AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Tuesday 24 November 2015
A victim of child sexual abuse at the hands of a Melbourne priest, Peter Searson, has told a royal commission that he now sits at home in the dark with the door locked because it is the only place he feels safe.
The victim, identified only as BVD, said the abuse had begun when he was about nine years old in 1978, while he was serving as an altar boy at the Our Lady of Carmel parish in Sunbury. Searson was the parish priest and BVD was ordered to mow his lawn and wash his car.
“He was a very scary man and and very intimidating, with a gaze that would just pierce you like he was looking right through you,” BVD told the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse in Melbourne on Tuesday.
“I was very submissive as a child and I was very scared of Searson.”
Searson would order BVD to come inside with him every Saturday after he had finished washing his car, he said, and the priest’s behaviour progressed from drying BVD’s genitals to raping him.
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