AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
Joanne McCarthy
2 Apr 2017
STEVE Smith’s daughter remembers the day in 2001 when her father drove to a court case that nearly broke him.
The dreadful details of that child sex trial against Newcastle Anglican priest George Parker – including “considerable doubt” about the veracity of diary entries used to stop the case – were only revealed to Mr Smith’s family during a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse public hearing in August.
In an open letter to “abusers of children and those who help conceal those crimes”, that was one of the final documents tendered as evidence on the royal commission’s final public hearing day on Friday, Mr Smith’s daughter Danika spoke about the ripple effect of child sexual abuse on the families of the abused.
“You ensured a traumatic childhood for us where our Dad was emotionally unavailable because he was just trying to survive every day. He closed off from the world, including even his kids at times,” said Danika, who did not want her surname revealed.
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