AUSTRALIA
Knox Weekly
By TARA McGRATH
Nov. 21, 2012
CARMEL Rafferty was silenced, shut down and bullied in 1992 when she dared to question the behaviour of a parish priest at the school where she worked as a teacher.
The Boronia resident — known as Mrs Giddings during her teaching life — taught at Holy Family in Doveton for five years from the late 1980s, before being appointed as a senior school teacher in grades 5 and 6.
It was during this year that her pupils started coming forward to tell her that they were uncomfortable with the way the priest, Peter Searson, was touching them.
It’s because of her experiences more than 20 years ago that Ms Rafferty was “overjoyed” to hear the federal government’s announcement of a royal commission on institutional responses to allegations of child abuse.
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