AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail
By Belinda Grant Geary For Daily Mail Australia
A woman who was groomed and sexually assaulted by a chaplain when she was a young girl has spoken out about how she was silenced by her abuser and the Catholic Church.
Joan Isaacs, 63, was fifteen-years-old when a ‘charismatic’ chaplain of the Sacred Heart Convent at Sandgate, Brisbane, started paying her and a select few of her classmates ‘special’ attention.
Father Francis Edward Derriman passed the school children notes about musicians, gave them nicknames, and challenged the religious ideas that restricted their lives – all in an attempt to carefully construct an image of a man who was ‘different’ and could be trusted.
‘Father Derriman was not handsome. But what he did have was a strong charisma and a power over people,’ Ms Issacs wrote in her autobiography, To Prey and to Silence.
‘He made them feel good. He made them feel special.’
Derriman told them he was dying of a terrible lung disease but insisted they keep it a secret. She said he positioned himself as a vulnerable and lonely man who needed their help and support.
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