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	Altar Boy #2 (Daniel): He Committed Suicide in 2007 Broken Rites November 8, 2009 http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page172-parramatta-court.html A certain Australian priest — let us call him Father "F" — built up a pool of altar boys in his parishes. On 1 January 2001, one of those altar boys (named Damian) died in tragic circumstances, aged 28. On 25 November 2007 another of Father F's altar boys (named Daniel, from a different parish) took his own life. Both were aged 28 at the time of death. This article is about Altar Boy #2, Daniel. At the bottom of this article, you will find a link to the story of Altar Boy #1, Damian. Court case in 2004 This article is based on evidence presented in the Parramatta District Court in western Sydney in June 2004. Broken Rites possesses a copy of the court transcript. During this case, Father F admitted that he had oral sex with young boys in his parishes. He also admitted serving alcohol to boys as young as 12. The court was told that when one boy (Daniel Powell) reached the age of 18, he confronted Father F in 1998, angrily complaining that the priest's sexual abuse had disrupted Daniel's adolescence at age 12 — by involving the boy in secretive behaviour culminating in alcohol and drug abuse. Father F offered money to the 18-year-old in 1998 if he did not take his sex-abuse allegations to the police, the court was told. In court in 2004, Father F was giving evidence against Daniel William Powell (born on 28 May 1979), who encountered Father F as a 12-year-old altar boy in late 1991. Father F complained to the police in late 1998 that, on several occasions in early 1998, Daniel had tried to "extort" money from him. In court in 2004, Daniel (aged 25) pleaded not guilty to 12 charges of demanding property with menaces. In his defence, Daniel denied that he had "demanded by menaces". He said that Father F had offered to pay compensation for the breach of priestly trust that had allegedly disrupted the boy's life. The jury found Daniel not guilty on all charges. Three years after his acquittal, Daniel committed suicide. The priest's background In the Parramatta court hearing, the judge ruled that the priest could be referred to (outside the courtroom) "by the pseudonym F". Father F told the court that he was no longer in the ministry in 2004. He said the church had not given him any parishes since mid-1992, although technically (he said) he was still a priest — a priest whose rights of ministry had been withdrawn. Father F told the court that he was ordained in September 1981 to serve as a priest in northern New South Wales. During cross-examination, he agreed that in February 1988 he was appeared before a magistrate in a local court in northern New South Wales, charged with having sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy named Damian Jurd. Father F and Damian were making a weekend visit to an outlying parish when the alleged assaults of Damian occurred. Father F successfully contested the 1988 court charges, which were dismissed by the northern magistrate on 18 February 1988. After the 1988 court case, Father F said, the diocese withdrew him from parish postings, and he then resided for a while with the bishop in the bishop's residence. In 1989, Father F said, he was transferred on loan from northern New South Wales to another diocese (westwards from Sydney), where he worked first in one parish (to the north of Parramatta) and then, from 1990, in another parish (to the south of Parramatta). At the second parish, he met Daniel Powell (an altar boy, then aged 12) in late 1991. The court was told that Daniel was a disturbed and vulnerable boy because his father had committed suicide (by hanging himself from a tree in the backyard) when Daniel was aged nine. Some pupils at Daniel's Catholic school taunted Daniel about the suicide, the court was told. Father F befriended Daniel and his family and became a father figure for Daniel, the court was told. During questioning by Daniel's lawyer, Father F said Daniel would visit him at his presbytery at night. If anybody else was at the presbytery at this time, Daniel would be smuggled in, quietly. Father F agreed that he supplied Daniel with alcohol and cigars at the presbytery. Father F said he and Daniel also stayed overnight at another presbytery (in south-west Sydney, in the Wollongong diocese), where they shared a bedroom, when Father F was doing weekend Masses for an absent priest. Daniel's lawyer asked Father F about sexual acts that he had allegedly performed on Daniel (including oral sex, masturbation and, on one occasion, thrusting a finger painfully into Daniel's anus). Father F declined to answer on the ground that it might incriminate him. In reply to Daniel's lawyer, Father F agreed that he attended a meeting, held at the Sydney Cathedral presbytery on 3 September 1991, with Reverend Brian Lucas, Reverend Usher and Reverend Peters. The cross-examination continued: * QUESTION: I suggest to you that at that meeting you made certain admissions to