complaints and see nothing happen, and be told on the other hand … I was running great programs at the school,” Sleeman told the commission.

“As soon as it came to issues with the parish priest, any credibility I seemed to have went out the window. No one wanted to listen to me. No one wanted to take any notice.”

Dooley is due to give evidence to the commission on Wednesday.

Searson died in 2009 without ever facing charges. The commission has heard he abused children in parishes and schools across three districts over more than a decade, and displayed strange behaviours such as carrying a gun to school and cruelty towards animals.

Earlier on Wednesday, one of his victims, Julie Stewart, told the commission of the devastating impact his abuse of her had on her life.

Sleeman said he could vividly remember seeing Stewart running away from the confessional box and Searson, sobbing. “I came to the firm conviction that Searson had molested her,” he said, adding that he had shared this information with Dooley.

Sleeman said when Dooley did not act on that or other complaints, he had written numerous letters to other senior figures within the archdiocese of Melbourne and the Catholic Education Office, asking for meetings and outlining his concerns.

The response had always been the same, Sleeman said – that there was not enough concrete evidence to investigate the complaints.

“The whole time these events went on, they did not ever give me any real support, assistance or care about how to handle this guy,” Sleeman said. “It was all done off my own back.

“I had to try and provide the best possible solutions to what I call the diabolical position I was in: how do I look after 400-and-something kids when we’ve got this raving lunatic loose?”

He had accompanied classes to their weekly confessions with Searson and tried to support teachers in dealing with the priest. But eventually the lack of support had become too much and he resigned from his position in 1986. “I did not understand how I would get the concrete evidence they would want,” he said.

Sleeman told the commission he had struggled to find an education job after his resignation, which he believed was punishment for the stance he took against Searson.

He said he had written numerous letters to then then auxiliary bishop, George Pell, who is now an Australian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, asking to speak to him about his employment.

The commission heard on Tuesday that Pell had previously been informed by parish staff of Searson’s behaviour. “George Pell rung me when I was living in Grafton and wanted to know what I wanted after so many letters to him,” Sleeman said.

“[I said:] ‘I want you to go on national TV and to the national press and say the stance I took in Doveton was morally correct and the only one I could take.’ And he hung up.”

A retired teacher who worked at the Doveton parish school, Carmen Rafferty, also gave evidence to the commission, saying she had worked there in the early 1990s under the then principal Ray Adams.

Searson was still the parish priest. Rafferty said it wasn’t long into her teaching career at the school that other teachers had warned her that children were not safe around him.

Children had come to her hysterical about their interactions with the priest, Rafferty said, describing how he had made them sit on his lap or would follow them around the playground hitting them.

Searson said when she had gone to Adams to complain he told her: “You have to cover your arse and I have to cover mine.”

“I knew that children were vulnerable every day, and there was no one to protect them,” Rafferty said.

She had resigned from the school as a result of the inaction and the stress of working with Searson. She had felt she was being isolated and that life was being made tough for her by Adams because she had spoken up.

“It upset my health,” Rafferty said. “I was in a situation where I had a moral dilemma going on. If you stay you have to keep quiet. If you get out, one day you can talk.”

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

The hearings continue.