Over 300 at Rally Call for Royal Commission

ABC News
September 17, 2012

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-16/newcastle-rally/4264192


At a rally in Newcastle more than 300 people have supported calls for a Royal Commission into the Catholic Church's handling of clergy abuse.

The rally at Newcastle Panthers club heard from abuse victims and their families, Greens MP David Shoebridge, Independent Lake Macquarie MP Greg Piper and President of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Andrew Morrison.

The meeting heard how clergy abuse over the decades has lead to suicides, alcohol and drug abuse, divorce and shattered relationships.

So far Premier Barry O'Farrell has refused to support calls for a Royal Commission, saying it would hinder police investigations.

Peter Gogarty who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest from the age of 12, told the rally that several decades later, he still carries the scars.

"What that did to me was give me an incredible sense of guilt. Guilt about the way I was living my life," he said.

"It destroyed my sense of who I was, who I am.

"While all of my peers, the people around my age, were having a normal teenage development, normal sexual development, I was having a relationship with a priest."

The wife of Belmont North man John Pirona who took his own life, told a rally in Newcastle she won't give up fighting for a Royal Commission into clergy abuse.

John Pirona was one of dozens of victims of convicted paedophile priest John Sidney Denham and took his own life in July this year.

Tracy Pirona told the rally she will not allow her husband's death to be in vain.

"He knew it had destroyed every part of his life and to him the only answer was to end it," she said.

"His daughters now have to life with and grow up knowing their father was abused and took his own life to make the pain go away.

"These men need to pay for what they have done, whether it was the vile act of what they did or having the knowledge of it and not doing anything about it."