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Valley of the damned: the cruel spot where two different churches made the ‘epicentre of organised paedophilia’

By Candace Sutton
news.com.au
July 27, 2016

http://goo.gl/kWpRC6

   
Monster: the late Father Peter Rushton cruelly abused boys and ran a paedophile ring in the Hunter Valley.     Rushton and his boyfriend Jim Brown (above, who served time in prison) raped and abused young Anglican boys.

Paul Gray was abused by his godfather, the Anglican priest Peter Rushton in shockingly cruel games under the guise of boys’ camps.

   
Phil D'Ammond was an orphan abused by the Anglican Church in the Hunter Valley.     Mick Brown will give evidence against Hunter Valley priests.

Peter Gogarty, a victim of Catholic paedophile priest Jim Fletcher, was shocked to learn of similar atrocities in the Anglican Church.

[with video]

IT was a cruel game played out by vile abusers in an idyllic valley which will be revealed as the nation’s “epicentre for organised paedophilia”.

The game of “spotlighting”, ostensibly a weekend camping pursuit by young Anglican boys and their religious leaders was actually a guise for child sexual abuse.

Revelations of how Anglican priests and their paedophile gang chased boys and raped them in the wilds of the Hunter Valley will unfold in coming weeks.

And the Hunter Valley, known for its vineyards, its coal industry and its fertile soil for crops, will emerge as something more sinister.

This valley of the damned is now being recognised as a playground for not only priests from the Catholic Church practising systematic abuse, but their Anglican counterparts.

It is the Anglican Church’s turn to be exposed for its widespread practice of grooming and sexually assaulting young Hunter Valley boys.

Incredibly, both churches were secretly committing the same sorts of vile abuse at the same time in the same region.

The abuse occurred behind the doors of two of the Hunter Valley’s most respected establishments between 20 and 40 years ago, St John's College in Morpeth, the seminary for the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle and the Catholic Diocese of Maitland and Newcastle.

The crimes of the Hunter Valley’s Catholic abusers such as Father Vince Ryan and Father Jim Fletcher and Father David O’Hearn, and the cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy were described in sickening detail two years ago.

The Royal Commission into institutional child sexual abuse by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC investigated the Catholic Church to a limited extent, handing down its findings in May 2014.

“But I don’t think any of us realised exactly the same thing was happening to boys in the Anglican Church,” said abuse survivor and counsellor Peter Gogarty.

“It makes the Hunter Valley the epicentre of organised paedophilia in this country.”

Mr Gogarty was abused by Father Jim Fletcher who targeted him as a “shy boy from a devout family with lots of siblings, a stressed out mother and a father doing lots of jobs”.

“They didn’t question if the priest wanted to spend time with them, it was ‘get your coat’,” Mr Goarty told news.com.au.

“Fletcher had predatory long-term ‘relationships’ and his threats (if you revealed the abuse) were that you wouldn’t be believed and members of your family would be hurt.”

Unbeknown to Mr Gogarty, boys from Anglican families were falling prey to monsters from “the other side” of the church fence.

One of the victims preparing to give testimony to the Royal Commission is 64-year-old Paul Gray, who was sexually abused by his godfather Peter Rushton, an Anglican priest who ran a paedophile ring in Cessnock, 50km from Newcastle in the Hunter Valley.

As an altar boy aged 10 to 15, Mr Gray was targeted by Rushton and men including scout masters who would take boys into the bush for a game of “spotlighting”.

The game, supposedly to spot wildlife, ended up as a terrifying hide-and-seek pursuit of boys by adult men.

Instead of looking in the trees for possums and other animals, the boys “were made to do sexual acts” upon which every member of the paedophile ring caught them.

Mr Gray told the ABC that his godfather was “a kingpin” of the group who had left him to be abused by other men at St Alban’s Boys Home in Aberdare, a suburb of Cessnock.

Another victim, Phil D’Ammon will give evidence to the Royal Commission about how, as an orphan in an Anglican home, he was abused.

Rushton and his lover, Brother Jim Brown, took D’Ammond on a two-week “holiday” where the 12-year-old was raped.

“There was always someone there. Always,” Mr D’Ammond told the ABC of the feared St Alban’s. “There was never no one there and they were all young guys, like, between 12 and 14 and 15. And we were all drunk and we were all smoking hash and I was dropping acid and I was — yeah, it was sick.”

Yet another victim, Nick Brown, was brutally raped at camp and had his “backside split open” by adult abusers.

All the Anglican priest abusers had trained at the now abandoned St John's Theological College at Morpeth.

Rushton was “regularly out” at St John's and “on various boards and committees ... and was very influential in the dynamics and the management of St John’s at various periods. He would also take children out there”.

The first set of hearings at the Royal Commission from August 2 will cover events in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle.

Peter Gogarty said the hearings would “stir up emotions” among victims and their families and that Lifeline and other groups were “gearing up” to receive more calls.

“I hope people take the opportunity to seek help,” he said.

Liz Mullinar, the film and television executive who is herself a survivor and runs the abuse help group Heal for Life, said that abuse victims could heal.

“When people say they are damaged forever, that is simply not true,” she said. “It is hard to heal but it can be done.”

Mr Gogarty said fellow survivors of Catholic Church abuse were shocked by the allegations against the Anglican Church.

His abuser, Jim Fletcher, was also responsible for the abuse of Hunter Valley choir boy Daniel Feenan, whose mother wrote a book about her son’s torment in the Hunter, Holy Hell.

“I honestly didn’t think it would be this bad in the Anglican Church,” he said. “I’m not sure why — perhaps my view was that because Anglican priests can marry that maybe there wouldn’t be this level of paedophilia, and there wouldn’t be this level of cover-up, so I’ve been shocked.”




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