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	This Priest Received High Praise from His Archbishop but Now (Thanks to Broken Rites) the Church Admits That the Priest Was an Abuser Broken Rites September 15, 2009 http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page155-penn-jones.html AUSTRALIA — The "Very" Reverend Monsignor Penn Jones died in Melbourne in 1995. His boss, Archbishop Sir Frank Little, wrote (in an obituary article) that Jones is "an example to us all". Ten years later, in 2005, a new archbishop (Archbishop Denis Hart) was forced to admit that Jones was a child-abuser. So exactly what sort of "example to us all" did Archbishop Little have in mind? Penn Harold Jones was born in January 1915. After leaving school, he trained and worked as an accountant in Melbourne with Shell petroleum. At age 26, he entered the Melbourne diocesan seminary to train for the priesthood as one of the oldest entrants. Frank Little, who entered the seminary a couple of years after Jones, was ten years younger than Jones. In an obituary article about Jones (in The Age newspaper on 1 August 1995), Archbishop Little wrote: "He [Jones] happily plunged into the activities of his younger friends" . . . again, rather an ambiguous choice of words. Jones's official duties Jones was ordained in 1948 (two years before Frank Little). Jones's earliest parishes included Geelong West (the parish of Saints Peter and Paul) and South Yarra (St Joseph's parish). In 1957, aged 42, he was posted to St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, to help in the office administration there which (according to Frank Little) was then based "in a mean couple of rooms on the bottom floor of the Catholic presbytery". He remained at the cathedral, doing archdiocesan administration work, for 35 years. As the supervisor of the archdiocesan finances, Jones' administrative career boomed in the 1960s. He was appointed chancellor of the Melbourne archdiocese and secretary to the Roman Catholic Trust Corporation (nominal controllers of the church's property and assets). Paradoxically, this corporation is the body that fights any sex-abuse victims who try to sue the archdiocese for damages. Jones also became a director (and later the chairman) of the church's insurance company, Catholic Church Insurances Limited. This, too, is a body that fights any sex-abuse victims that sue the church for damages. Jones was given the distinguished title of "Monsignor" and became listed as the "Very" Reverend Penn Jones. He also became a "Prelate of Honour of His Holiness the Pope". Jones's extra-curricular activities Simultaneously, from the 1950s onwards, Penn Jones took a keen interest in the Cathedral's altar boys. He acted as a chaplain to the nearby Parade Christian Brothers College, where he gave tuition to boys about "sex education". Former students say that they were summoned, one at a time, to the chaplain's office, where Jones would engage them in chat about "sex", notably about erections and masturbation. Jones also befriended boys who were thought to be potential candidates for the priesthood. He took schoolboys and cathedral altar-boys on excursions, including after school hours and at weekends. There are complaints that he behaved indecently with boys during these activities. Gavan's story Gavan (born in 1948) contacted Broken Rites in 1994. He said he went to school at Parade College and he had been one of Penn Jones's altar boys at St Patrick's Cathedral. In 1962 he went with Father Penn Jones and about 20 other altar boys to a holiday camp at Shoreham (on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne). The camp comprised unlined cement sheet huts, in which the boys slept, plus an old house, in which Jones slept. There were a couple of open shower cubicles at the back of the house. Gavan said that Father Jones used to loiter around the showers while the boys were showering and in fact Jones showered with the boys. One day, when Gavan was the only boy in the shower area, Jones cornered him and behaved indecently with the boy. Because of Jones's position of authority, Gavan was at a disadvantage in defending himself during the molestation. There were no witnesses. Gavan did not complain to anybody because the Catholic culture prohibited negative statements about the clergy. Gavan said he knew of other boys at Parade College who were wary of Father Jones. In later years, Gavan realized that parents were unknowingly taking a risk in the 1960s when they allowed their sons to go off to altar boys' camps, thinking that their sons were perfectly safe with supposedly "celibate" priests and student priests. As an adult, Gavan mentioned Father Jones' 1962 behaviour to a number of church agencies but nobody offered to take the matter up. Matthew's story "Matthew" (born in 1947) contacted Broken Rites in 2004. He did not realize that there had been any previous complaint about Penn Jones. Broken Rites told Matthew that he was not the only complainant. Matthew said: "In my final years of secondary school in Melbourne in the early 1960s, I was interested in becoming a priest. My 'vocation' was encouraged by the Christian Brothers and I would meet regularly with Father Penn Jones to discuss how my vocation to the priesthood was going. By year 12, Penn Jones and I had become friends. He would come to my house on some weekends and pick me up for a game of squash. He would never come inside; he would just beep the horn, then wait for me in the car. "My father was dead and my mum never queried what was happening. She was happy that I was going on outings with a priest; in fact I think she was proud of this. "During school holidays, Penn Jones and I would travel to an inner-suburban school that had squash courts. There was never anyone else around. He would get the keys to a type of gym, turn on lights at a main switch, and we would get changed in a shower/locker room. "In the showers, after each game we would talk about normal things, but on some occasions I felt pressured to get physically closer. It first started as a joke and a flick of a towel, but when I saw him fully naked, mucking around, I thought it was bit strange for a priest to not have a towel around himself. I felt very embarrassed. Sometimes he would push up against me 'as a joke', squeezing my buttocks. And on one occasion he pulled my hand across onto his penis as he pretended to want the soap. He didn't say anything just looked at me in a dominant way. I think I must have joked my way out of it, because I had absolutely no idea of what was going on. "Over time I became uncertain as to where this was going, but there was no-one to talk to. My mother was a solid Catholic and I didn't think she would want to know about the shower stuff. I just keep quiet but must have given Jones the impression that I was uncomfortable. Finally, one day, he cornered me in the showers pretending to play a squash shot, and tried to push his penis into me. I was aware of it being erect and hard up against my buttocks. I became quite frightened and squeezed away. "That turned out to be the last time I ever saw him. For various reasons, I ended up choosing a different career, not the priesthood." Apology and settlement In 2004, Matthew decided to lodge a complaint about Penn Jones with the Melbourne archdiocese's commissioner on sex abuse, Peter O'Callaghan QC. To help Matthew, Broken Rites re-contacted the earlier complainant, Gavan, who until then had not been well enough to go through the O'Callaghan procedure. Gavan offered to contact O'Callaghan to speak in support of Matthew. Confronted with the evidence from both victims, Commissioner O'Callaghan upheld the complaints. In 2005, O'Callaghan wrote to both Matthew and Gavan on behalf of the archdiocese, accepting that both boys were sexually abused by Monsignor Penn Jones. O'Callagahan referred both Matthew and Gavan to the Melbourne archdiocese's compensation panel (this panel is not chaired by O'Callaghan). The purpose of the compensation panel is to remove the church's legal and financial liability as cheaply as possible. As part of this process, Matthew and Gavan each received a letter of apology from Melbourne's Archbishop Denis Hart. The archdiocese also paid a discounted financial settlement to both Matthew and Gavan in return for each of them signing a deed releasing the archdiocese from any further legal liability (the church finds this a cheap way to end its legal liability). Thus, the church authorities were able to forget about Gavan and Matthew. To paraphrase the words of former archbishop Frank Little, the case of the "Very" Reverend Monsignor Penn Harold Jones serves as "an example to us all" — that is, to all victims of the church's cover-up on sexual abuse. And Broken Rites has demonstrated, in the Penn Jones case, how a church-abuse survivor can fight to obtain justice.
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