AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
MOST people dont understand the impact of sexual abuse.
They rattle off words like ‘rape’ and ‘molestation’ but they don’t really understand it. If they did, they’d do something about it.
My husband, John, and I have four boys, Daniel, Luke, Dominic and Bernard. We raised them on a 25-acre property 40 minutes from Newcastle, NSW, and led a happy life with a strong Catholic faith.
The boys were 11, 10, seven and three when Father James Fletcher arrived in our parish.
He didn’t seem very smart and his homilies were shallow, but he took an interest in the children and we were pleased to have a priest who learnt their names and asked them about cricket and school.
Father Fletcher visited our family a lot and we were very active in his church. John did his accounts and I did everything from sewing the buttons onto his black shirts to taking communion to the elderly.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.