AUSTRALIA
Sky News
Twelve years after being silenced by the Catholic Church, Joan Isaacs can now tell the world about the sexual and emotional abuse inflicted upon her as a schoolgirl.
Ms Isaacs was applauded as she left the witness stand at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday after finally talking publicly about the abuse dealt her by Father Francis Derriman more than 40 years ago.
The church last week lifted the legally binding agreement she made in 2001 in return for a $30,000 payment, in a gesture she said was ‘too little, too late.’
Ms Isaacs, 60, received a letter from Brisbane Archbishop, the Most Reverend Mark Coleridge, saying she was no longer required to observe the conditions of the settlement agreed to under the church’s Towards Healing process.
A confidentiality clause required her not to speak to anyone, except for medical reasons, about her abuse and demanded that she not make ‘disparaging comments’ about the process and the archdiocese.
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