AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY Sept. 15, 2013
ONE year ago exactly, on September 16, hundreds of people gathered in Newcastle and called for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and other institutions.
They stood outside Panthers up to an hour before the meeting started. They carried in extra chairs to cope with the numbers.
They supported the family of John Pirona, whose suicide in July last year after “too much pain” from being sexually abused as a child by Hunter priest John Denham was the catalyst for the Newcastle Herald’s Shine the Light campaign for a royal commission.
They cried as Mr Pirona’s widow Tracey and father Lou laid bare their grief. They cheered as Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox sent a message to NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell – that police alone could not achieve justice for Australian victims of historic child sexual abuse.
And two months later the hundreds at Panthers on that day, the thousands more who supported the Herald’s campaign, and the tens of thousands across the country who echoed the Hunter’s rallying cry, achieved that goal.
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