AUSTRALIA
7 News
January 21, 2013, 6:18 pm Georgia Main Today Tonight
Just two months after the announcement of a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, the Catholic Church is reeling from scandal once again.
This time a former Sydney priest has been exposed for a long-term sexual relationship with a vulnerable parishioner.
Father Tom Knowles is preaching again after sexually preying on a disabled woman.
For fourteen years Jennifer Herrick endured a secret sexual relationship with the priest. Father Knowles was the Herrick’s trusted family priest at their local church in Sydney.
Herrick was a shy nineteen-year-old with bilateral congenital hip dysplasia – a condition causing her to walk with a highly abnormal gait.
“I had such low self-esteem because of the way I walked, that I kind of made allowances for him because he was a priest. The rules were the rules and I thought ‘I guess he’s human, he has his needs’ and somehow he’d picked me. Now I know he sure did pick me,” she said.
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