By Joel Gibson
Sydney Morning Herald
July 18, 2008
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/parents-plea-for-a-papal-audience/2008/07/17/1216163059294.html
AFTER 33 hours travelling from Scotland via England, Japan and Cairns - and 20 years after the futures of their two daughters had been stolen by a serial rapist in priest's clothing - Anthony and Christina Foster landed in Sydney yesterday morning.
They were here on a mission for their late daughter, Emma.
Their faith in God had disappeared, Mr Foster said, since they learnt a five-year-old Emma was repeatedly raped at a Melbourne Catholic primary school by a serial abuser of 50 years named Father Kevin O'Donnell.
They later learnt her sister, Katie, had been raped by the same priest at the same school.
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| Blessing … George Pell with Emma at her confirmation at an Oakleigh church. Photo by Bob Pearce |
They cut short a European holiday when they realised that Emma, who committed suicide in January, aged 26, would have wanted them here this week.
Now they wait in a Sydney hotel, seeking that rare indulgence - an audience with the Pope.
They would tell him that the church should sell property if it must to take lifelong care of its victims, or lose its moral authority in the greater community.
"The church just doesn't get it," Mr Foster said. "It just does not comprehend the impact of its actions and the effect of sexual assault. And it does not know how to look after the victims."
Only the Pope, he said, could unite the Australian church in a uniform response that is "moral, not legal" and end the buck-passing between orders and archdioceses that has denied justice and peace to many victims.
The Fosters learnt the awful truth when Emma reached puberty and the changes in her body induced flashbacks to what happened over and over in an Oakleigh church hall, in the south-east of Melbourne, from the ages of five to eight.
For her death, by an overdose of medication, they hold the Catholic Church responsible - not only O'Donnell but the religious hierarchy they say could have prevented it.
The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, offered Emma $50,000 in compensation and continuing counselling after the family approached the church's Towards Healing program in the late 1990s, when Cardinal Pell was the archbishop of Melbourne. On Wednesday he described Emma's case as tragic and said his apology still stood. He had left Melbourne when the civil case was under way and had no involvement in the case.
Yesterday Mr Foster said the Victorian system created by Cardinal Pell, which, unlike in other states, caps payouts at $50,000, was "unjust and unfair".
An independent panel should be formed to review all cases handled by the Melbourne archdiocese since 2001 and increase their payments to the level of a civil claim, he said.
Mr Foster said he had shown Cardinal Pell a photograph of the cardinal with Emma in the Oakleigh parish when she was a girl, and one of Emma after she had harmed herself as a teenager. When Cardinal Pell was shown the second photograph in a 60 Minutes interview in June 2002, he said he did not recall having seen it before.
The Fosters see themselves as spokespeople for hundreds of victims who, because of the devastating impact of sexual abuse, are less able to argue their case.
Indications from the Vatican press office that there may not be a spoken papal apology this week showed the church was ducking for cover, Mr Foster said.
He questioned the fitness for the job of the World Youth Day co-ordinator, Bishop Anthony Fisher, after his comments that some people were "dwelling crankily … on old wounds".
It was "disgusting, given that our daughter only died six months ago", Mr Foster said.
But the chief operating officer for World Youth Day, Danny Casey, said Bishop Fisher's comments had been directed to the media, not victims themselves. "It shouldn't in any way suggest he's a man lacking compassion," Mr Casey said. "I know he is a man who feels deeply a great degree of compassion for the victims of abuse and indeed all those who have been hurt."
In 1995, O'Donnell was sentenced to 39 months' jail for indecently assaulting 12 victims in the 1970s. He died in 1997.
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