those priests that you had had oral sex with young boys. What do you say about that? ANSWER: Yes. * QUESTION: And that's the reason why they won't let you carry out your duties as a priest, isn't it? ANSWER: That's part of it, yes… * QUESTION: That, of course, breaks your promise of chastity, doesn't it? ANSWER: Actually what you are talking about is the promise I took of celibacy, which is not getting married, but if you are saying it was wrong and sinful to engage in wrong practices the answer is yes, and I am deeply sorry for what happened. Father F said his posting in the parishes to the west of Sydney ended on 1 July 1992 and he was not given any more parish postings anywhere. He then returned to his home town in northern New South Wales, where his parents lived, and took up university studies as a civilian (that is, no longer in the official role of a priest). Before leaving western Sydney, Father F said, he gave his contact details in northern NSW to Daniel, inviting the boy to contact him again some time. Meanwhile, Daniel was experiencing behavioural difficulties. By age 14, as well as drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, he was smoking marijuana and playing truant from school, the court was told. His relationship with his mother deteriorated and he left home, descending into a spiral of alcohol and drug abuse. Finally, in early 1998, aged 18, Daniel made the first of several phone calls to Mr F in northern New South Wales. In these calls, Daniel eventually confronted Mr F and told him about how the priest's influence had allegedly disrupted the boy's life. Mr F offered to pay money to Daniel if Daniel did not report his sex-abuse allegations to the police. Mr F said he told Daniel that a court case was to be avoided. Mr F said that the Damian Jurd court case in northern New South Wales in 1988 "attracted a large amount of media attention and the experience had a devastating impact on me." Mr F also told Daniel that the 1988 court case did not do Damian Jurd any good because the 1988 magistrate dismissed Damian's allegations. Mr F and Daniel Powell discussed a sum of compensation to be paid, and Mr F began paying some instalments into Daniel's bank account (drawing money, he said, from the account of Mr F's elderly father). The court was told that, during these payments, Mr F consulted a friend in the police force and arranged to make a police statement, alleging that Daniel was trying to extort money from him. Mr F and the police arranged a "sting" to trap Daniel one day when Mr F was meeting Daniel at a McDonalds fast-food outlet to discuss the payments. After being trapped, Daniel was charged in Blacktown Local Court on 20 September 2002, and magistrate Pat O'Shane adjourned the matter to be heard at Parramatta. [A news item about Daniel's initial court appearance, with Daniel's name, but not Father F's name, appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, on 21 September 2002, written by court reporter Jaedene Hudson. It is not known who tipped off the media about Daniel's court charges.] Daniel's story During the week-long jury trial at Parramatta, Daniel's defence lawyer repeatedly raised Daniel's allegations that Father F had sexually abused him in western Sydney. The jury also learned that in October 2003 Daniel (then aged 24) lodged a 24-page police statement, detailing the alleged sexual abuse of Daniel. This statement was read aloud to the jury, and the statement is therefore preserved in the transcript of Daniel's trial. Daniel stated that, while he was in primary school, his parents had a business that folded. He stated: "There had been a great deal of pressure on my parents and they used to frequently argue..." "On 5 April 1989 I returned home after an outing with my mother and sister to find my father dead, hanging from a tree in the backyard. The visions of his body and memories of this day will remain with me forever. The impact on my family was tremendous and for me, barely ten years old, the confusion, grief and trauma seemed insurmountable... "My mother strove to keep us in the Catholic education system, hoping that with Christian care we could continue on to achieve well academically and learn wholesome morals with which to face the world." Daniel stated that in early 1991 a lay teacher (Mr H******) at his Catholic school befriended him and took him on outings, including camping. Mr H******, who became a father figure for Daniel, began sexually abusing Daniel, including masturbation and oral sex. When he was forced to perform oral sex on this teacher, Daniel "felt sick" and "almost vomited", he said. But this was the price Daniel had to pay in order to retain this teacher's friendship, he stated. This abuse occurred not only on outings but also on school premises, he stated. In 1991, detectives contacted Daniel, asking about Mr H****** (because of complaints from other families), but Daniel denied that the teacher had touched him, because he was embarrassed about being labelled as a "poofter" and because he wanted to protect his mother from distress. During the