AUSTRALIA
The Saturday Paper
MARTIN MCKENZIE-MURRAY
There is a sound you’ll hear often in these hearings. It follows a victim’s swearing in – a secular affirmation, never on a Bible – and precedes their reading of a prepared statement on their abuse. The sound is a quick inhalation of breath, followed by an anguished release. It is swift but unmistakable. It is the sound of emotional preparation, a quick steadying of the nerves.
It preceded BTU’s statement this week, as it did BTO’s. Before BTO began on Monday, he tearfully told the hearing he was ashamed to speak his own name. His name was spoilt, he felt: sullied by the abuse he experienced as a boy at the hands of Father Wilfred Baker. It is sorrowful testament to the suggestibility of children, the way others’ behaviour becomes integrated with a child’s psyche, that today he still blames himself.
It was the 1970s, and BTO was attending Catholic schools in Gladstone Park, a suburb of Melbourne. He was a prepubescent boy when Baker began showing a special interest in him. BTO was flattered. “When I first met Father Baker,” BTO said this week, “I found him to be very engaging. He took time to listen to me and gave me attention that I felt I was not getting at home. I’d only recently moved to Gladstone Park and really didn’t know many people. I felt special around him and found Father Baker and the church a bit of a refuge.”
It is an unmistakable pattern of these hearings – abusers exploiting the nascent egos of their victims; cultivating their need for belonging, guidance and identity. Baker made BTO an altar boy, and he relished the role. It gave him a sense of prestige, membership in a warm and noble club – a community given to the advancement of souls. This was something on which he could base a life. Meanwhile, Baker was not only grooming BTO, but also ingratiating himself with his family – another pattern. Baker would have dinner at BTO’s home at least once a week.
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