Fight for Justice
By Kath Gannaway
FORMER St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School teacher Pam Krstic has worked closely with two parents of children abused by convicted Healesville priests and supported them in their efforts to achieve justice for their own children and protection for all children in the future.
The announcement last year of a Royal Commission into institutionalised abuse by clergy is a triumph for Pam and the Healesville victims of Catholic paedophile priests, which very much includes their families.
In 2006 she and Ian Lawther founded HEAR (Healesville Education and Awareness Raising) to advocate for the education of parents and teachers in schools to recognise grooming behaviour. At the same time they tackled the Catholic Church Melbourne Archdiocese’s practices for handling clergy sexual abuse under their flawed Melbourne Response.
Over the past six years Pam has challenged the Catholic Church’s Melbourne Response directly, advocating for and supporting the parents who dared to go to the police when the church didn’t.
“In 2006 when we started HEAR we were looking at the Healesville area and thought we would be able to work with the local community and from there would be able to show a model of what needed to be done,” she said.
“We were completely shut down.”
It was when all avenues were closed to them - denial at a parish level, refusal to engage at archdiocese level, and all the way to Rome, and a deaf ear and empty words by the politicians they desperately sought to join them in their fight - that they went public.
Pam said they knew it was only when the broader public became aware of the full extent of what they knew was happening, and the government put in a position where they could no longer ignore it, that change would happen.
“We realised then that we needed to go to the media ... and it’s taken six years,” Pam said.
One of their goals, a Royal Commission, will happen, but it has come at a personal cost.
Speaking out against your own church, in your own parish, is a tremendously hard thing to do.
The teaching career Pam had dedicated herself to, and loved, was no longer possible.
The lack of understanding and support from her own parish, both for herself and for the parents of the abused children, has been devastating.
Pam has remained compassionate and courageous in her determination not to walk away from the wrong others have turned a blind eye to and failed to speak out about.
For the past two years she has worked with Helen Last at In Good Faith and Associates supporting victims of Catholic Church clergy abuse and lobbying for justice, accountability, truth and legislation to protect children in the future.
The announcement of first, the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry On The Handling of Child Abuse By Religious And Other Organisations, and, in November, the Federal Government’s decision to finally hold a Royal Commission to investigate institutional child abuse, made 2012 a landmark year, on a continuing journey, for Pam and the victims of clergy abuse, and future generations of children.
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