Daughter sought ‘peace’ after a priest’s alleged abuse

By Simone Fox Koob
Australian
February 12, 2017

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/daughter-sought-peace-after-a-priests-alleged-abuse/news-story/0dfb1310fc5de3a986885e987c91e6af

Eileen Piper, 92 in her home in Frankston, in Melbourne’s southeast, with a picture of her daughter Stephanie, victim of an alleged rape by a priest who later killed herself. Photo by David Geraghty

It was January 19, 1994, when the mother of two found a note left by her only daughter, Stephanie­, in her bedroom at the family’s Melbourne home.

“A blaze of glory streams from heaven’s gates,” it read. “The prize: eternal life. A dream no more, for God himself has opened his holy sacred doors to a peaceful place.”

After years of sexual abuse as a teenager at the hands of disgraced Pallottine priest Father Gerard Mulvale, Stephanie had been unable­ to recover and ended her life just after she turned 32.

Mulvale has previously said he “did not know” about the abuse.

Twenty-three years later, Stephanie’s 92-year-old mother is still battling with the institution that refused to acknowledge the systematic abuse of her daughter.

“You never get over it. A mother never does,” said Ms Piper. “Along the way, people say: ‘Why do you keep doing it?’

“And I say: ‘I’m her mother. I’m her mother. That’s why.’

“I don’t want her name to be blackened like the church has done. She was beautiful.”

Mulvale, the priest who allegedly raped Stephanie during her late teens, was sentenced to three years’ jail in 1995 for indecently assaulting two teenage boys who were in the same youth group.

He was sentenced to a non-parole term of two years and three months.

Ms Piper is still waiting for an apology from Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart and an acknowle­dgment by the church that the abuse occurred.

“They have twisted all the stories­, twisted them all around,” she said. “How can I untwist their words? Only this way.

“I believe in Stephanie. It happened, I know it happened.” Last week Ms Piper was approached by Change.org to began an online petition to aid her cause. It garnered almost 45,000 signatures.

“A lot of people have said they know what Stephanie’s gone through, I’ve been there,” she said.
“They are unknown to me. ­Unknown.

“If it’s opening up their hearts and minds, why not? If they feel sentimental or sad, let it be. Let it come out.”

The release of a report­ last week from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse reminded Ms Piper why she keeps fighting. The statistics identified 1880 alleged perpetrators and 4444 victims who have come forward between 1980 and 2015.

The head of the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan, cried as he said the data was indefensible and a “massive failure on the part of the Catholic Church in Australia to protect children from abusers and predators, a misguided determination by leaders at the time to put the interests of the church ahead of the most vulnerable and a corruption of the gospel the church seeks to profess”.

“As Catholics we hang our heads in shame,” he said.

For Ms Piper, these are crocodile tears. The response needs to filter down to people such as her, whose lives have been indelibly marked by the failure of a relig­ious institution she once believed in.

“I’m just thankful I’m still alive, still capable of handling what I need to handle,” she said.

“I've opened up a can of worms in my simple way. I cannot bear to think that I’m going to die and this still hasn’t progressed.”