A sexual abuse survivor reveals his identity

By Gregg Borschmann
ABC - RN Breakfast
February 22, 2016

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/a-sexual-abuse-survivor-reveals-his-identity/7190028

Ballarat sexual abuse survivor Tony Wardley had previously chosen to remain anonymous. Now, thanks to the efforts of a crowd-funded campaign, he's off to Rome to see Cardinal George Pell give evidence in person. Gregg Borschmann reports.

Tony Wardley can't quite believe it.

He's packing his bags for Rome, one of a group of 15 victim/survivors of child sexual abuse from Ballarat.

More than $203,000 has been raised in the past week to send the group to Rome to hear Cardinal George Pell give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Commissioner Justice Peter McClellan said today that the desire of the group to attend the hearings in Rome was a 'reasonable request'.  The venue is likely to be a hotel room, which will be tested later today for the quality of the video link it can provide.

'That's unreal. I wasn't expecting it. You can't see my face, but I'm smiling,' Wardley, who was abused from the age of six at three different schools in Ballarat in the late 1960s and early 1970s, told RN Breakfast.

The Royal Commission accepted medical evidence from Cardinal Pell's doctors earlier this month that he was still too unwell to travel back to Australia. The commission ruled it would question Cardinal Pell by video link from Rome about his time in Ballarat—where he was a parish priest from 1973—and Melbourne.

The decision made Wardley all the more determined to be in the room in Rome with Pell.

'To see him, to actually see his body language when he's answering these questions from the commission, [to] be able to get a real sense of whether he's being honest or misleading or whatever—they're the sort of things you can't really tell from a video appearance,' he says.

'If we were there, not to confront him or disrupt or anything like that, [it] just puts more pressure on his conscience, if he's got one, on his answering those questions.'

Until today, Wardley was known as Witness BAA. When he read a statement to the commission last May, he asked to remain anonymous. Not anymore.

Thanks to the support of his family and the community, he says the time for shame, secrecy and denial is over.

'People are starting to understand the effects of child abuse. The community is really rallying behind not just me, but all the survivors. They've gotten an understanding of what we go through now.'

Wardley's first abuser was a nun at St Alipius Primary School, when Wardley was just six years old.  The nun told him what had just happened was 'God's secret' and if he talked about it he would go to hell.

There was a culture of silence, according to Wardley, but all the children knew what was going on.

'You never thought you were alone because other kids were getting molested in front of you as well. Even though you saw others getting molested as well, you never spoke about it.

'It's just something that you didn't do. Instead of talking about it, the fights in the playground were constant.'

Wardley says the abuse ruined his life and his first marriage.  Even now he finds it hard forming male friendships. He's struggled to hold down jobs, has tried to commit suicide several times and continues to have nightmares.