police investigation, Mr H****** committed suicide, Daniel stated. Daniel stated that he had been an altar boy in previous parishes, and in late 1991 he resumed altar-boy duties at Father F's parish, to the south of Parramatta, which is how he first encountered Father F. Daniel stated: "[Father F] was welcomed into our home with open arms without question of motive, as it was common place for us to have contact with members of the church. His visits and the time we spent together would in most cases follow serving Mass with him, at the presbytery where he would also bring me after going to Rookwood Cemetery where he was teaching me to drive his car, a Holden Commodore." Father F was a gun-owner and showed Daniel how to use guns, which the boy found exciting, Daniel stated. Daniel's statement then describes how Father F began touching him sexually while watching a movie, The Untouchables, at the presbytery. Daniel stated: "When this touching began, I became very confused and shocked by what he had done and I was disappointed that I must once again enjoy discomfort on my part to receive my companionship and outings..." Daniel's statement then alleges that, in a series of subsequent meetings, Father F's actions developed into a pattern of masturbation and oral sex. On one occasion, Father F had worn a red condom, Daniel stated. Once, when Daniel was getting out of the shower at the presbytery after a sex session, Father F "put his arm around me from behind and pushed one of his fingers into my anus." Daniel went on: "I pulled straight away from him towards the bathroom door and said not to do that again, explaining that my anus was now very sore..." Daniel stated that later that night Father F offered him a nightcap, scotch whisky, "which he joked would numb my bum." Daniel and Father F kept their sexual relationship as a secret. Daniel had to conceal it from his mother. Father F would arrange to phone Daniel at a particular time to discuss their next meeting, so that Daniel would answer the phone without his family knowing. Daniel stated that this behaviour involved him in a pattern of deceptiveness, stealth and risk-taking. At the time, aged only 12, Daniel did not realize what this was doing to him psychologically. Before Father F left western Sydney in mid-1992, he "wrote down his phone number and address [at his home town in northern New South Wales] and requested that I write to him and call him from time to time," Daniel stated. Daniel's statement then described how his teenage development became disrupted. He stated: "Towards the end of my relationship [with Father F], I discontinued my altar-service and distanced myself from the church. My interests and hobbies had also become both reckless and beyond my years. "In 1993 I was expelled from [a Catholic high school] for constant truancy and poor attitude towards my education...Early in 1994, my attitude towards school worsened as did my risk-taking... I had begun to smoke marijuana with some older boys whom I had become friends with. "My relationship with my mother had deteriorated... My drug and alcohol use had become almost habitual by the age of 14 and, although an asthmatic, I was often a regular cigarette smoker. At 15, I was told to leave home after a heated argument about my social circles and bad attitudes towards my mother and lack of respect for her rules and boundaries." Daniel's statement outlined his phone calls to Mr F in 1998 and how he had expressed his anger at the priest for using Daniel's emotional vulnerability "to trick me into unwittingly let him treat me as some sort of an under-age prostitute". Daniel stated: "He [Mr F] asked me what I wanted from him and what I intended to do in relation to the police...He then asked me if it was money I wanted...[Later in this conversation] he again posed the question of my accepting money as some sort of compensation." Not guilty As well as hearing Daniel's police statement about Father F, the jury also heard details about the police "sting" operation against Daniel that resulted in his arrest. The jury found Daniel not guilty on all charges. [The trial proceedings were written up in a NSW District Court transcript, number DCV 3090.] A tragic ending * After being acquitted, Daniel Powell tried to repair his life but faced many difficulties. Finally, on 25 November 2007, aged 28. Daniel committed suicide in the same way that his father did - by hanging himself from a tree. * The earlier complainant, Damien James Jurd of northern New South Wales, who was born on 7 March 1972, also died in tragic circumstances. Damian, too, had a disrupted adolescence, culminating in drug-usage, and by the time he became a young adult, his life was a mess. At the end of 2000 Damian was particularly depressed and he was found unconscious in bed. Later, life support had to be withdrawn and Damian died on New Year's Day, 2001, aged 28. The story of Altar Boy #1, Damien Jurd, is told in another article on this website. * Mr F is still living in a regional city in New South Wales.
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