AUSTRALIA
The West Australian
EXCLUSIVE Gary Adshead, The West Australian
Updated November 17, 2012
A mother who discovered 18 years after her teenage son committed suicide that he had been molested by an Anglican priest in Gosnells will ask the national royal commission into child sex abuse to investigate the case.
David Dossett was 13 in 1976 when he overdosed on sleeping tablets, leaving his mother Margaret baffled until detectives with evidence about the crimes of Rev. Michael Roderick Painter knocked on her door in 1994. Mrs Dossett has spoken publicly for the first time about her son’s suicide and her belief that Painter abused many children before taking his life.
She described the heartache of finding out that the priest, who prayed for her son while he lay dying in hospital and later conducted his funeral service, was responsible for David’s death.
“I’d wish I’d had the strength to confront Michael Painter and say, ‘What have you done to my son’,” Mrs Dossett said. “But I didn’t have that strength. It is my big regret.”
Painter killed himself four months after police officers told Mrs Dossett that entries in his diaries would result in the priest being charged with molesting her son between 1974 and 1976.
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