AUSTRALIA
The Australian
February 13, 2017
SIMONE FOX KOOB
JournalistSydney
@SimoneFoxKoob
Eileen Piper’s faith in the Catholic Church died when her daughter did.
It was January 19, 1994, when the mother of two found a note left by her only daughter, Stephanie, in her bedroom at the family’s Melbourne home.
“A blaze of glory streams from heaven’s gates,” it read. “The prize: eternal life. A dream no more, for God himself has opened his holy sacred doors to a peaceful place.”
After years of sexual abuse as a teenager at the hands of disgraced Pallottine priest Father Gerard Mulvale, Stephanie had been unable to recover and ended her life just after she turned 32.
Mulvale has previously said he “did not know” about the abuse.
Twenty-three years later, Stephanie’s 92-year-old mother is still battling with the institution that refused to acknowledge the systematic abuse of her daughter.
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