AUSTRALIA
9 News
A NSW inquiry has been left in stunned silence by a social worker reading statements from two women sexually assaulted 32 years apart by the same Catholic priest.
The letters spoke of the terror, suffering and sadness that still plagued them, in one case, almost 60 years after the abuse by Hunter Valley Catholic priest Denis McAlinden began.
Maureen O’Hearn, the coordinator of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese child protection unit’s healing and support services, read the statements because the women were unable to.
She said the first letter was written by a 68-year-old woman who was abused for years, from 1954, when she was 10.
The second was written by a 38-year-old who was abused from 1986, when she was 11.
The first woman described McAlinden as “an extremely bad tempered, evil man who was a sexual predator of little girls”.
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