NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Listener
In a book published in 2007, retired Australian Catholic bishop Geoffrey Robinson bravely called on his church to rethink its approach to sexuality. In particular, he argued that forced celibacy
was one of the causes of sexual abuse in the church. Celibacy was not a gift given to everyone, Robinson wrote. For some, it could become a heavy burden that harmed their ability to be good human beings.
His conclusions were based on nine years spent working with victims of clerical abuse. But far from being commended for his courage and insight, Robinson was rebuked by the church hierarchy for daring to question Catholic teaching.
Tragically, that stubborn, blind adherence to rigid dogma continues to cause enormous anguish and pain. That was evident in the Wellington District Court recently when former priest Peter Joseph Hercock, 72, was sentenced to a long prison term for sex offences committed against vulnerable girls when he was a “counsellor” – we use inverted commas because he had no training for the role – at a Catholic girls’ school in Lower Hutt during the 1970s.
In simple but eloquent victim-impact statements, four complainants gave compelling accounts of the psychological damage inflicted when they were raped or indecently assaulted by Hercock after going to him for advice about personal problems and troubled home environments. Being assaulted by a priest, one victim said, was too much for a young Catholic girl to get her head around. The ghastly memory of the sex act had never left her. “I was a virgin when you assaulted me, and when it was over, I wasn’t,” she told Hercock.
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